Tofu-Dreg Buildings Without Foundations in China

Look at the fire in your house, isn't it good? Isn't it good? Is this brick? If you can't put it together, this is their brick. Look at it. Everyone, look at it. Can you see it? As project money is skimmed off the top for and by officials, leaving less funding for quality materials, qualified staff, and acceptable workmanship while projects are often granted to companies that have more political ties than qualifications. Furthermore, tribute projects are often rushed for completion in order to mark a state anniversary. For instance, in 2007, a bridge in Hunan province where work was expedited so it could open on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the local prefecture, collapsed during construction, killing 64 people. Lastly, local governments rely on the revenues arising from construction including land sales and transfer fees, so they have incentives to promote rapid and unfettered growth, including turning a blind eye to substandard construction. In July 2021, another occurrence of tofu drug construction happened in Zhengzhou in Henan province where the entire city was put at a standstill due to torrential rains and flooding. The city was referred to as a sponge city because of how vulnerable the drainage system was. Some argue that the city was not to blame since they were experiencing unprecedented rain levels, but there was evidence later found pointing towards a weak infrastructure. Such disasters have occurred multiple times in Zhengzhou, giving it the reputation of being spongy and a result of tofu construction. After visiting China in early 2011, Canadian journalist Lawrence Solomon stated that many Chinese people feared that a tofu dam might fail, leading to hundreds of thousands of downstream victims. According to Chinese architect Li Hu, tofu drug projects in China are vastly outnumbered by buildings without construction flaws. Li said that in most cases, ill-constructed buildings don't collapse but merely have a reduced lifespan or leakages. A February 2023 survey on natural disaster risks found that there were close to 600 million buildings in China. The urbanization race in the context of rapid growth has led to many residential and major infrastructure projects in China not meeting the required quality standards. There have been cases where newly constructed buildings have collapsed shortly after completion due to their weakness and lack of proper quality, akin to tofu drug construction. Shanghai authorities have temporarily detained nine individuals connected to the incident involving a 13-story building in the Lotus Riverside complex in the Minhong district of Shanghai, which collapsed on June 27, resulting in the death of one construction worker. Regardless of the ultimate conclusion, the issue of poor construction quality is not ruled out. On June 28, Shanghai's local newspaper reported that over 400 residents in other buildings within the Lotus Riverside complex surrounded the main office of the primary developer, My Home Real Estate Company, to demand a refund of the money they paid for their apartments due to safety concerns. We dare not live in our homes anymore. We demand that the investors refund our money and compensate us for the fallen property prices so we can buy somewhere else, said an upset customer, Qiao Haquan. Behind her were hundreds of others with similar demands. They have hired lawyers to negotiate with the developer, but the likelihood of success is very low. As per the law, only those who have paid for apartments in the collapsed building are eligible for refunds and compensation. The investigative team, consisting of construction experts from the Minhong district, was established immediately after the accident. Preliminary findings indicate that the building collapsed like a tofu drug construction due to a massive pile of earth beneath the building that shifted during the construction of the underground parking garage, causing structural damage to the entire building. The investigation team has also collected concrete samples for testing, as it cannot rule out the possibility of the investor using subpar materials. Furthermore, local residents have added that the embankment near a nearby pond had collapsed after several days of continuous rain, which could be one of the primary factors contributing to the building's collapse. Surprisingly, the investigation has uncovered that My Hong Real Estate Company had been operating illegally for over four years. Despite this, the company was the developer of two other buildings in the Minhong district, which have almost completely sold out. The issue of poor construction quality, which often results from cost-cutting measures such as using subpar materials and dishonest practices, has emerged alongside the rapid economic development and the need for infrastructure to keep up with the pace. China has long been alarmed by instances of tofu drug construction, referring to shoddy, low-quality construction projects that fail to meet quality standards. These projects are not limited to housing but also extend to other critical public infrastructure. In 1999, the sudden collapse of a bridge in Chongqing claimed the lives of over 40 people. The bridge had been constructed for less than three years and was found to have been replaced with low-quality materials. A noteworthy example of the problem stems from the exceptionally short period between construction and disaster. The pressing concern among Chinese citizens today, as reported by the Guangzhou-based news outlet, is how many other tofu drug construction projects have yet to be uncovered. Tofu drug construction stemming from speedy, shoddy work often uses cheap and quick materials, mainly concrete. The speedy construction and pouring of substandard concrete leads to poor building infrastructure, causing the issues seen when a natural disaster occurs like the Wenchuan earthquake. Concrete production contributes to large percentages of individual greenhouse gases. From 1980 to 2011, China has led in cement-slash-concrete production. In fact, China produced more cement in a