AFP - Getty Images
Scavengers picking up useful construction waste from a garbage dump in Hefei, in central China's Anhui province on December 9, 2012.
China's wealth gap has widened to a level where it is among the world's most unequal nations, a Chinese academic institute said in a survey, as huge numbers of poor are left behind by the economic boom.
-- Agence France-Presse
A once-sleepy village in the countryside of eastern China celebrated its 50th anniversary Saturday by unveiling an incongruous addition to its skyline: a skyscraper taller than the Chrysler Building.
The 74-story Longxi International Hotel towers 328 meters (1,076 feet) above the village of Huaxi and cost 3 billion yuan ($472 million) to build, according to the state-owned China Daily newspaper.
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An aerial photo of the Longxi International Hotel, which stands at 328 meters high and cost $472 million to build, in Huaxi, which is still classified as a village, in east China's Jiangsu province on September 24.
"The building exudes wealth and excess," wrote The Guardian's Jonathan Watts, who was given a tour before the official opening. One of the most impressive features is a one-tonne gold statue of an ox, said to be worth $47.2 million.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
A woman stands next to a gold statue of an ox during the official inauguration of the Longxi hotel on Oct. 8. The one-tonne statue greets visitors at a viewing area on the 60th-floor of the tower.
It may model itself on Dubai, but Huaxi is still officially classified as a village. Its original residents, just 2,000 families, have shared in the bonanza of its transformation. Reuters reports that they each have at least $250,000 in the bank, as well as enjoying universal health care and free education.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Officials attend the inauguration ceremony of the new skyscraper on October 8. Officials from elsewhere in China tour Huaxi to find out how this once sleepy village, with just 576 residents in the 1950s, could have become so rich.
The rise of Huaxi, which now operates as a conglomerate with interests in steel, shipping, tobacco and textiles, has drawn tens of thousands of migrant workers, Watts reports, but their comparitively meager earnings have left them on the outside looking in.
What remains unclear is where the hotel, with its 826 bedrooms and dining facilities for 5,000 guests, will find its patrons. Local officials confidently predict a tourist rush, but if it does not materialize then their golden ox may come to resemble nothing no much as a great white elephant in the sky.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Guests attend a dinner at the new hotel before its official inauguration on October 8.
Kimberly White / Reuters
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, delivers a keynote address at the company's annual conference in San Francisco, in this file photo taken July 23, 2008. Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Zuckerberg clocked in at No. 52 with an estimated worth of $13.5 billion, up from 212 and $4 billion in 2010. Six of the founders and investors behind the hot Internet startup made the annual list of world's top billionaires compiled by Forbes and published on Wednesday -- and four of them are new to the roster.
Forbes estimates Zuckerberg was worth $4 billion in 2010 and is worth $13.5 billion today. Also, according to Forbes, the 2011 Billionaires List breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). Read the full story here, and you can read a bio of all 1,210 people on the 2011 Billionaires List here.
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South African tycoon Kenny Kunene, left, eats sushi from the body of a scantily-clad woman on Jan. 30 at the pre-opening of his new club, the Zar, in Cape Town.
According to AFP, Kenny Kunene's wild parties with near-naked women serving as sushi trays have opened a debate in South Africa between supporters of a complex-free, black middle class and those who take it as a insult to the majority of poor South Africans. On January 31, ruling African National Congress Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe condemned Kunene's sushi parties, adding that the ANC was not in the business of nightclubs but was a revolutionary movement.
This morning, South Africa's Independent Online reported that Kunene has cancelled any plans to repeat the stunt. "I will not be throwing or attending any further such sushi parties as I have nothing but respect for the leadership of the ANC and the guiding principles of the movement," Kunene is reported to have said.
AFP - Getty Images
A villager walks towards the gate of a "Great Wall" in Taizhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province on Feb. 1. Residents of Yuhuan village have followed the ancient emperors and built a "Great Wall" around their increasingly well-off community to keep out thieves, state media said.
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