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'400-m only' gov't offices slammed online

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A high-profile publicity official in Southwest China's Yunnan province was slammed by netizens on Tuesday for saying that the construction of four local government buildings cost "only 400 million yuan (US$63 million)" on his micro blog.

A local official's claim that a cluster of government buildings at Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture "only cost 400 million yuan (US$63 million)" outraged netizens.[Photo/China Daily]

Wu Hao, chief of the publicity department of the Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture, who keeps a high profile on the micro blog, refuted a netizen's micro blog entry on Weibo.com, claiming the Honghe government building was the most luxurious one the latter had ever seen.

"I used to be a reporter at Xinhua News Agency, and when China Central Television exposed the extravagant spending on building luxurious government buildings in Honghe, I was sent to investigate the case, and found the facts to be different from what was being claimed," Wu commented on Monday night.

Wu said that the total cost of the four official buildings, which belonged to the prefecture Party committee, the prefecture government, the prefecture people's congress and the prefecture committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, along with a hall and a park covering more than 66.67 hectares, added up to "merely a little bit more than 400 million yuan".

Wu told China Daily on Monday night that the annual financial revenue earned by the prefecture government was more than 16 billion yuan, hinting that the controversial buildings were put up at an affordable cost.

"In many other places, it cost several billion yuan to raise government buildings," Wu said.

The publicity official's comment drew immediate public outrage on the micro blog, and many renowned bloggers expressed disagreement.

Wang Keqin, chief reporter at the Economic Observer, who has more than 234,000 following his micro blog account, commented sarcastically on Tuesday that the government "seems to have spent too little".

"(The building is) so beautiful. I hope that the Honghe government has a sense as beautiful as the building to serve the tax payers," said Yao Bo, a public affairs commentator and active Weibo blogger.

Wu continued to respond to public skepticism on Tuesday through his micro blog, saying the "low" cost of the buildings was, in fact, praised by the audit authorities as a model for saving public money.

Wu said the government buildings accommodated dozens of the prefecture government departments, thus saving land.

Wu even cursed a netizen who used dirty words against him on Tuesday.

"All your family members will suffer unnatural deaths," Wu wrote on his micro blog. "Your mean words will shorten the life of your grandparents, parents, wife and children, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts."

The magnificent official buildings in Honghe prefecture will do harm to the local government's credibility, said Zhu Lijia, a professor of public administration research with the Chinese Academy of Governance.

"In some other places, it cost just several million yuan to erect a government building that can accommodate all of the government agencies," Zhu told China Daily on Tuesday. "Wu's defense is nonsense."

The publicity official's attitude was "shameless", Zhu said.

An online post in late November disclosed that the poverty-stricken Wangjiang county, in Anhui province, invested more than 63 million yuan in constructing its government building, covering 43,600 sq m, almost 8.5 times the size of the White House.

In contrast, the financial surplus of the government was merely 210,000 yuan in 2009.