There was a time when the Shantou Waisha Airport in eastern Guangdong was one of the busiest in the country. These days, travellers taking off or landing at the facility often find their plane is the only one on the tarmac.
Shantou was one of the first special economic zones and at its peak, in 1995, its airport moved 2 million travellers a year and ranked 13th in passenger traffic and 15th in cargo handling among the mainland's then 139 airports. Back then, the airport boasted direct flights to 39 domestic and five overseas destinations, including Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
But, in just over a decade, Waisha's passenger numbers have halved and the number of cities serviced has shrunk, too, to just 21. Today it no longer ranks among China's top 50 airports and operates at a third of capacity.
The airport's decline is all the more stark considering the mainland has the world's fastest growth in civil aviation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, unlike other booming coastal areas, Shantou never recovered from the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.
Nevertheless, the city is now in a rush to build a new airport and several other big infrastructure projects as municipal officials try to grab a slice of the massive investment package the central government unleashed in response to the global economic slump.
Shantou's is just one of dozens of lower-level authorities across the country seeking to cash in on Beijing's spending bonanza, a planning frenzy that has reignited concerns about runaway corruption, extreme waste and the heavy price the public could pay.
Immediately after the central government unveiled its 4 trillion yuan (HK4.54 trillion) stimulus package to build roads, railways and other infrastructure, lower-level governments began crafting their own, even more ambitious, plans. In all, 28 provincial-level regional governments came up with pump-priming plans at a total cost of 29.23 trillion yuan - more than the gross domestic product for the entire country in 2007 and more than twice the country's fixed-asset investment for that year.