Cleaning House

Such a vast country as China's with all the problems attendant on the need to tamp down conspicuous corruption, there's little wonder that from time to time scandals erupt of a nature and magnitude rarely seen elsewhere. China stands second in the world, after the Unites States and before Russia in the number of its billionaires. One of those billionaires once considered to be one of China's richest men appears to have disappeared from public view.

Deng Hong, 50, the major figure behind a project to build the world's largest building, the New Century Global Centre in the Sichuan capital Chengdu, opened just a month earlier, has vanished. Not quite into thin air. "We don't know where he is" a spokesman for his company, Entertainment & Travel Group, has said. It is thought, however, that he may have vanished his way into police custody.

Over 50 government officials have been detained in police custody as a result of investigations into corrupt practices that reach upward into the country's highest administration level. "There are more investigations and more arrests to come", the former editor of a state newspaper said. China's new premier did announce on his ascension to power that the country was on track to solve its endemic problems of corruption.

The Century Global Centre's slogan is "Better quality, integrity, honesty". Has a nice ring to it. Within it is a shopping centre of four million square feet, a convention centre, a university campus, an Intercontinental hotel, a pirate ship, a skating rink, an Imax cinema and a 54,000 sq.-ft. artificial beach. Alongside the beach is a 500-ft. LED screen the height of the Statue of Liberty displaying tropical sunsets to swimmers.

The vast New Century Global Centre Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A monster riff, it would seem on the West Edmonton Mall in Canada which itself boasted an impressive array of entertaining and commercial retail enterprises within its huge interior. Until 2004 it could boast it was the largest such feature-laden mall in the world with a gross area of about 5,300,000 sq.ft. with 800 stores employing over 23,000 people.

World Waterpark Pool/Wikipedia

China's immense structure, now the largest in the world, is reputed to have cost the local government $8-billion. The centre was purpose-built with a mind to host the Global Fortune 500 Conference. A showpiece event treasured by the Communist Party. Trouble was, the furore arising out of corruption investigations had created an embarrassment sufficient to move the conference at the last minute to another venue.

Mr. Deng left China in the early 1990s to emigrate to the United States, already a wealthy property business owner. When China began its voyage to launch itself as a Communist country with a Capitalist economy he decided to return to Chengdu and sold himself as an invaluable entrepreneur to the local government. He had ties to Li Chuncheng, deputy party secretary of Sichuan, now also detained and expelled from the party and questioned by anti-corruption officials.

"In fact, a lot of the officials in Chengdu and Sichuan now hate Li Chuncheng", said a local government source. Who believes that when he was detained by authorities he took the opportunity to launch allegations of corruption against those with whom he had done a great amount of business which handsomely profited them all.