北京——在北京南郊的农田里，一个由混凝土、钢筋和玻璃构成的网状建筑拔地而起，这个世界上最大的机场之一已做好了投入使用的准备，其建设仅用了五年的时间，与那些更富裕的地方令人痛苦的基础设施项目，形成了鲜明的对比。（见：纽约的地铁，英国的火车服务，柏林的机场。）

　　Just as impressive as its speed are the airport’s broader goals. It is meant to shift the Chinese capital’s center of gravity away from its high-tech university district in the north toward its poorer southern suburbs — part of an even more ambitious plan to remake Beijing and its hinterland into an 82,000-square-mile economic locomotive for northern China.

　　这个机场更宏观的目标与其建设速度一样令人惊叹。其目的是把中国首都的重心从北部的高科技大学区转移到更为贫困的南部郊区，这是一个更加雄心勃勃计划的一部分，该计划旨在把北京及其腹地改造成中国北方一个21万平方公里的经济引擎。

　　Scheduled to open next September, the Beijing Daxing International Airport will lift China’s capital into the stratosphere of aviation superlatives. By 2025, the airport will be able to serve 72 million passengers a year. That, along with the existing Beijing Capital International Airport’s annual capacity of 96 million passengers, would make Beijing one of the world’s busiest city airport systems, rivaling for top spot the 170 million carried by London’s six airports, based on 2017 figures. Ultimately, Daxing is expected to handle 100 million passengers a year.

　　北京大兴国际机场定于明年9月投入使用，它将把中国首都提升到航空领域的顶级水平。到2025年，该机场每年将接待7200万乘客。连同现有的北京首都国际机场每年9600万的旅客吞吐量，将让北京拥有世界上最繁忙的城市机场系统之一，足以与世界第一的伦敦机场系统媲美，伦敦六个机场2017年的数据是接待了1.7亿人次的客运量。大兴机场预计最终能力是每年接待1亿人次的旅客。

　　Beijing Daxing occupies 18 square miles of land, more than two-thirds the size of Manhattan, in southern Beijing and the adjacent province of Hebei. It’s trumpeted as a key part of the “Jing-Jin-Ji” economic development plan, which will unite Beijing, Hebei, and the port city of Tianjin into an economic region to rival the country’s more prosperous economic hubs, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

　　北京大兴机场占地面积达47平方公里，面积超过曼哈顿的三分之二，它位于北京市南部和邻近的河北省之间。它被宣传为“京津冀”协同发展规划的重要组成部分，该计划将把北京、河北和港口城市天津组合成一片经济区，与中国更繁荣的经济中心上海和广州相媲美。