This is Roundtable.
Highways in China used to be nothing more than practical strips of tarmac built for speed, efficiency,
and moving boxes from point A to B.
But today, across the country, these once ordinary routes are being reimagined as experiences worth savoring,
with thousands of miles of thoughtfully designed byways turning travel into something far more immersive.
So what happens when the drive itself becomes the destination?
And the journey stops being just a means and starts being the memory.
Coming to you from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you so much for being with us for this episode.
And for the show, I'm with Yushan and Yang Yang.
First up.
Yes, China just introduced something very new.
This is a huge, huge network of roads, up to 60,000 kilometers, as a matter of fact,
that include a lot of different loops and corridors,
and it's a way to get from point A to point B to point C,
D, E, F, G all around the country.
It's called the Implementation Plan for High-Quality Self-Drive Tourism Highways.
And it's a direct response.
It's a big bet on something already happening here in the country, and that's road trips.