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August 15, 2012

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Poor city to spend 100b yuan on park

KAIFENG City in Henan Province, with an annual fiscal revenue of 5 billion yuan, (US$785.7 million) has shocked the nation with its recent plan to borrow 100 billion yuan to relocate more than 100,000 downtown residents to make way for a huge tourist site.

The aim is to create a 20-square-kilometer "reproduction" of what the city looked like in its heyday in the Song Dynasty (960 AD-1279).

The debt burden is definitely beyond what Kaifeng can bear. And even if Kaifeng eventually could raise the money, the tourist project could hardly revive past glory. What Kaifeng authorities should do is preserve the status quo of the city, a place that combines history and modernity.

You can't "remake" history, but you can preserve what history has left us.



 

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