Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, several generations have paved the way and built bridges across mountains and rivers, promoting China’s growing strength in transport. As an important component of transportation infrastructure, bridges have effectively promoted national economic integration and regional coordinated development. Chinese bridges span rivers, lakes, and seas, connecting deep valleys and ravines, tightly linking the two separated areas together, achieving complementary advantages and common progress. This not only brings development opportunities to underdeveloped areas, but also expands broader market space for developed areas, stimulating the driving force and vitality of economic and social development. To accelerate the construction of a strong transportation country, it is necessary to recognize the position of bridge construction in the development of the new era, analyze and judge the development process of bridge construction in New China, and deeply grasp the inherent relationship between bridge construction and national development. The paper systematically summarizes the main achievements of bridge construction in New China. New China’s bridge construction has a huge scale and rapid development, entering a new development stage of comprehensive innovation and surpassing the world’s advanced level. It has made major achievements, such as scale expansion and network formation, engineering breakthroughs and technological transition, as well as international cooperation and national image. Furthermore, the paper summarizes the historical role of bridge construction in combination with the characteristics of different stages of China’s economic development. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Chinese bridges broke geographical barriers in the central and western regions, serving the Third Front Construction projects and laying the foundation for industrial and economic development. In the 1980s, the investment and financing mode of borrowing to build bridges and collecting tolls to repay loans promoted the construction of bridges in the Pearl River Delta and greatly accelerated the pace of reform and opening up. At the end of the 20th century, with the implementation of the planning and strategic decisions for the five vertical and seven horizontal national highways, the construction of highways and bridges expanded rapidly, providing strong support for the coordinated development of China’s regional economy and the promotion of urban-rural integration, and driving economic takeoff. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s bridge construction is further integrated into the regional development strategies, optimizing transportation conditions in the western region, connecting the eastern coastal areas, and accelerating the construction of high-speed railway bridges to support the Eight Verticals and Eight Horizontals high-speed railway network, promoting regional coordinated development. In addition, the paper starts from the realistic conditions of bridge construction and summarizes the inherent driving force of bridge construction. Regional connectivity is an essential part of bridge construction, technological and institutional innovation is an important support for bridge construction, promoting economic growth is the fundamental purpose of bridge construction, and improving the quality of life is the value trend of bridge construction. The paper also proposes vision measures for the future development of bridge construction. Under the grand goal of accelerating the construction of a strong transportation country, it is necessary to coordinate the relationship between bridge construction and the production, life, and ecology of surrounding areas, adhere to the integrated planning of population, industry, urban areas, and transportation, accelerate the construction of bridges of all levels and types, and improve the comprehensive transportation network system; optimize and adjust the planning and layout around the bridge to meet the actual needs of production activities; deeply explore the aesthetic value of bridge construction and create diverse life scenarios for application; fully integrate the scientific concepts of diversified construction to achieve the value goal of ecological function.