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By Li Hongmei ( Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-11-25 14:08

The Nov.15 Hangzhou subway collapse has raised a general public concern—how on earth to avert the recurrence and repercussions of the deadly disasters of the kind? Zhai Baohui, a fellow researcher at the State Policies Studies Center affiliated to Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction, deemed it a pseudo proposition that only the massive investment and large-scale construction could fall into the category of infrastructure construction sweeping the state at the juncture. He thought the linchpin is none other than straightening out the issues like what infrastructure construction means and what can virtually beef up the domestic demands.

From his perspectives, only those meeting the desperate need of the ordinary citizens can be defined as infrastructure facilities, instead of the ‘white elephants’ regardless of the real needs of the general public.

As a matter of fact, it seems to be an epidemic nowadays that the cash-rich local governments are competing with each other for the facelift of the city image, as if this were enough to showcase the local economic strength and local governments’ achievements. These eye-catching and tangible ‘achievements’ are embodied by nothing but the broadened avenues, spacious city squares, immense edifices and colossal dams, which are truly necessary in escalating a city’s image and offering some convenience and benefit to the local people. But these gigantic projects are, after all, not falling within the sphere of ordinary people’s daily concerns, compared with the projects related to their livelihood such as affordable housing, convenient medical care, accessible road and reachable education.

In a backdrop of the global financial crisis, the problems are looming large when some local authorities set up a flurry of massive projects construction. Immediately after the announcement of the 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package by the State Council, the local governments responded by announcing a total investment topping 10 trillion yuan.

Although the central government reiterated the top priority should be still put on ‘quickening the pace of affordable housing construction,’ gigantic projects like the construction of railways, subways or highways, as well as the construction of power plants and development of real estates are still leading the list in the investment blueprints drawn up by many local governments. In the cities with the investment scale amounting to hundreds of billions of yuan, the budgets for projects ensuring people’s livelihood merely account for less than 15 percent of their total planned investment.

Some anecdotes released online might partially mirror the morbid phenomenon in which some local official were so crazy about the ‘image projects’ that it turned out to be a vicious circle creating serious misplacement of investment, which is hard to reverse or curb. It was reported that a poverty-stricken county in the center of China had completed a grand palatial township office building nicknamed ‘White House.’ Another story showed a coastal province had planned to build up the most spacious square in the region, the size of the Tiananmen Square, as the symbol for its robust economic strength.

In so doing, they have actually run counter to not only the intention of the 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package but the essence of the central government’s decision as well. It must be curbed before the whole thing gets out of control, that the local governments are in insane pursuit of the so-called ‘city image’ involving in a gust of massive projects construction, in defiance of the national interest and the public benefit.