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Local corruption rife as China races to build affordable homes
By Ni Tao |
August 5, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A RECENT string of high-profile accidents like bridge collapses and the Wenzhou train crash have stoked widespread concern about the safety of public works.
While the authorities are trying very hard to convince the public that they are merely the results of a highly coincidental combination of natural and human factors, and thus are unlikely to repeat, many simply refuse to buy their theory.
People have good reason for skepticism, especially when an age-old problem officials have long vowed to tackle keeps making headlines and undermining what little public trust there is in their ability to act as faithful watchdogs.
This newspaper has covered more than once the quality scandals involving China's affordable housing program. Blatant corner cutting and corruption plague this sector.
Although officials like to portray their investment in social housing as a conscientious move that will make home ownership an attainable goal for millions, past media exposes have shown that many of the prized affordable homes, so shoddily built that they could barely withstand a rainstorm, are in fact a tottering monument to their rotten conscience.
It's deja vu all over again when media reported last month that in Anqing City, Anhui Province, some rural dwellers relocated to one of the city's biggest public housing communities were aghast to find they were practically living in houses of cards.
Since late last year, more than 50 households in the neighborhood, called Long'an Shangmao complex, in Anqing's Taihu County, have spotted cracks in the bearing beams, ceilings and walls of their apartments, some as wide as a finger's breadth. A few punches were enough to bring a pile of debris off the leaky, peeling walls, and much cheaper sand was used in lieu of cement to fill them. Some residents could even make a gaping hole the size of a water basin in their floor slabs with a foot stomp.
Fearing the shaky homes could crumble at any time, residents were forced to live outside, exposed to the elements, while local officials had dragged their feet for over half a year on addressing residents' requests for compensation.
Some observers pointedly argue that the experience of the residents is reflective of the general situation in which former rural dwellers often find themselves after their land is seized by the authorities for commercial developments.
Tightened budgets
While rags-to-riches stories made possible by relocation are occasionally heard, they are more the exception than the rule. Oftentimes rural dwellers are pushed off their land with brute force and offered a fraction of what the government would get by leasing the land to developers.
Judging from their record of mismanaging an already overheated economy by spending more on monstrous white elephants, many of China's local bosses do look like economic idiots. But the way they plot to maximize profits from land sales indicates otherwise.
With the provision of affordable homes for resettled rural dwellers now becoming a political imperative, some local officials are cracking their brains over how to dump that burden, or at least reduce its financial weight.
That's where the practice of skimping on construction materials and human labor comes in as an improvised way of cutting costs. Xinhua editorialized on Monday that many local governments considerably tighten their budgets for affordable housing so as to pocket the lion's share of land sales. Winning bids for these projects are thus kept low.
In a similar vein, after builders who get the job cut their slice, they subcontract it to numerous smaller players, who in turn cobble together unskilled workers and use inferior construction materials to squeeze whatever penny is left from this convoluted racket.
Well aware of the horse trading involved in the process, government watchdogs, being part of it, are both uninterested in and shy about regulation, Xinhua concluded. The article added that the root cause of jerry-built public houses is the official-developer nexus, and more damningly, the official tendency to pauperize the public.
It appears some watchdogs only bark when they are lured by the smell of filthy lucre.
Nationwide, China plans to build 10 million units of affordable housing this year, up 4.1 million from last year. The ambitious target requires a whopping 1.3 trillion yuan (US$201.8 billion) in funding. As many localities are now up to their necks in debts, where will all the money come from?
In case you're wondering, Qin Hong, deputy chief of the research center at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, told Half-Monthly Forum, a Xinhua-affiliated publication, early this year that a major source of funding for social housing is land sales.
Unchecked misuse
Many indebted local governments are kept afloat solely due to land sales. But this money-spinner is also sowing the seeds of corruption and social ills, evident in the scandal-ridden public housing sector.
Although the provision of affordable housing is a laudable cause, we should beware of those exploiting it as justification for more ruthless land sales to line their own pockets. Alas, so far there are no effective checks on officials' misuse of land revenues.
Hence the irony that the government is flirting with an adjustment of its addiction to so-called "land finances."
