A Zhuhai roofing manufacturer is suing four firms involved in the construction of the National Grand Theater for over 36 million yuan (US$4.35 million) in unpaid bills.

Zhuhai Jingyi said the general installation contractor of the National Grand Theater, Beijing Urban Construction Group, Shanghai Construction (Group) General Co. Ltd., and Hong Kong Construction (Holdings) Ltd. should have paid it 63 million yuan as of October 2004 for building the theater roof, but they only paid 13 million yuan. It claimed the firms still owed it 36 million yuan if the deposits were counted.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court is handing the case.

Sources with the theater said the theater would be completed by the end of this year as scheduled, despite the dispute.

Earlier reports said the National Grand Theater was over budget by at least 200 million yuan (US$24 million).

"The budget has been set at 2.688 billion yuan but the theater needs at least 3 billion yuan if it is to be completed on schedule," Wan Siquan, an official with the project's sponsor, the Project Owner's Committee, said at the end of last year. He said the project was short of about 200 million yuan.

The National Grand Theatre, located near Beijing's central Tiananmen Square and behind the Great Hall of the People, had been under fire for its expensive avant-garde design by French architect Paul Andreu.

The French architect said he hoped his building would become one of the landmarks of the Chinese capital.

(Shenzhen Daily July 5, 2005)