It takes up an area of 43,600 sq m, or as Xinhua news agency reported last weekend, about 8.5 times the size of the United States' White House. The price tag is 63 million yuan.
Such developments have been called 'image projects' or 'vanity projects' (xing xiang gong cheng), ordered by local officials who want to build up their image while ignoring the real needs of the people.
And there are plenty of such buildings in China. A survey by China Youth Daily last week of 1,600 people online showed a stunning 97.5 per cent who said that there were vanity projects in their cities.
They come in all shapes and sizes. There are the ostentatious government buildings like Wangjiang's, with many poor towns and counties in China opting for Washington's Capitol building design.
There are also the cultural image projects, from spectacular theatres to massive stadiums. Most of them are almost completely useless because the local populace lack the critical mass and interest to sustain them.
Funing in coastal Jiangsu province is among the most lampooned online, after building not only a copy of the World Expo's China Pavilion, but also a poor replica of the Sydney Opera House.
Many such projects are also incongruent with their location. Xian in north-western Shaanxi, for example, has spent 500 million yuan on a musical fountain, which it claims to be the largest in Asia, despite the serious water shortage in the province.
'If we compare it to the US, a lot of the local government offices there are no bigger than the size of a villa. There are also fewer bureaucrats at the local level in the US,' said observer Hu Xingdou from the Beijing Institute of Technology.
'China, on the other hand, has a lot of local officials and they all want to work in very impressive buildings.'
Most importantly, local officials persist in the vanity projects because they can siphon off large amounts of money from its construction.
'The 'rebates' which officials get from the developers are usually 15 per cent of the total bill,' said Prof Hu.
Top China officials have spoken out against the vanity projects.
Two weeks ago, Vice-President Xi Jinping urged local governments to stop such blind pursuits.
'These luxurious and superficial 'image projects' waste people's money and manpower... The officials' obsession with image projects seriously hurts the credibility of the party and government and affects their work. There is an urgent need for this to be rectified,' he wrote in Study Times, a publication of the Central Party School.
He was only the latest top leader to slam such ridiculous projects.
As far back as two years ago, Premier Wen Jiabao, in his work report to the legislature then, also warned local officials to shape up.
'We will prohibit image projects that waste human and financial resources and vanity projects that are divorced from reality,' he said.
But analysts believe that the exhortations alone will not work. A big factor behind such projects is that officials want to splurge so as to boost gross domestic product, since their promotions still depend heavily on economic growth.
Beijing's scoldings also come across as hypocritical because the central government has also authorised and built several large-scale vanity projects.
The most prominent is the Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Olympics, a 90,000-seater arena which has been struggling to find a purpose since the Games.
'Vanity projects are a reflection of our society's flaws. They are not going to go away overnight,' said Prof Hu.
shpeh@sph.com.sg
WASTE OF RESOURCES
'We will prohibit image projects that waste human and financial resources and vanity projects that are divorced from reality.'
Premier Wen Jiabao, in a 2009 report
Extravagant and even 'useless' structures
Mini China Pavilion and Sydney Opera House
Funing, in an underdeveloped part of coastal Jiangsu province, stunned the country by splurging 3.5 million yuan (S$673,000) last year to build a copy of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo's iconic China Pavilion. Unlike the real pavilion, the 8,000 sq m replica cannot function as an exhibition hall. Netizens slammed it as a useless vase.
Reports of another vanity project in the county - a replica of the Sydney Opera House - surfaced later. Built earlier than the mini China Pavilion, at an even greater cost of 50 million yuan, the 420 sq m building houses meeting rooms, a restaurant and leisure facilities.Local officials said the aim of the projects was to boost the influence of the little-known county.
Faux Capitol building
Fuyang city in central Anhui province spent 30 million yuan for a district government building that resembled Washington's Capitol building. The marble steps of its entrance alone cost 500,000 yuan.
During construction, a primary school in its vicinity appealed to overseas aid agencies for funds to rebuild its school building after it was found to be structurally unsafe.
Little Bird's Nest
Puxian in central Shanxi province has just two main roads, a population of 100,000 and an annual government revenue of 300 million yuan. But it spent 100 million yuan to build a cultural centre shaped like Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium.
The centre was completed last year and now boasts a 1,195-seater theatre and meeting rooms which can fill a total of 4,000 people.
PEH SHING HUEI
From the Straits Times
