Teachers, pupils save century-old school from demolition

LANZHOU -- When Chinese pupils started their new semester on Monday, more than 670 primary students in Northwest China's Gansu Province won their school back after a local government u-turn over plans to tear it down.

Municipal government in the city of Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, on Saturday yielded to public pressure against the demolition of the century-old Lanyuan Primary School, promising to keep it and not to make way for a central business district (CBD) development plan.

The official statement to suspend the seizure of the school in Chengguan District was announced by Yu Haiyan, Party chief of Lanzhou, who and the city government were under fire last weekend after media reports led to major public concern about the demolition plan.

Yu vowed that the city government would draw a lesson from the case and listen to public opinion on urban construction projects concerning public facilities such as schools, hospitals and greenery.

Chengguan district government apologized to the school and parents for the inconvenience the "poor demolition plan" has caused.

Previous to the turnaround, the government had maintained a hardline in the overall demolition of the school as well as a nearby gymnasium and a children's center to make way for the CBD building project, listed as the city's major investment program.

In line with the development agenda, the local authority had given the school a deadline to send students and teachers to two other primary schools before the end of this week, as the demolition project was due to get under way soon.

"When students came back to register for the new semester last week, I felt too sad to tell them that it would be our last week in the school," said Ma Yanping, headmaster of the Lanyuan school.

Ma said the local authority urged the school to disperse faculty and students to the other two schools. There was no plan to rebuild the school.

The school, built in the 19th century, is one of the oldest in Gansu. It is still regarded as one of the best public schools in downtown Lanzhou.

A survey by Gansu provincial education department in August evaluated resources in Chengguan district, Lanzhou as "desperately insufficient", citing the crowded schoolrooms in the district, where students have a per capital space of less than five square meters.

An additional 26 primary schools and eight middle schools are needed in order to meet national and provincial standards on the allocation of resources according to the local population of school-age children, according to the survey paper.

However, the local authority has given urban development priorities to commercial buildings in the downtown area.

The rare victory for teachers and pupils underscore a dilemma for many local governments in China, where business has clashed with education and other public livelihood projects, sparking a growing number of protests over land seizure nationwide in the past years amid rapid urbanization.

Real estate developers and local governments are eager to grab more land from urban residents or farmers in the suburb for the development of apartments, shopping malls or office buildings in a bid to benefit from the country's soaring property prices.

In Lanzhou's Chengguan district alone, the population has been increasing by about 38 percent to around 1.3 million over the past decade, but only three primary schools were newly built while more than ten have disappeared.

Li Chunrui, an education superintendent with the provincial government, said schools have already been insufficient.

"For Chengguan district, the primary task now is to build schools, not demolish them," Li said.

Schools, along with other public facilities, have been often ignored by local governments in the urban development drive as public services are deemed as less profitable than commercial real estate buildings. Many local governments saw GDP-measured economic development as their major achievements.

He Wensheng, vice dean of the management school of Lanzhou University, said local governments should strike a balance between developing the economy and providing public services.

"If economic gains are over-emphasized, such clashes between the government and the public as the Lanyuan case will happen again," He said.