Chinese steel not safe enough for Sky City project
Industry criticises developer's contention that only foreign steel will meet structural demands of record-breaking prefab skyscraper in Hunan
The Chinese developer who aims to give China the world's tallest building will not be using Chinese steel.
Citing safety concerns, Broad Group president Zhang Yue said yesterday the company would use only foreign steel for its controversial 838-metre Sky City tower in Changsha - a project he hopes to complete in a record-breaking seven months.
"The hundreds of thousands of tonnes steel used by Sky City will come from the most technologically advanced country, Luxembourg, with very high price, tariffs and a huge transport cost," Zhang said in statement.
"It is not very environmentally correct to transport such an amount of steel more than 20,000 kilometres, but my reasoning tells me safety must be prioritised," he said, without saying why he thought domestic steel was less safe.
The decision immediately drew fire from the country's struggling steel industry, which questioned why domestic steel was inadequate for the building's modular design.
"Why don't they use Chinese steel?" Qi Xiangdong , deputy secretary general of the China Steel Industry Association. "Home-made steel should be qualified for building construction."
Qi said the Sky City project could have provided a big economic and morale boost to the domestic steel industry which had been suffering overcapacity and sluggish demand.