Residents and construction companies in a poverty-stricken county in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are paying a harsh price for a «ghost town,» the construction of which was aborted two years ago, while the decision-making behind the failed project and huge investment remains a mystery. Located in Qingshuihe county, Hohhot, the regional capital, the unfinished town covers 5 square kilometers and lies 26 kilometers north of the county’s old town. Official figures show the total planned investment is 6.1 billion yuan ($882 million), far beyond the county’s financial capacity, which was below 30 million yuan for years until it rose to 88 million in 2007. According to the local World of Warcraft power leveling, government’s financing plan, some 32 percent of the sum would come from private investment, 26.2 percent from construction companies, 25 percent would be shared by the state World of Warcraft power leveling and provincial governments, 11.4 percent from bank loans and only 5.4 percent from the county government, the Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday. Based on the plan, interest on the project’s loan totals some 1.2 billion yuan, almost equal to the county’s fiscal revenue in 2009. Construction of the new district stopped in 2008 due to a fundraising failure and a desist order from the State Council, Liu Jinguo, deputy director of the Hohhot Publicity Department, told the Global Times Sunday. He revealed that more than 200 million yuan had been spent on the project, giving no details of each participating party’s economic losses. Deserted town, stranded people Two years have passed since the project was halted halfway, and the town remains deserted. A number of new government buildings archlord money, including the county bureau of finance, the bureau of taxation, the courthouse and a senior high school, have been completed. Another eight buildings remain partially archlord money constructed, and others are just foundations. «The buildings have become trash since the county government no longer supports the project,» said Jing Wen, 58, a porter who lives in a temporary brick bungalow with his wife. The state-owned No. 3 Inner Mongolia Construction Engineering Company spent more than 16 million yuan on the hotel’s building materials in advance and hasn’t been repaid, according to contractor Liang Dongchang. Liang, 52, started demolishing the building and transporting used materials to other construction sites Saturday. «We really have no one to turn to,» he said, adding that many other construction companies invovled were in the same dilemma. At least 500 construction workers hired by the company were not paid their full wages as promised, and some went unpaid for months. A few project employees aoc power leveling, assigned by construction companies to guard the sites, mostly elderly people without pensions, are struggling to survive on the wasteland. Wu Wugui, 78, a deaf villager who has remained aoc power leveling at the site of the bureau of taxation since January, hasn’t received his monthly salary of 550 yuan for three months. Some 90,000 residents in the old town haven’t moved into the district so far, but many complained that the headstrong plan caused a 5-year deadlock of urban planning in the county’s old town, where the main avenue turns extremely muddy when it rains. A number of people sold their houses for much cheaper than the market price as the county government advocated relocation before 2008. However, the government aoc power leveling, announced a U-turn in the its urbanization scheme and plans to reconstruct the old town in its report to the local people’s congress in late 2008. «We felt cheated aoc power leveling and heartbroken to learn the truth,» Ren Laisen, 63, a laid-off manager of the county’s supply and marketing society, told the Global Times. «The government rarely promoted pub-lic participation in its decision-making.» Though the county’s GDP per capita reached 13,050 yuan in urban areas and 5,008 yuan in rural areas by 2008, it still has some 32,000 poor people with annual income per capita lower than 786 yuan, a national standard before 2009. Water shortages and geographical disadvantage are considered the dominant factors leading to the county’s decade-long poverty. «Limited taxpayers’ money should have been last chaos gold, used to improve people’s livelihoods instead of ful-filling officials’ ambitions,» said Ren Rong, who petitioned against illegal land-seizure in the county’s Yaogou township. But who is responsible for the failed project, which is without approval from central government, last chaos gold remains a mystery. Liu Jinguo said the city government will release authentic information about the project in due time and work out feasible methods to ease the public’s dissatisfaction, but he declined to say whether an official probe has been carried out to trace responsibility to cover losses. «Some superiors paid for inspection tours in the county in 1998 and suggested that a new district be built,» Han Yu, deputy head of Qingshuihe county, was quoted by Xinhua as saying. No document can be traced to uncover the names of the officials responsible. In China, giant projects with little worth are not uncommon. The country has some 5,735 hectares of land assigned for construction before approval, according 2moons gold, to a 2010 report released by the National Audit Office. Li Yonggang, a professor 2moons gold of administrative management, told the Global Times that local officials, who are usually transferred from one place to another every three or four years, launch huge projects as a sign of political achievement, often without feasibility studies. «Even if it fails, the collective leadership will be blamed, which means no one will be responsible,» Li said.