At 55 kilometres, the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge is both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world. It consists of three cable-stayed bridges, a 6.7-kilometre immersed tube tunnel, four artificial islands, and link roads extending from both the Hong Kong and Zhuhai sides. The main bridge alone — the central section managed by mainland Chinese authorities — runs 29.6 kilometres across the Pearl River estuary, with three cable-stayed spans reaching between 280 metres to allow shipping traffic to pass underneath.

The tunnel section dips beneath the water between two artificial islands named Blue Dolphin Island and White Dolphin Island, built to mark where road traffic transitions between bridge and tunnel. Drivers switching from Hong Kong's left-hand traffic to mainland China's right-hand traffic use dedicated crossing viaducts at the boundaries. The bridge is technically in Zhuhai for most of its length. The total project cost ¥127 billion — approximately US$18.8 billion — and was designed to last 120 years.

The construction record is not only one of engineering achievement. On the Hong Kong side of the project alone, more than ten workers died and between 234 and 600 were injured — the range reflecting disputed reporting. On the mainland side, at least nine additional fatalities were confirmed, though lawmakers in Hong Kong noted that the true toll there was unknown and potentially far larger. Fernando Cheung, a Hong Kong lawmaker, publicly called it 'the bridge of blood and tears.'

In December 2017, a laboratory technician pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight months in prison for falsifying materials test results. The Hong Kong Highways Department retested the materials and found that actual results met safety standards, but the episode added to public unease about oversight across a project of this complexity. The workers who built this bridge — the ones who died and the far greater number who went home at the end of each shift — are the human foundation of what the official record calls an engineering marvel.

On the first day of public operation, fewer than 1,500 private cars and goods vehicles crossed the bridge. The government had projected 9,200 to 14,000 daily. Critics called it a vanity project, a massively expensive link that served politics more than people.

The picture looked different by 2024. Over 10,000 private, coach, and goods vehicles were crossing daily, and most of the bridge's traffic travelled not in private cars but on the HZMBus shuttle service — colloquially known as the 'golden buses' — which runs every five minutes around the clock and carries the crossing in about forty minutes. In a single day on 31 January 2025, the Zhuhai port recorded 156,000 passenger trips. The journey between Zhuhai and Hong Kong, which once took roughly four hours by road and ferry, now takes thirty minutes.

The Pearl River estuary is home to the Chinese white dolphin, a species that ranges from pink in adults to white in juveniles and that has lived in these waters for as long as records exist. Conservationists at WWF Hong Kong documented the impact of construction directly: between April 2015 and March 2016, the population of white dolphins in the waters near Lantau Island fell by sixty percent. The construction noise, dredging, and shipping traffic associated with the project pushed the animals from habitat they had occupied for generations.

The dolphins did not have a seat at the table when the bridge was planned, and they had no recourse when the construction proceeded. They remain in the estuary in reduced numbers, sharing the water with the bridge that reshaped their world.