Vanity projects should be put to use

Xinhua News Agency has found that some vanity projects, whose construction was suspended by the central authorities, have been left unfinished and unused for a long time. Rednet.cn commented on Monday:

Most of these vanity projects are luxurious government office buildings, usually in places, especially poorer places, where the spending of government funds, particularly the money that is initially earmarked to be used on public services and poverty alleviation, is poorly supervised, and thus is misappropriated to "boost" the image of the local government.

In fact, as indicated by many graft cases, the vanity projects are often cash cows providing corrupt officials with a means to fatten their pockets with kickbacks from the developers, constructors and decorators.

It is absolutely right to halt the building of such vanity projects, which always accompany the investigations and subsequent downfalls of local government leaders. But, as Xinhua found, their replacements often just ignore these projects, which results in them being unused or unfinished, because the procedures to get approval for the buildings to be used is complicated and putting them to use entails spending more money.

The local governments should attract and cooperate with private investors to turn these buildings into care homes for the elderly, schools or other public facilities to serve local residents, with the whole process carried out above board according to law in a transparent and open manner.

That the vanity projects are left untouched for so long is a testimony to inaction, which is a kind of malfeasance and abuse of power.