by Rahim Said
There are airports, and then there are airports that make you wonder whether the engineers who built them had a private argument with gravity and won.
China’s Chongqing Wushan Airport is one such engineering achievement. Perched approximately 1,771 metres above sea level, with a 2,600-metre runway, it began operations in August 2019. Constructing it involved reshaping formidable mountain terrain to create a sufficiently level site in the spectacular Three Gorges region.
This was no ordinary exercise in pouring concrete, laying tarmac and inviting politicians to pose for photographs. It required engineering ingenuity, substantial earthworks, careful planning and the ability to turn geographical obstacles into infrastructure.
The Chinese even have a name for it: an “airport in the clouds”. One suspects that, had the project been undertaken by some of our more imaginative bureaucrats, it might first have required a feasibility study, a committee to study the feasibility study, and another committee to investigate why the first committee had not finished its work.
China built an airport on top of a mountain. We sometimes struggle to get everyone to agree on where to build the meeting room.
The joke, unfortunately, carries a serious message. Engineering is more than building things
What makes Wushan Airport impressive is not merely its altitude or its photogenic location. It demonstrates how engineering can overcome physical constraints to improve connectivity, open up tourism and bring economic opportunities to communities that might otherwise remain difficult to reach.
The airport was designed to improve access to the Three Gorges Reservoir region. Its significance therefore extends beyond the runway. It connects infrastructure investment with regional development, employment and commercial activity.
This is the kind of thinking Malaysia should study closely.
We have our own mountains, islands, remote settlements and geographical challenges. We have ambitious development plans, universities offering engineering degrees, and young Malaysians capable of learning and innovating. What we must continually ask is whether our education system, research institutions and industrial policies are doing enough to convert that potential into practical capabilities.
A degree is useful. The ability to design, build, test and deliver something that works in the real world is even more useful.
China’s achievement reminds us that engineering excellence does not materialise from graduation ceremonies and framed certificates. It grows from years of technical education, applied research, disciplined project management and the willingness to tackle problems that initially appear almost impossible.
Why not send more Malaysians to China?
This brings us to an obvious question: why should Malaysia not expand the number of students it sends to China, particularly in engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, transport infrastructure and other technology-intensive fields?
To be fair, Malaysia is not starting from zero. Chinese Government Scholarship opportunities have been offered to Malaysians, and Malaysian institutions and organisations have already established partnerships with Chinese universities. MARA and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, for example, signed an agreement in November 2025 to strengthen academic and research cooperation.
The question is whether these initiatives are sufficiently ambitious, accessible and strategically focused.
Imagine a substantially expanded scholarship programme sending Malaysian students to leading Chinese engineering universities. They could study how large-scale infrastructure is designed, how construction projects are managed, how automation improves productivity and how research is translated into commercial applications.
Students need not remain in China permanently. Indeed, the objective should be to bring their knowledge home.
We should cultivate engineers who understand international best practices, speak the languages of technology and commerce, and possess the confidence to adapt what they have learnt to Malaysian conditions.
Why should our young people learn about advanced engineering only through textbooks when they could also learn from projects that demonstrate what engineering can achieve?
And why should we limit educational exchanges to occasional delegations, ceremonial agreements and photographs of officials exchanging documents?
A memorandum of understanding is not a technological breakthrough. It is an agreement that something might happen. The real achievement begins when students are trained, researchers collaborate, patents emerge, factories adopt new processes and Malaysian companies become more productive.
Collaborate, but do so intelligently
Malaysia should also pursue more substantial cooperation with Chinese universities, research centres and engineering companies.
Our universities could develop joint laboratories, exchange academic staff, establish dual-degree programmes and undertake collaborative research. Malaysian companies could partner with Chinese firms to train local engineers, improve manufacturing processes and develop new products.
Infrastructure projects could incorporate meaningful technology-transfer and skills-development requirements, rather than treating local participation as little more than providing labour and administrative support.
However, collaboration must be approached with open eyes. Malaysia should assess the quality of partners, protect intellectual property, insist on transparent procurement, maintain appropriate environmental safeguards and ensure that technology transfers create lasting domestic capabilities.
There is no virtue in importing expensive technology if we never develop the capacity to understand, maintain or improve it ourselves.
Nor should Malaysia assume that every Chinese model can be transplanted wholesale. Our needs, geography, finances and institutions differ. The purpose of international cooperation is to learn, adapt and innovate, not to copy without thinking.
We should engage China confidently while continuing to cooperate with universities and industries in Japan, South Korea, Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
Technology has no passport. Good ideas should be judged by their usefulness, not the nationality of the people who invented them.
The danger of admiring from a distance
Malaysia has spent decades talking about becoming a high-income, knowledge-based economy. We have launched policies, unveiled blueprints, established committees and announced targets with impressive regularity.
Yet the ultimate measure of progress is not the number of policy documents produced. It is whether our people become more capable, our businesses more competitive and our economy less dependent on low-value activities.
China’s mountain airport offers a useful reminder that national ambition must be supported by technical competence and the ability to execute.
We cannot simply admire photographs of impressive Chinese infrastructure and then return to business as usual. We must ask what knowledge lies behind the achievement, what skills made it possible and how much of that knowledge we can acquire for ourselves.
The Chinese have demonstrated that even mountains can be reshaped to serve a practical purpose. Malaysia, meanwhile, must decide whether we are prepared to reshape our educational priorities, research culture and approach to industrial development.
Perhaps the next generation of Malaysian engineers should spend less time hearing politicians promise a technological future and more time learning how to build one.
An airport in the clouds is an extraordinary engineering accomplishment.
But for Malaysia, the greater achievement would be to ensure that our young people have the skills, knowledge and opportunities to build extraordinary things of their own.
China has shown us what engineering can accomplish when ambition meets execution. The question is whether Malaysia will merely applaud from the ground, or climb high enough to learn how it was done.
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