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Govt center in the air weighs on rebuilding

By Huang Zhiling and Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-22 07:41

Before the quake struck, most of the departments under the CPC Chengdu municipal committee and government had already moved to the new center.

Only the offices of the city's top leaders, including the party secretary, mayor, people's congress and political consultative conference, had yet to move in.

Special coverage: Devastating Earthquake Related readings:  WB helps with post-quake reconstruction  China issues guidelines on post-quake reconstruction  China unveils quake reconstruction financing plan  Environmentalist urges green reconstruction

But the quake paved the way for the city's decision to sell the administrative complex.

While the move won the support of residents and administrative employees, controversy soon built up around the actual sale of the complex.

Jie Liang, an official with the city's sports bureau, told China Daily that she would feel more at ease in her old office located in the Chengdu Sports Stadium downtown, considering how quake victims continued to suffer in Sichuan.

Her office had moved to the center less than a week before the temblor struck.

Following the disaster, Jie had gone to several quake zones to help in relief work and came face to face with the suffering of victims.

In Dujiangyan, where 900 students were killed in a school building collapse, Jie found a distraught middle-aged mother facing the body of her daughter.

"And when I went to quake-hit Mianzhu about 10 days ago, I did not expect to see about half of the city's population of 500,000 still living in tents. It felt wrong to be staying in a grand edifice like the center while millions of people are homeless," she said.

Also, the new complex is too far from the city center, Jie said.

"Many have complained about its inaccessibility," she said.

"The former offices of all the departments are near Tianfu Square, the city center."

Similarly, many Chengdu residents doubt if the complex, strictly designed for office use, can be sold.

The land on which it is built costs more than 1.3 billion yuan alone.

The buildings cost more than 2.5 billion yuan, after the price of its land and requisite investment is taken into account.

"That is to say, one square meter of building space in the center, which has 370,000 sq m of building space, costs about 6,700 yuan, about the same price of commercial homes located around the center," said Chen Qun, deputy headmistress of a Chengdu primary school.

There are also many big trees in the complex that are said to pose as obstacles to its sale.

A gingko tree in the area, for instance, can be worth more than 10,000 yuan.

It is difficult to find a company that will find the center suitable, much less one that can afford to buy such a large center with so many valuable trees, Chen said.

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