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Government landmark for salePosted by Eric Mu, July 17, 2008 3:03 PM
 Southern Metropolis Daily July 17, 2008 When construction began in 2004 on the new municipal service center of Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan province, the project repeatedly drew criticism for being overly extravagant. The government nevertheless insisted that it has the approval of the State Council. The service center, which cost over 1.2 billion yuan, is a cluster of seven buildings centered around a dome shaped structure, which resembles the National Theater in Beijing. On July 16, the Chengdu government called a press conference to announce that the service center will be auctioned to raise money for reconstruction work in ares destroyed by the recent Wenchuan earthquake.  Municipal service center of Chengdu He Zhanghua, the director of the Chengdu publicity department, said,"Times are difficult, people's lives are difficult...the earthquake has changed the basis upon which we make decisions." Li Chunchen, Party secretary of Chengdu, commented that the decision demonstrates the government's willingness to stand by the people through the hard times. Government offices that have already moved to the new service center will move back to their original sites. It is said that the center will likely be sold to companies for commercial use. Links and Sources
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Comments on Government landmark for sale
I think it is not neccessary even the earthquake hadn`t taken place.you can see luxury government building all over china from Beijing to small townships.The trend of building extravagant office building began in middle 1980s(禁止修建楼堂馆所),it has always been forbiden by government and critized by socielty from then.Unfortunately the trend hasn`t been held back,instead it has become biger and biger in 20 years.This article hit the point.but I still want to add someting --the official furnitures are also extravagant.It is common that officals has a desk of morae than 10,000 rmb in my city (450,000 dwellers),.
Pure populism. The land on which their current offices are located is worth much more than the cost of their new offices (including land, construction, etc).