An audience with the King

In China the boundary between the state and private sector is less clear than in the UK. The state is the main construction client but also the bulk of contractors are either state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) or joint ventures with SOEs. Plenty lose money. Loss-suffering enterprises made up 19.2 per cent of all construction enterprises in 2000, according to figures from the Chinese Embassy.

But the private sector is gathering strength. For a good example of entrepreneurial flare we go to Shenzhen, a miracle city in South East, situated on the mainland facing Hong Kong. It used to be a fishing town of 70,000 but in 1980 Deng Xiaoping dubbed it a Special Economic Zone allowed the free market free reign. And boy, did it reign. Investment flowed in and so did people from all around China, swelling the population to its current 7m. It developed a reputation as a heartless frontier town, and that’s what it felt like. We stayed for only 16 hours but witnessed a level of drunkenness, prostitution and pushy begging that we didn’t see anywhere else. In the 1980s, queasy about what it had spawned there, the state launched the Campaign Against Spiritual Pollution, during which you could be executed for, among other heinous acts, dancing cheek to cheek. But it was a place where ordinary Chinese people could go to throw off their shackles, get rich or go bust trying.

And it’s the place where steel subcontractor extraordinaire, Bao Guangjian FCIOB, got rich.

A quick, compact guy with a fleet of Mercedes at his beck and call, Bao is nicknamed the China Steel King for a string of high profile jobs, the latest being the steelwork for the controversial China Central Television (CCTV) Tower in Beijing. This will easily be the weirdest building in the world when it’s finished in time for the Olympics. It wasn’t popular among the people I polled, partly perhaps because it was designed by a foreigner, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, but also because of its unnatural appearance. “It looks like a monster,” says one Beijing engineer, wrinkling her nose. But it’s definitely a feather in Mr Bao’s cap because its daring design makes it especially tricky to build.

I finally nab him for an interview at 9:30 after a day showing us around Shenzhen, capped by one of the more challenging banquets we were to endure (raw lobster - so raw its claws were still clicking). He’s already late for a meeting. In fact the guy he’s due to meet is drumming his fingers in another part of the hotel coffee shop. Two engineers help translate but it’s still slow going. Within a few minutes, though, he warms up, jumping to his feet to act out his ideas.

even with an interpreter, talking to the ‘steel king’ is tricky until he leaps to his feet to act out his ideas

He started as a welder. In 1985 he pitched up outside a prominent development in Shenzhen and started talking to the bosses, convincing them to let him manage the steelwork. He made his mark by repositioning the joints of steel columns enough to stop the welders having to adopt a back-breaking stoop. This caused a big time saving and was the beginning of his reputation as an innovator. CCTV ran a documentary about his techniques recently after he won a national award for innovation.

To build the CCTV tower he has teamed up with China’s premier construction SOE, the China State Construction and Engineering Corporation (CSCEC). He says he beat three other consortia by locking up 80 engineers in Beijing for three months, making them come up with a thorough method statement on every aspect of erecting the steel. The resulting document was book-length. He believes his fame in welding and problem solving probably helped.

He admits he’s worried about erecting the 60,000 tonnes of steel necessary to keep the thing up. Of particular concern is the horizontal link between the two towers (see main picture). That bit, with its right-angle turn in the middle, is itself 15-storeys high. His strategy will be to build outward from each tower simultaneously and meet in the middle, bolting the two sections together quickly. This will have to be done in the evening to avoid the sun warping the steel out of shape. No wonder he’s worried.

So he’s the China Steel King, but does he have plans to be the steel king of the world? Well, yes, of course he does. The link to CSCEC has him in New York building a council building and in Dubai building a five-star hotel. He’d like to link up with UK consultants to cooperate on other projects around the world.