Everybody knows China likes building things. Skyscrapers, factories, gizmos and of late: bridges.

Overlooking a plush valley in Southern China, the 1.4-mile long Chishi Bridge has four piers and impregnable cables that suspend a four-lane expressway lying 610 feet above picturesque rice and corn fields. The structure truly embodies everything a bridge stands for and more: it acts as a shortcut, linking southwestern China with the east coast. But that's about it.

Critics are worried that China's penchant for superfluously rolling out infrastructure has become an end unto itself. Chishi Bridge is only one of the hundreds of spectacular bridges China has produced recently, and slowly but surely, the bridges in addition to the slew of China's other creations are becoming symbols of corruption, rising debt and a lack of control when it comes to government spending.

It took $300 million to build Chishi Bridge, a sum that is 50% over the intended budget. Not only is this the result of government-backed loans and coaxing by profiteering construction companies, but it has also sprouted from China's attempt to maintain itself as some sort of infrastructure giant, engaging in large-scale, symbolic projects like building the world's highest railway and world's largest hydropower scheme.

However, according to Atif Ansar, a management professor at Oxford, "Infrastructure is a double-edged sword. It's good for the economy, but too much of this is pernicious. 'Build it and they will come' is a dictum that doesn't work, especially in China, where there's so much built already."

A recent study that was aided by Mr. Ansar established that less than one third of the 65 Chinese highway and rail projects were "genuinely economically productive." Chishi is testament to this, as it does little more than reduce travel time incrementally and endow the landscape with the pomp of modern construction. Moreover, the bridge was also subject to major delays and a building accident, amongst other reports of government corruption. This comes shortly after 21 employees were arrested for falsifying test results in the construction of the Hong-Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.

In 2013 President Xi Jinping said: "It's very important to improve transport and other infrastructure so that impoverished regions can escape poverty and prosper." However, when these structures are hardly affecting the impoverished regions and impacting them in any significantly productive way, is their importance diminished?

Attention has been directed to Chishi Bridge within a month of the credit agency Moody's downgrading China due to its amplifying debt crisis, which is in no way ameliorated by projects like the bridge. This has contributed to China's slowing economic expansion as debt makes up about 15% of its output each year, hindering real growth and growth potential as land, resources and capital used to build such bridges could be funneled into something more productive instead.

A primary factor that motivates such spending for China is economic growth; yet, paradoxically, it is this very spending that is diminishing the same. It is a case of short-term gains and appearances being incorrectly held in higher stead than the long-term repercussions of such projects.

The world can only hope, that for China's sake, these long-term consequences are soon identified and addressed.