
The Chinese government has been building a massive wall on its border with the United States for nearly a decade, and the latest step in that construction was announced Thursday.
The wall is the second major piece of the $1.4 trillion wall that China is building along its border to keep the United States population from entering the country.
The first major wall was constructed in the 1990s and covered the border with Mexico, but it’s been expanded to include a few countries along the Pacific coast, including the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
The new border wall is nearly twice as tall as the previous one and spans 1,200 miles (2,200 kilometers).
The new border fence will be built on the U.S.-Mexico border, and a separate wall along the Rio Grande river, the world’s longest, will be constructed on the western edge of the border to the east, Axios reported.
The border wall will be about 4 feet (1 meter) thick, the biggest of its kind in the world, and will be topped with steel bars and fencing.
China is building more than 1,300 miles (3,800 kilometers) of the 1,600-mile (2.6-kilometer) border barrier that has been in place since 2006.
It is also building fences along the Gulf of Mexico and on land that China has previously used to build its vast infrastructure projects such as dams, airports, power plants, and highways.