Beijing (TIP): While visiting China as part of US President Donald Trump’s high-profile billionaire entourage last week, Elon Musk took to X to repost a video of the construction journey of the Chongqing East Railway Station, which is the world’s largest.
While Musk didn’t write anything in the post, it remains a subject of curiosity about why he made the post. That’s because he has previously expressed scepticism about public transport. Curiosity aside, the real story of Chongqing East Railway Station is more interesting. The story of how it was constructed in 38 months using an army of robots.
The Chongqing East Railway Station is a gigantic multi-modal transit complex. It is the world’s largest railway station by floor area, which was opened to the public in May 2025.
Located deep inland in Southwestern China, Chongqing, where the station is located, is the country’s largest city by both population and administrative area. A major economic powerhouse today, Chongqing was dramatically transformed starting in the 1960s under Mao Zedong’s Third Front Campaign. It was a massive effort that redirected huge national resources to rapidly industrialise China’s historically neglected interior regions. As a result, industries spread westwards from the Pacific coast to the east.
Today, Chongqing, and its new station, stand as a striking display of China’s formidable engineering prowess, and its massive economic heft. It’s the same Chinese city where one would see metro trains passing through apartment blocks.
While many countries struggle for decades to deliver large-scale projects, China built this colossal 1.22-million-square-meter station in just 38 months. Here’s how the station was built by an army of robots.
Before diving into the station itself, it is essential to first understand the city behind it. Chongqing is one of China’s most important and dynamic megacities.
Like many other Chinese urban centres like Shanghai and Beijing, Chongqing is an ancient city dating back nearly 3,000 years. During World War II, it served as the capital of the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) Government after the fall of the erstwhile capital, Nanking, to Japanese forces in 1937.