Society

Knock-off Bird's Nest under way in Shanxi

By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-10 06:50

A man takes photos of the copycat Bird's Nest in Puxian county of Shanxi province. From Internet

Beijing - People in North China's Shanxi province, who have not had the chance to visit the Bird's Nest, do not need to travel all the way to the national capital to get a glimpse of the Olympic marvel.

A knock-off of Beijing's National Stadium is now under construction in a county located southwest of the province.

With an investment of 100 million yuan ($14.8 million), Puxian county is building a cultural palace designed to look like the original Bird's Nest, which is well known as the symbol of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Shanxi natives are calling it the "fake Bird's Nest".

However, the construction has triggered great dissatisfaction from the public, which feels the county, with a population of 100,000, is wasting its annual fiscal revenue of 300 million yuan on the project.

According to Beijing Times, Puxian had to borrow 80 million yuan from a local coal enterprise to pay government employees their salaries in 2007.

Many citizens went online to criticize the move as a waste of taxpayers' money, saying the palace will be of no practical use besides raising the town's profile.

"We have seen the overwhelming responses on the websites, but we do not plan to respond," said Wang Anbao, chairman of the Standing Committee of People's Congress of Puxian, who is also the general director of the cultural palace project.

"If we really face any problems, the upper level government will investigate," Wang added.

As for the design of the cultural palace, Wang said its originality is the forest, which is a symbol of ecological harmony and environmental development.

Spread over 20,000 square meters, the project is mainly composed of a 1,195-seat theatre and a multifunctional lecture hall, designed to accommodate some 4,000 people.

At present, the construction of the palace's main body has been completed and workers are busy working on the interior decoration and outdoor square.

"A cultural palace can be built for luxury, but it needs to match the local economic situation. For a county that has an annual fiscal revenue of less than 300 million yuan, a 100-million-yuan palace is obviously too luxurious," said Liu Qinglong, a professor at the school of public management at Tsinghua University.

"Such projects are just a few examples of how the authorities are mismanaging funds given to them by superior governments," Liu said.

"The central government should strengthen supervision on needless expenditure and guide the officials toward what's really important."

China Daily

(China Daily 07/10/2010 page3)