MCLC: ban on new govt buildings

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: ban on new govt buildings
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Source: NYT 
(7/23/13):http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/world/asia/china-orders-halt-to
-construction-of-government-buildings.html

China Orders Ban on New Government Buildings
By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — China issued a directive on Tuesday banning the construction
of government buildings for the next five years, the latest in a series of
initiatives by President Xi Jinping to discourage corruption and foster
frugality at a time of broad popular resentment against high-living
bureaucrats.

The central government authorities in Beijing have periodically tried to
rein in the widely mocked penchant for grandiosity among local officials
who order offices for themselves. A few of these projects have been slowed
or stopped, including the nearly Pentagon-size headquarters started by a
local government several years ago in an impoverished corner of Anhui
Province in central China.

But until now, such isolated cases have done little to dissuade other
local officials from their own pharaonic ambitions. The government of
Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, attracted critical attention
across China last fall after beginning construction of what was initially
planned as Asia’s largest government building.

But Tuesday’s joint directive by China’s cabinet and the Chinese Communist
Party went much further than prohibiting the construction of buildings: it
also banned a long list of strategies that local leaders have used to
circumvent previous, more informal efforts to discourage them.

Expanding or restoring existing government compounds in the name of street
repairs or urban planning? Not allowed. A new training center or hotel?
Also forbidden. Multiple offices for the same official? Prohibited.

Since taking over as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in
November, Mr. Xi has tried to discourage lavish spending and gift giving
by the party’s cadres and rein in opulent lifestyles among senior military
officers. His campaign temporarily emptied many luxury restaurants over
the winter, although there have been recent signs of a revival of
behind-the-scenes extravagance.

The new directive showed clear signs of being a continuation of the
anticorruption campaign, describing the ban as “important for building a
clean government” and improving the ties between the party and the people.

Yet the prohibition on new buildings also comes as the government is
starting to round up and prosecute activists who called on officials to
disclose their wealth and the wealth of their families. In the most
celebrated case, Xu Zhiyong, a prominent human rights activist, was
charged last week with “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public
place” — even though, according to his wife, he had already been under
informal house arrest for three months.

Debt-fueled spending by local governments, partly for new buildings but
also for roads, sewers, water systems and other projects, has been a
growing worry in recent years for Beijing policy makers, as well as for
economists and credit-rating agencies around the world. Most tallies of
total local government debt in China tend to be in the vicinity of $2
trillion, equal to three months of China’s entire economic output, but
some estimates are even higher.

Cheng Li, the China research director at the Brookings Institution, said
the construction restrictions would do little to assuage broader worries
about the Chinese economy.

“We should put into perspective that the problem of local government
spending on buildings is not the most serious problem facing China’s
economy,” Mr. Li said in a telephone interview from Beijing. “The property
bubble, shadow banking and the state-owned enterprise monopolies are far
more risky.”

Prime Minister Li Keqiang vowed on coming to office in March that there
would be no more new government buildings during the current five-year
term of the government, and the new decree follows through on that
promise. But the decree also acknowledges that similar efforts to halt
profligate spending on such buildings in recent years have not worked as
intended, and that the buildings have “harmed the image of the party and
government.”

A clear loophole in Tuesday’s directive is that it does little to rein in
spending by enterprises partly or entirely owned by government entities.
State-owned enterprises have been very active builders of hotels,
providing free luxury suites to local officials for their meetings and all
too often for assignations with mistresses, according to hotel industry
executives.

Mr. Li of the Brookings Institution predicted that Mr. Xi would seek
greater austerity at state-owned enterprises next.

One persistent feature of Chinese political life, the retired official who
continues to haunt his former agency or even the entire government by
wielding influence from behind the scenes, will not be eradicated by the
directive.

Former officials who left or retired years ago are supposed to give up
their offices, the directive said, but they are not required to do so
immediately. These offices “should be returned in time,” a statement on a
government Web site said.