A 500-meter-tall building is expected to be built in Beijing's Central Business District, making itself the highest in the Chinese capital, China Daily reported Thursday.

The 122-floor skyscraper will stand on an 11,478-square-meter site that sold at auction for 6.3 billion yuan (US$948.15 million) on Dec. 21, the newspaper cited the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resource as saying.

The land where the building will stand is located on Guanghua Road in Chaoyang district, right at the heart of the CBD.

The completed building will offer 350,000 sq. m. of space.

The bureau said the planning department called for such a skyscraper in its design plan for the area.

At the moment, the city's tallest building is China World Trade Center Tower 3, which is 330 meters tall.

The CITIC Group, which now has usage rights to the land after winning the bidding, plans to build the skyscraper that will have four underground levels and call it Zhongguo Zun (Chinese goblet).

The skyscraper will serve as an office building and also house apartments and a hotel. The underground area will be used as a commercial area and connect with other underground commercial space in the neighborhood.

The building will take five years to complete.

(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2010)