CHINA> Regional
Govt center in the air weighs on rebuilding
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-22 17:39

One major challenge is the resettlement of the homeless, which is said to be on the scale of that seen for the Three Gorges Dam project, the city's publicity chief said.

In that instance, the resettlement had taken a decade.

Fiscally, Chengdu needs at least 150 billion yuan for total reconstruction efforts, He said.

The city is short of that mark by tens of billions of yuan.

Drastic measures are now being taken to cut down on expenses and build up funds for reconstruction, including canceling official trips for overseas exchanges and banning departments from buying new cars for official use.

Above all, the city announced last Wednesday that it will sell its new administrative center to raise funds for reconstruction.

The center costs 1.2 billion yuan, covers 17 hectares and is located in the city's southern suburbs, near the Shuangliu airport.

It was completed at the end of last year, after three years' construction.

The complex has a main building shaped like Beijing's egg-shaped National Grand Theater and its peripheral structures borrow designs from the Olympic National Stadium, better known as the Bird's Nest.

More than 5,000 people can be accommodated in them.

The idea of clustering all the administrative departments into one complex was aimed at improving work efficiency.