A NEW interpretation of the word China (china) is gaining currency.

China, pronounced with a Chinese lilt, sounds like chai na, meaning "what to demolish" or "tear that down" in Chinese.

The fine country of chai na strikes many first-time visitors as a construction site of monumental size, of endless bulldozing, pile driving and moving cranes that are nowhere else to be seen on the planet.

The large white character chai, daubed over exteriors of buildings, is a sign of demolition to come.

Officials obsessed with transforming city landscape through edicts of chai na need not scratch their heads over what to demolish next. One researcher has pointed the way - pull down half the residential buildings in modern China.

"At least half of China's urban homes have to be demolished and rebuilt in the next 15 to 20 years," Chen Huai, a senior researcher with a government-affiliated think tank, said on August 7 at a seminar in Haikou, the provincial capital of Hainan.

Chen is head of the Policy Research Center at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MHURD).

His case for wholesale demolition? "Urban homes constructed before 1999, except those that are recognized as relics and hence preserved, are all of poor quality by today's standards," Chen said. "They lack the modern amenities, such as kitchen and lavatory needed for every household to have a comfortable life."

More important, as Chen's logic goes, some of the homes were intended as transitional housing, in the form of cramped dorms for factory workers and makeshift shelter for suburban peasants.

Some urban homes in Beijing were so shoddily built that they splintered into pieces when the Tangshan earthquake struck in 1976, he said, oblivious to the fact that a temblor of this magnitude could easily have flattened modern, supposedly resilient homes as well.

So naturally he concluded thus: These "houses of cards" can barely measure up to what people today expect of their dwellings - a safe, convenient and livable place. Therefore, they have no reason to exist any more.

Even though he tried to sugarcoat his reasoning with seemingly plausible words, he didn't provide a shred of statistical or empirical evidence to back up his claim that urban houses built before 1999 are all tottering on the verge of collapse.

In fact, his sweeping analysis can hardly stand up to scrutiny. Take the quality issue. Is today's residential housing any sturdier than decades-old, squat buildings?

Jerry-built

Most informed people will presumably say no. Ever since an unfinished 13-story apartment building toppled almost intact on its side in Shanghai's Minhang District last June, a string of jerry-built construction scandals have popped up. Popular anger at sky-high house prices has gradually morphed into fears about flawed construction code.

Last November, in a residential complex called Danguiyuan in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, it was revealed that bamboo poles were used in lieu of steel bars to prop up buildings; In Chengdu, residents of the Campus Spring neighborhood were stunned to find last July that two adjoining apartment buildings had tilted toward each other after a downpour eroded their foundations.

These are but some notable examples of a nationwide malaise. Most of the problematic buildings in question were in fact built after 1999, supposedly a watershed separating what Chen identifies as "quality" and "tumble-down" homes, or in his words, "shantytowns."

With home prices soaring to fantasy levels, urban housing has become an emotive issue. And it can be counted on to turn volatile when people find out what they have traded their life savings for.

This substandard building problem was underscored by Qiu Baoxing, deputy head of the MHURD, when he said in an interview in April that for every 2 billion square meters of floor space that is added in China each year, the country consumes 40 percent of the world's annual output of cement and steel. Yet the end product can only last for 25 to 30 years theoretically.

So would it be worth the money, energy and pain tearing down all those old, much-weathered low-rise apartments that still stand firmly and squarely in one piece - despite the "poor quality" label that Chen attaches to them? Wouldn't it be better to just give them a face-lift?

Notwithstanding the lack of amenities Chen so endorses, old residential apartments feel more like home in the midst of a sprawling forest of impersonal and monstrous high-rises.

My childhood was spent in a cubicle less than 20 square meters. The apartment had only one room and my family used to share the kitchen with neighbors, many of them gray-haired old folk.

Whenever I left my keys at home and could not enter, the granny next door would kindly let me in and treat me to assorted snacks; when reminded by kind neighbors, my mother could retrieve laundry hanging outside before it started to rain.

Few of these benefits of a modest dwelling are still available - let alone appreciated - in new apartment buildings, where people live almost in segregation. You are left to fend for yourself as you barely know, or trust, your neighbors. You may now have access to modern amenities, like squeaky-clean appliances, and no longer have to struggle with grimy liquefied gas canisters. But the days when neighbors would generously treat others' children as their own are long gone.

On a random visit to my former residence, I took solace from the fact that the red brick low-rises etched in my childhood memories had yet to succumb to bulldozers. Senior citizens were sitting out in the open, schmoozing, playing mahjong or snoozing on sling chairs. The "modern" world had yet to encroach on their "primitive" paradise.

But who knows how much longer these old buildings can hold out? As long as we have officials and experts like Chen blowing the trumpet for demolishing anything they consider as old, unworthy of existence and potentially a burden to their drive for GDP, we'll lose more close-knit communities to the onslaught of chai na.