Web users blooming mad over floral budget

Web users have questioned the appropriateness of plans by Chaoyang to spend millions of yuan on floral decorations within the district ahead of National Day on October 1.

Hu Liangsen, director with the Chaoyang district landscape and forestry office, said during a conference held Monday by Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry (BBLF) that Chaoyang will spend up to 50 million yuan ($7.9 million) on decorating the district ahead of National Day and the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Beijing Times reported Tuesday.

The plans involve large ornamental gardens and flower pillars in 10 places in the district, including at Siyuan and Jianguomen bridges, said Hu.

Participants at the conference, which also discussed other issues related to the environment, included directors of landscape and forestry offices from the 16 districts and counties in the city.

Gao Xingchun, director with the Xicheng district landscape and forestry office, also revealed at the conference that five mini-parks at stations along Subway Line 4 will be finished before the CPC's 18th National Congress.

The five mini-parks, built to improve the greening in the district as well as provide rest areas for passengers, will cost 8 million yuan in total, Gao said.

The news of the high price for Chaoyang district's temporary floral decorations had Web users blooming mad Tuesday, with the information being forwarded more than 3,800 times by 11 pm, after the Beijing Times first reported the figures on Tuesday morning

A majority of Web users said spending 50 million yuan on blooms which will only last a month is too indulgent.

"Can't the city spend this money on more useful things?" said Web user Li Haifeng on his Sina microblog Tuesday.

Li Xuan, a staff member with the publicity office of the BBLF, told the Global Times they could not reveal the total amount to be spent on floral decoration across the capital.

"We don't have the accurate amount and revealing this will bring trouble to the work," he said, refusing to say what trouble that may be.

Other districts in the city, approached directly, refused to reveal the cost of their decorative flower budgets.

Wan Fang, 29, a resident in Beijing, told the Global Times the money spent on decorating Chaoyang is too high.

"The money is half that provided by the government to people in the rainstorm-hit districts, including Fangshan and Mentougou districts," she said.

The government has allocated 100 million yuan to help people across Beijing affected by the July 21 rainstorm rebuild their lives, reported the Beijing Times on July 25.

There are many ways the government could improve the city's environment without having to resort to taxpayers' money, said Wan.

"Instead of using taxpayers' money to build mini-parks, we could set up ad billboards along subway lines and let the enterprises pay the construction fee of these parks," she said.

Zhang Xin, an associate professor of public management at Renmin University of China, said that he thinks the city should beautify its environment ahead of important occasions.

"The point lies in how much money is spent. It should not be over-indulgent," he said.

He added that though it is understandable for people to complain online about the large sum of money spent, this does not help solve problems.

Zhang noted that the country lacks an effective system to allow the public to supervise the government budget.

"If the public could participate in evaluating a project's beneficial results and have a say in suggesting how much money is spent on the project, online complaints will disappear," said Zhang.

Last year, 0.7 million flower pots were used to decorate Tiananmen Square and Chang'an Avenue for National Day, although the cost was not revealed, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The only year for which figures are available is 2005, when it cost nearly 20 million yuan to decorate Tiananmen Square and Chang'an Avenue with flowers for National Day, reported Xinhua.