As she opens the doors to a new exhibition and conference centre, Sun Sihan, a smartly dressed public-relations official for the city of Zhengzhou, is flushed with pride.
'We have the largest conference hall in Asia,' she beams, displaying a cavernous room that at 34,000 square metres is nearly five times the size of Old Trafford, the world famous Manchester United football ground in Britain. The exhibition centre and the walkways, gardens, lake and car parks that are part of its development area cover 69 hectares, making it larger than Vatican City.
Built at a cost of 2.2 billion yuan (HK$2.52 billion) four years ago, its vast lobby boasts imported Italian stone walls, while the hallways are filled with fresh-cut flowers.
The last time the conference centre, which was entirely empty on a recent hot weekday morning, was filled with people was last year when Zhengzhou hosted a national pharmaceutical industry event.
The conference centre is one of many attractions on show at Zhengdong New Area, a recently created district within Zhengzhou, the capital of the relatively poor inland province of Henan. Still under construction, the new town eventually will cover 115 square kilometres, almost twice the size of New York's Manhattan Island, and cost 150 billion yuan, funded by the local government and property developers involved in the project.
Here in central China, Zhengzhou is racing against neighbouring cities to become this region's economic hub. Similar contests are being played out across China in second- and third-tier cities.
In the short term, such big projects boost employment and burnish the reputation of local authorities. But in the long term, the flurry of construction - much of it funded by local government borrowings - could leave the cities lumbered with white elephant projects for years to come and Chinese banks stuck with sour loans.