I started with shopping malls and digressed to corruption and the parallel state. I feel that I should not go any further.

The biggest building in the world is a shopping mall. The New Century Global in Chengdu, Sichuan, in China has a floor space of 1,750,000 square meters. Currently the biggest shopping mall in Turkey is about 175,000 square meters; that is, a tenth of the New Century Global. Of the 1,750,000 square meters, 400,000 is devoted to the shopping mall, while the rest is a common area composed of a hotel, an artificial beach, a zoo, and a picnic area. The rule is, the larger the common area is, the more customers the mall will have. It is reported that the New Century global can accommodate the Sydney Opera House 20 times, Vatican four  times, and the Pentagon three times. It really is big.

Not long ago, the biggest buildings on earth were either mosques or churches. Mankind used to undertake huge construction projects in the name of religion. Then military buildings replaced religious buildings. Later, huge production facilities took the lead. The pattern has changed once more today. Currently, the Pentagon ranks only fourteenth among the world’s biggest buildings and Vatican is not even among the top 50. The list does not include any buildings for art, either.

The New Century Global, which opened in 2013, is in first place and is followed by the Dubai International Airport, which also opened in 2013. The airport’s floor area is 1,700,000 square meters. The third place is taken by the Abraj Al-Bait, Mecca, a tower that the Saudis built atop the Kaaba after they had demolished the historic Ottoman citadel in 2002. The top three on the list then are a shopping mall, an airport plus shopping mall complex, and another shopping mall! We are surrounded by malls. Another thing the list tells us is that the biggest malls are in locations that have experienced rapid urbanization. Just take a look at East Asia. I am wondering if bad municipalities come with the largest shopping malls.

Let’s take a look. Why did the Chinese decide to build the biggest shopping mall in the world? Currently I am reading Lenin’s Kisses by the Chinese author, Yan Lianke. The story is set in Liven, a remote village in rural China. The Communist Party of China (CPC) sets money-making and growth goals for local administrations. Those who succeed and reach the targets are promoted. The biggest achievers rise up to the Politburo. The young chiefs of the region, including that of Liven, seek ways to achieve the targets. In the dearth of industry, land reform, or productive small shops, he seeks alternative ways and decides to focus on tourism. Yet there is a tiny problem: the region does not have an historical and touristic artifact or natural appeal. Then, the young man, who had been selected to act as chief only for being literate, decides to build a big monument to attract tourists. He recalls a news piece periodically featured at the party paper on how Russia is sick of the cost of the maintenance of Lenin’s embalmed corpse and how it considered entombing it. So he launches a campaign to buy Lenin’s corpse and construct a mausoleum.

The novel is of course richer and more epic than how I summarize it, but this is exactly how the prosperity fever China caught on in the 1990s. This also might be how New Century Global in Chengdu arose as a project.

There happens to be another dimension of the issue. I recently watched an interview in China. Asked by a journalist seeking a story on the mall why the project was so big and crazy, one of the interviewees gave the perfect response: “it might be related to the magnitude of corruption going on in China.” Our ancestors knew it very well: if there is too much talking, there is lying. If there is too much money, there is stealing. And in our case, if there is too big a project, there is a catch. Indeed, the developer of the project Deng Hong has gone missing and some claim that he is under custody.  Why did this not become public? Because that’s how the parallel state works in China. On the one hand is the constitutional state with executive, legislative, and judiciary powers; and on the other, is the CPC organization. If the corruption reaches as high as the politburo, first the inner balances are checked, then the party police steps in. Initial confessions are first heard within the party organization and later submitted to the legitimate judiciary mechanism. The issues are dealt with in the shades in the parallel state while everything progress transparently under the constitutional mechanism. That’s how things work in China.

I started with shopping malls and digressed to corruption and the parallel state. I feel that I should not go any further. Or I might end up saying that the CPC is the same as what is going on in Turkey. No need to get myself in trouble in vain.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 03.01.2014