Safety of hydrocarbon transmission pipelines is essential to protect the environment and public, as a hydrocarbon release can open to significant pollution and/or the horrific potential of explosion and a very large long-term fire, depending on the transported product.Safety is a consequence of integrity, which is essential to ensure a continuous supply to support the economic engine of China and/or any other world power.Any hydrocarbon pipeline moving compressible fuels like methane or high-vapor-pressure (HVP) liquids operating at supercritical conditions can experience long-propagating failures.Such failures are perhaps the preeminent design concern for such hydrocarbon transmission pipelines.This paper considers pipeline design and steel specification to avoid long-propagating failures in advanced-design larger-diameter higher-pressure pipelines made of thinner-wall higher-grade steels.The inability to predict consistently arrest requirements for full-scale tests in Grade X80 make clear that we are at the limit of current technology: with X90 or X100 on the horizon for future developments in China we will step even closer to this technology frontier.The history of technology development based on fracture concepts is reviewed, and the gaps identified as steels became stronger and tougher.Adaptations to manage the gaps are elaborated, as are issues, such as separations.Alternative technology is presented that has the potential to offset the limitations of existing methods, which opens to a design basis for new pipelines free of past issues.