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Who needs this 'White House'?

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-19 07:35

The money that was supposed to have helped the people improve their lives was used to build a luxurious government office in a city in Sichuan province, says an article on the website www.china.com.cn. The following is an excerpt:

The municipal government of Mianyang has been criticized recently by netizens for building a luxurious office that imitates the US White House. According to reports, every government employee moving in will enjoy 100 sq m of office space, which costs 300,000 yuan on average.

The local officials argued that everything about the office, from its design to its construction, is open to public scrutiny. It is anything but "luxurious", and the construction had begun before the May 12 earthquake took place.

Nowadays, it seems commonplace in many parts of China to build an office with tens of millions of yuan. Financial revenues should be directed more to public works that can bring general benefits to the people. Even if an office really needs to be refurbished, the government should weigh which is a priority: public interest or the improvement of offices.

Surely, the exterior of the government building gets a makeover with the money spent, but its interior remains distant from the people's hearts. It is a decadent practice to blindly seek luxury disregarding the difficulties of common people.

In essence, such displays are intended to show off the higher status of officials and the political power in their hands. The root cause of the problem lies in the traditional concept of privileges for officials.

(China Daily 01/19/2009 page4)