The country will pay closer attention to large-scale public construction projects to avoid "prestige projects" often blamed to be a waste of land, according to a government statement issued yesterday.

A statement, issued jointly by the Ministries of Construction, Finance and Supervision, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Audit Office yesterday, said the number, scale and standards of large public projects should match national and regional economic development.

Large-scale public construction signifies buildings for public use, such as offices, commercial and educational establishments, with a surface of over 20,000 square meters.

The move is one of the country's latest measures towards curbing relentless illegal land acquisition and aiming to protect dwindling arable land.

"Some local governments, brushing aside the national status quo and their own economic strength, are keen on building some unrealistic large-scale prestige projects, which take up excessive land," the statement said.

The statement asked local governments to abandon blind "externality" in projects, and instead to switch their focus to historical and cultural characteristics in large-scale public projects.

In a related development, the Ministry of Construction rescinded a draft on building houses over 90 square meters, only a day after it was posted on its website on Tuesday to solicit opinions, the Chinese media reported.

The draft, accounting for climatic factors and the number of storeys, had given different standards for the construction of houses less than 90 square meters in size for different regions of the country.

(China Daily January 12, 2007)