Cutting corners, costs in building posh flats

By Ni Tao | 2009-11-19 | NEWSPAPER EDITION

Reading Tools

Email Story

Illustration by Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily

More in photo gallery

AS the cliche goes, you get what you pay for. Price often serves as the first clue as to whether a certain product is of sound quality.

Unfortunately, these days you don't always get what you pay for, even when it's a luxury apartment.

In the latest in a string of reports about China's construction scandals, notably jerry-built projects, homeowners in a posh residential complex in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, have been demanding answers from property developers about their shoddily built "luxury houses."

These cost 13,000 yuan (US$1,900) per square meter, the Legal Daily reported on November 12. After some residents at the site in question, Dan Gui Yuan, or Scarlet Osmanthus Garden, undertook a face-lift job and tore down the concrete wall of their apartment balconies, they were stunned to find that in lieu of steel bars, bamboo poles -- often used for scaffolding -- were used to prop up the structure, the report said.

Homeowners at Dan Gui Yuan are hardly alone in their campaign to seek remedies for substandard houses.

In Tongxiang City in Zhejiang, an apartment building's slabs each measured only 7.9 centimeters thick -- way below the design standard of 12 centimeters. This came to light after many residents detected gaping holes in their apartment floors, through which they could even peer into the apartment directly downstairs. This travesty was reported on November 13 by the China Youth Daily.

Even budget housing projects are not immune to scandals. In Beijing's "crisp walls" case, developers had bragged about their "reliable building codes" until it was exposed that their no-frills houses were so rickety that it only took a few hard kicks to bring a pile of dust and debris off the walls. This was reported by the Beijing News on August 27.

The root cause of sporadic construction scandals is that wholesale deception, often coupled with corruption, has plagued the industry chain.

It has become the norm for property developers to subcontract projects to several small players, who cobble together teams of unskilled workers. In this case it doesn't take a genius to see there is very little money to be made for those at the bottom rung. Hence, they are prone to cut corners on construction materials or safety procedures to squeeze whatever profit is left from a shady business.

Some officials responsible for safety supervision have essentially become rubber stamps, giving the green light to inferior projects after being bribed to turn a blind eye.

As Xinhua news agency points out in a November 16 commentary, collusion between officials and developers gives rise to lax discipline and perfunctory inspection.

If we look beyond China's construction fiasco, however, we'll see this "official-developer nexus" is doing more but intangible harm than just churning out house-of-cards buildings. Astronomical property prices in many cities are threatening the momentum of urbanization. Indeed, it's a predicament facing many city managers.

On the one hand, some governments are unlikely to wean themselves off the real estate market that has long been a significant source of fiscal income; on the other hand, ambitious urban architects are formulating a growth model that places innovation at its core.

Alas, sky-high housing prices run counter to the very goal of establishing an innovation-based economy. In a recent interview with local media, Yu Zhengsheng, Party Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, said: "Shanghai's development will be hamstrung if high-caliber talents are discouraged from settling down by unreasonably high housing prices."

Asked whether he was being "emotional" when he said earlier this year that Shanghai's housing prices shouldn't rise any higher, Yu replied that government officials should be empathetic toward citizens' travail.

Yu added that the increase of supply holds the key to lowering home prices.