Chinese border town to demolish failed 270m-yuan tourist strip near Vietnam
Relatively new project becomes a white elephant, requiring more money to dismantle than what it took to build it
A remote Chinese county near the Vietnam border is demolishing a tourist strip just three years after it was built at a whopping cost of 270 million yuan (HK$340 million).
The Hekou county government in Yunnan is spending 300 million yuan – its conservative estimate – to raze the 1-kilometre-long China-Asean International Tourist Cultural Scenic Corridor, which officials say has been derided by the public as unsanitary and disorganised.
Located by a river, the street is lined mostly by restaurants, furniture shops and tour agencies, and was publicised as a “pearl on the border”.
Officials envisioned it to be an attractive destination, featuring “landscape architecture with a combination of commerce, culture and tourism”.
But the provincial government said it ended up having a “negative influence” on the river scene, according to the Oriental Morning Post.
The Yunnan government has ordered the street to be rebuilt as a public open space in an effort to “improve the image of one of the country’s gateways”, it said.
“[It’s] mainly because of policy adjustment,” a county government spokesman said. Official data showed the county’s fiscal revenue last year was 180 million yuan.