How wise is it to expect incorrigible junkies desperate for the next fix to administer their own drug rehab programs?
While the authorities are trying very hard to convince the public that they are merely the results of a highly coincidental combination of natural and human factors, and thus are unlikely to repeat, many simply refuse to buy their theory.
People have good reason for skepticism, especially when an age-old problem officials have long vowed to tackle keeps making headlines and undermining what little public trust there is in their ability to act as faithful watchdogs.
This newspaper has covered more than once the quality scandals involving China's affordable housing program. Blatant corner cutting and corruption plague this sector.
Although officials like to portray their investment in social housing as a conscientious move that will make home ownership an attainable goal for millions, past media exposes have shown that many of the prized affordable homes, so shoddily built that they could barely withstand a rainstorm, are in fact a tottering monument to their rotten conscience.
It's deja vu all over again when media reported last month that in Anqing City, Anhui Province, some rural dwellers relocated to one of the city's biggest public housing communities were aghast to find they were practically living in houses of cards.
Since late last year, more than 50 households in the neighborhood, called Long'an Shangmao complex, in Anqing's Taihu County, have spotted cracks in the bearing beams, ceilings and walls of their apartments, some as wide as a finger's breadth. A few punches were enough to bring a pile of debris off the leaky, peeling walls, and much cheaper sand was used in lieu of cement to fill them. Some residents could even make a gaping hole the size of a water basin in their floor slabs with a foot stomp.
Fearing the shaky homes could crumble at any time, residents were forced to live outside, exposed to the elements, while local officials had dragged their feet for over half a year on addressing residents' requests for compensation.
Some observers pointedly argue that the experience of the residents is reflective of the general situation in which former rural dwellers often find themselves after their land is seized by the authorities for commercial developments.
Tightened budgets
While rags-to-riches stories made possible by relocation are occasionally heard, they are more the exception than the rule. Oftentimes rural dwellers are pushed off their land with brute force and offered a fraction of what the government would get by leasing the land to developers.
Judging from their record of mismanaging an already overheated economy by spending more on monstrous white elephants, many of China's local bosses do look like economic idiots. But the way they plot to maximize profits from land sales indicates otherwise.
With the provision of affordable homes for resettled rural dwellers now becoming a political imperative, some local officials are cracking their brains over how to dump that burden, or at least reduce its financial weight.
That's where the practice of skimping on construction materials and human labor comes in as an improvised way of cutting costs. Xinhua editorialized on Monday that many local governments considerably tighten their budgets for affordable housing so as to pocket the lion's share of land sales. Winning bids for these projects are thus kept low.
In a similar vein, after builders who get the job cut their slice, they subcontract it to numerous smaller players, who in turn cobble together unskilled workers and use inferior construction materials to squeeze whatever penny is left from this convoluted racket.
Well aware of the horse trading involved in the process, government watchdogs, being part of it, are both uninterested in and shy about regulation, Xinhua concluded. The article added that the root cause of jerry-built public houses is the official-developer nexus, and more damningly, the official tendency to pauperize the public.
It appears some watchdogs only bark when they are lured by the smell of filthy lucre.
Nationwide, China plans to build 10 million units of affordable housing this year, up 4.1 million from last year. The ambitious target requires a whopping 1.3 trillion yuan (US$201.8 billion) in funding. As many localities are now up to their necks in debts, where will all the money come from?
In case you're wondering, Qin Hong, deputy chief of the research center at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, told Half-Monthly Forum, a Xinhua-affiliated publication, early this year that a major source of funding for social housing is land sales.
Unchecked misuse
Many indebted local governments are kept afloat solely due to land sales. But this money-spinner is also sowing the seeds of corruption and social ills, evident in the scandal-ridden public housing sector.
Although the provision of affordable housing is a laudable cause, we should beware of those exploiting it as justification for more ruthless land sales to line their own pockets. Alas, so far there are no effective checks on officials' misuse of land revenues.
Hence the irony that the government is flirting with an adjustment of its addiction to so-called "land finances."
How wise is it to expect incorrigible junkies desperate for the next fix to administer their own drug rehab programs?
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