Opinion | What has Li Chuncheng ‘the demolisher’ done to Chengdu?
More details surfaced about the anti-graft investigation of Sichuan’s deputy party secretary Li Chuncheng.
Reading the news, my friends from the provincial capital Chengdu, where Li had worked over 10 years – first as mayor and then as deputy party secretary – said what Li did during his term finally made sense.
Li, whose fist name is “Chuncheng”, meaning “spring city” in Chinese, is referred by locals jokingly as “Chaicheng”. The sound is similar, but the meaning is quite the opposite. “Chaicheng” means “demolish the city,” which is exactly what Li managed to achieve during the past 10 years.
Li managed to demolish some of the most distinct and culturally rich neighbourhoods in Chengdu, locals say, before the government then sold the lands to developers – who turned them into soulless and expensive modern blocks. This is the so-called “Old Town Improvement” project Li has prided himself on.
But Li, who had allegedly bribed his way to the top post in Chengdu, may have raked in billions of yuan from those construction projects in Chengdu, said the Legal Weekly.
Lives have been lost during his campaign to tear down older neighbourhoods to make way for modern development.
The then 47-year-old Tang Fuzhen, a Chengdu resident who desperately tried to protect her house from armed demolition crew who forced their way into the building, set herself on fire in a protest in 2009, dying in front of her neighbours, demolishion crew, the police and firefighters.