Beijing has checked 58 skyscrapers and other tall buildings to ensure they are earthquake proof - including the uniquely shaped National Stadium and the leaning towers of the new headquarters for China Central Television.

The checks come in the wake of the quake that killed nearly 70,000 people in Sichuan Province, Xinhua news agency said, citing the Beijing Municipal Construction Committee.

"Beijing has attracted architects from around the world in recent years," an official with the committee was quoted as saying. "However, as many of them come from places that seldom have earthquakes, their fancy designs are unusual and sometimes beyond the existing design criteria."

The committee will soon release the results of the building checks.

The committee pledged that all future high-rises in the capital would be given quake-proof checks at the design stage and this will be a key factor for approving new constructions.

Quake-proof capability will also be taken into consideration for the approval of reconstructions and the renovation of houses and other buildings, the committee said.

Buildings in downtown Beijing and nearby suburbs had to be able to resist an 8.0-magnitude earthquake after a 7.6-magnitude temblor claimed more than 240,000 lives in Tangshan City in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province in 1976.

The National Stadium, the site of the opening and closing ceremonies of the August Beijing Olympics, is renowned for its giant twig-like structure of metal girders and its bowl-shaped roof. Covering an area of 20.4 hectares, it can seat 91,000 spectators for the Olympics.

The stadium can withstand a 10-magnitude earthquake, according to reports.

The CCTV towers, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, was another target for this month's checks, the report said.

The towers, one at 234 meters and the other 194 meters, lean six degrees and they form the main building for a complex that has a floor space of 495,900 square meters.

Shoddy construction has been reported as a cause behind the deaths of thousands of people, including students, in the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan.

The catastrophe, the worst in China in more than three decades, prompted public calls for the government to take actions to make sure homes, buildings and classrooms are safe.

The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development vowed to carry out thorough checks on all school buildings throughout the country, the ministries said in a statement last week.

In Shanghai, engineers who have returned from the Sichuan earthquake-hit areas have called on the city government to launch a citywide assessment and reinforcement of school and public buildings.

The assessment should focus on structures built before 1993, when the city's construction standards were adopted, said Lu Xilin, head of Tongji University's structural engineering and disaster reduction research institute.

Buildings at kindergartens, schools and university campuses should receive priority in the assessment, Liu said

(Shanghai Daily June 19, 2008)