22 theSun | TUESDAY DECEMBER 30 2008

business news

Massive quake rebuild holds

usual budgetary checks and balances, must contend
with mismanagement and outright theft.
China, which has long struggled to rein in
corruption, is no exception. Small, isolated cases
have been publicised so far.
A national audit found that a half-dozen villages
had improperly spent subsidies meant for quake

key for China economy

ANXIAN (China): In 80 seconds of shaking, China’s
devastating earthquake earlier this year cut a swathe
of death and destruction through remote hilly towns.
In a recovery that will take years, the whole
country’s prosperity is at stake.
Quake reconstruction is a central plank of the
government’s stimulus plan for the ailing Chinese
economy, set to take one-quarter of Beijing’s
promised 4 trillion yuan (RM2.03 trillion) spending
boost and to create millions of sorely needed jobs.
Already, the disaster zone has been transformed
into a vast, manic construction site, a trail of bricks,
steel and cement coursing through its heart, those
made homeless hammering away to reverse their
fate and entrepreneurs from far-flung corners of the
country attracted by the whiff of profit in calamity.
“I’ve been doing this job for about 20 years and
I’ve never seen things so busy,” said Zhao Renjun,
bending steel girders into shape on a construction
site in Anxian county, part of the huge area rocked
by the May 12 earthquake that killed more than
80,000 people in China’s southwest.
“I haven’t had time to fix my own house. I’ve
been so busy working for others,” he said.
A partial list of needs includes 4.5 million
homes, 51,000km of roads and 5,500km of
railways – enough to occupy at least some of the
20 million people who could lose jobs in China’s
once-humming export factories hit by the global
slowdown.
The feverish activity inspires confidence about
the financial muscle of the state and the vigour of
the economy that it is trying to nurse back to health,
but it also carries warning signs of the corruption,
waste and unforeseen complications that are already
dogging China’s economic plans.
“Because everyone is building, prices for
materials have shot up,” said Liu Siyin, 34, taking a
break from hauling buckets of cement on a shoulder
pole at his quake-damaged home.
“We can’t buy everything we need now and we
might have to stop building for a while,” he said.
“We really wish the government could control
prices.”
Liu had just started laying bricks for the second-
floor wall of his house up a treacherous mountain
road.
Only half joking, he said fast-inflating material
costs would neutralise his 50,000 yuan interest-free
loan from the government for rebuilding. Bricks and
cement from local vendors have trebled in price in
just a few months.
Some local authorities, such as the city
government in Mianyang, have vowed to crack
I’ve been
doing this
job for
about 20
years and
I’ve never
seen things
so busy.”
- Zhao Renjun,
a construction
worker
but expects to lure private businesses into the fold,
to have the investment momentum spread more
widely.
A profit-chasing zeal has already been unleashed.
Piles of bricks, bundles of steel girders, wood
boards and small concrete mixers – all for sale – line
the narrow highways in the disaster zone, many in
front of makeshift shops set up by entrepreneurs
from Chongqing, a huge city 350km to the east.
Some have come from much further afield.
Tang Qinghua, a young energetic man with
close-cropped hair, said his last job had been selling
apartments in Shenzhen, the one-time boomtown
across from Hongkong where property prices have
dropped by nearly 20% over the past year.
He and two friends now ply rutted back roads in
a small van to drum up customers for their selection
of tiles – green, white and clay, glazed and unglazed,
interior and exterior.
“People have no choice here. They have to
rebuild. And we’re making a contribution, helping
victims, or demanded illegal reconstruction fees. An
investigation in Chongqing concluded that a hospital
had sold donated medicine for profit.
A little more than one month after the quake, the
National Bureau of Corruption Prevention said it had
already received more than 1,000 complaints from
the public and punished 43 officials.
Aid agencies lavished praise on China for
mobilising rescue workers just minutes after the 7.9
magnitude quake reduced homes, schools and offices
to rubble. It was China’s worst earthquake in three
decades.
The planning and oversight required in the next
three years, during which the government has
pledged to spend 1 trillion yuan on rebuilding, may
prove more vexing.
“There has to be a process. We want it to be
fast but not too fast, not too rushed,” said Tan Li,
Communist Party secretary of Mianyang. “Things
have to be well built, to proper standards.”
Getting it right in the quake zone is a critical part
of China’s bigger plan for reviving its economy.
The torrent of investment flowing towards
reconstruction and the country’s interior more
broadly should transform inland provinces into
China’s growth engine in 2009, as the coastal
factories that have long propelled the country
struggle, Standard Chartered Bank economists say.
But among the cranes and steamrollers, brick
layers and steel workers now busily rebuilding, there
is one place that is completely silent. The jagged
buildings and boulder-strewn roads at the epicentre
of the earthquake in Beichuan are untouched,
preserved as an open-air memorial to the tens of
thousands who died that May afternoon when the
earth shook so violently. – Reuters

down on price gouging.
However, a degree of price increases is exactly
what the government wants. As with the stimulus
package for the wider economy, Beijing is providing
a huge pot of cash to kick off quake reconstruction
REUTERSPIX
them out,” Tang said.
Glimpses of a darker side to the reconstruction
effort have come through in official reports.
Any country in the world that throws so much Quake reconstruction is a central plank of the government’s stimulus plan for
cash at disaster recovery, when urgency overwhelms the ailing Chinese economy.