![]() ![]() What I was seeing in real life didn't matter at that time because my media consumption was telling me China was slowing, China was collapsing, China was a bad place to be and it must have been true because even the BBC, CNN and other western media platforms said so. It really didn't take me long to understand much of it was wrong probably about 24 hours. I've said it before and will no doubt say it again, when I arrived in China, I had a very different perspective on what I was seeing to what I thought I knew about China. When the news reports something we know is untrue and then reports on something we don't know about, why do we believe that must be true? Well, it's a real thing and Michael Crichton, the famous doctor, writer, scientist movie maker among many other things, gave it a name - the Gell-Mann Effect. How many times have you picked up a newspaper or social media platform and read something on a topic you're familiar with and realized that you're reading something which isn't true? Annoyingly, it happens to us all. The disaster ignited a storm of public controversy over poorly constructed school buildings - dubbed 'tofu dregs' - which collapsed and killed thousands of students.Photo taken on Mashows the skyscrapers of the Central Business District (CBD) in Beijing, capital of China. The devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake caused over 69,000 deaths. Last May, a five-storey quarantine hotel in the south-eastern city of Quanzhou collapsed due to shoddy construction, killing 29. It is home to the world's fourth-tallest skyscraper, the 599-metre Ping An Finance Centre.īuilding collapses are not rare in China, where lax building standards and breakneck urbanisation lead to constructions being thrown up in haste. ![]() Many Chinese tech giants, including Tencent and Huawei, have chosen the city to host their headquarters. Shenzhen is a sprawling metropolis in southern China, close to Hong Kong, which has a booming homegrown tech manufacturing scene. The new guidelines for architects, urban planners and developers aimed to "highlight Chinese characteristics" and also banned tacky "copycat" buildings modelled after world landmarks.įive of the world's tallest skyscrapers are located in China, including the world's second-tallest building, the Shanghai Tower, which stands at 632 metres. It is the 18th tallest tower in Shenzhen, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat skyscraper database.Ĭhinese authorities last year banned the construction of skyscrapers taller than 500 metres, adding to height restrictions already enforced in some cities such as Beijing. The tower is named after the semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are based in the building. "SEG has been completely evacuated," wrote one Weibo user in a caption to a video of hundreds of people milling about on a wide shopping street near the tower. It was not immediately clear how authorities will handle a dangerous building of its scale in the heart of a city of over 12 million people.īystander videos published by local media on Weibo showed the skyscraper shaking on its foundations as hundreds of terrified pedestrians ran away outside. ![]() "The cause of the shaking is being verified by various departments." "After checking and analysing the data of various earthquake monitoring stations across the city, there was no earthquake in Shenzhen today," the statement said. The building was sealed shut as of 2:40pm, according to local media reports.Ĭompleted in 2000, the tower is home to a major electronics market as well as various offices in the downtown of one of China's fastest-growing cities.Įmergency management officials are investigating what caused the tower in Shenzhen's Futian district to wobble, according to a post on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. The near 300-metre (980 ft) high SEG Plaza inexplicably began to shake at around 1pm, prompting an evacuation of people inside while pedestrians looked on open-mouthed from the streets outside. One of China's tallest skyscrapers was evacuated Tuesday after it began to shake, sending panicked shoppers scampering to safety in the southern city of Shenzhen. ![]()
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