two-year period than the US, produced in the 20th century. All of this cement production has led to vast emissions of greenhouse gases, China's contribution to GHGs from cemental-owned rival Total GHG Emissions of some countries. China is using a lot of cement and is using it quickly, causing tofu construction of buildings. Tofu construction only leads to more construction, as after the Sichuan earthquake, China finished close to 29,692 projects to rebuild areas affected by the earthquake. Even without natural disasters, Chinese constructions have still failed. One Australian reporter counted four collapsed bridges in just nine days in July 2012. Chinese officials acknowledge these issues as well, giving life expectancies of buildings and even warning of future collapses of buildings as they age and reach certain lifespans. Even in reconstruction efforts, tofu-dred construction remains prevalent. Sources from the post-earthquake county of Yongqing cite having moved into buildings already having cracks within walls of their newly built apartments. Yet construction continues in China as in the span of 2011 to 2014 it was predicted that China would have a new skyscraper constructed every five days. Construction contributes to about 40% of the world's GHG emissions. Most of these emissions come from materials used, like concrete tofu-dred's signature building material and other materials. In connection to tofu-dred construction are the more grander projects that the Chinese government implements, many of which are wholly unnecessary for their purpose and are simply used as tools to indicate to foreign countries that China is developed. By allocating the country's best resources to wealthy cities, China's rural areas are subjected to repeated infrastructure disasters, which not only leads to the expenditure of more natural resources in order to rebuild but also the pollution caused during the initial collapse. China's construction industry is a significant contributor to the overall climate crisis, and although China has made plans to reduce the nation's carbon emission with renewable energy and upgraded industrial equipment, the majority of China's rural and pool areas continue to depend on staples such as cement and steel which carry a heavy carbon footprint. The result, as exemplified by tofu-dred projects, is recurring collapse and natural resource use. In addition to weak buildings are weak work areas, e.g. factories, which have led to devastating events such as factory fires, pipeline leaks, and workplace explosions. Tofu buildings are buildings which are so structurally unsound that they are compared to jiggling blocks of soft tofu which will crumble at the slightest provocation. The term originates in China, where a construction boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s led to a proliferation of such structures. The numerous issues with tofu buildings were brought to the forefront in 2008 when a devastating earthquake in Sichuan province killed tens of thousands of Chinese, many of whom were trapped when such buildings collapsed. From the outside, tofu buildings look perfectly safe, especially to the casual eye. They have all of the components one would expect to see in a building, and often the inside is finished in such a way that it looks secure as well. The superstructure and foundation of this type of building is not sound, and this can lead to serious problems in earthquakes, floods, and fires, as the unstable building may collapse or be badly damaged. Obviously, no one sets out to build a structurally unsound building. Tofu buildings are the result of hasty construction designed to wreck the structure as quickly and cheaply as possible. Hasty construction often results in the use of substandard materials and relaxed inspections. Builders may also skip important steps or ignore safety protocol in the interest of getting a building up quickly, and once the building is up, authorities may be loathe to order its demolition. In addition, the structural flaws may be hidden from sight, making it harder to pinpoint tofu buildings. Not so much as people like to pretend they are, but there's a confluence of problems that often mean that badly constructed building projects tend to be clustered by property developer bids. Simply put, the profit margins for construction bids in the PRC is ridiculously low, and provincial governments and their land trades to developers are economically vested in liquidating access to land as a primary means of replenishing coffers. These projects are ridiculously fierce in terms of construction company bids, so the profit margins are lower than what you'd think they were or would be. Property developers in the PRC are something else, and the scale of construction is something else as well. The salaries, land costs, materials, and more. All of these have to be covered, and a lot of the time all you've got to cover them are pre-sales. The operating costs of these are multitudinous given their unbelievable scale. Corruption at every stage complicates the small profit margins on projects as they were without people sticking their hand out to begin with. And this corruption can manifest in ways you weren't expecting, or via contracted firms you weren't expecting it from. So instead of workers spending, say, 20 days building a tower floor, they spend 5 days running low on cement, used bottles to pad out the total mix. Your contract for better quality steel rebar has gone belly up and absconded with the money you spent on them, while I know a friend of a friend that can get you something similar. That being said, these problems aren't even unique to the PRC. And the only reason why the PRC stands out is simply because of the volume of output and the immensity of the sector in general. It seems Sydney is not immune to poor construction practices and loopholes in regulation. While corruption there may be more professionalized than elsewhere, recent high-profile projects have been plagued by ill-conceived inspection rules and shortcuts taken to get green approval stamps. An NSW-do Fujiagongsheng may be in order to address quality concerns.