Statues look out over the soaring skyline of Lujiazui, Shanghai's trade and finance zone. Home to 51 skyscrapers, the city has the second largest number of tall towers after Hong Kong in China. Photo: CFP
By Li Mao in Shanghai
A new skyscraper is built every five days in China and by 2016 the country will have 800, four times the number in the US, according to a report released Monday by the Shanghai-based Skyscrapers Magazine.
Hong Kong had the most skyscrapers of any Chinese city with 58, followed by Shanghai with 51 and Shenzhen with 46, according to the website, which released the report after a year-long study of tall buildings in China. Five of the world's 10 tallest buildings are in China.
Skyscrapers are defined in the report as buildings of more than 500 feet (152.4 meters) in height. China started construction on more than 200 skyscrapers this year, a figure equal to the total number of skyscrapers in the US, according to the report.
However, some experts say skyscraper construction, initially seen as a way of saving land, has degenerated into an image project for the country.
"China does indeed need tall buildings in the process of urbanization as the country has a large population. Skyscrapers could to a degree help save the usage of land," Wang Jianmao, an economics professor at the China-Europe International Business School, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
"However, given the high costs of building skyscrapers and maintaining them as well as the environmental problems they cause, government authorities should be cautious in approving skyscraper projects."
The 421-meter-tall Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai's second tallest building, cost 20,000 yuan ($3,088) per square meter to build.
However, the building costs more than a million yuan per day to maintain now that it is in use, according to the Shanghai-based news portal Eastday.
Even cities with fewer than a million residents have undertaken skyscraper projects, according to the report. For example, Fangchenggang, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is planning to build a 528-meter skyscraper, higher than the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is currently the third tallest building in the world.
"If space in the skyscraper can't be sold or leased, skyscraper construction could lead to bad debt if investors borrowed money to finance the project," Yin Kunhua, deputy director at the Shanghai Real Estate Economy Society, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
