BEIJING airport's new Terminal 3, at twice the size of the Pentagon, is the largest building in the world.
Adorned with the colours of imperial China and a roof that evokes the scales of a dragon, the massive glass and steel-sheathed structure, designed by British architect Norman Foster, cost $3.8bn (£1.9bn) and can handle more than 50 million passenger
s a year. The developers call it the "most advanced airport building in the world" and say it was completed in less than four years, a timetable some believed impossible.
It opened in late February with little fanfare, but also without the kind of glitches that plagued Heathrow's £4.3bn Terminal 5, a project that took six years to complete.
This is the image China would like to project as it hosts the Olympic Games this summer – a confident rising power constructing dazzling monuments to its rapid progress and its audacious ambition.
While much of the world has focused on protests trailing the Olympic torch, China's poor human rights record, its pollution, product safety and child labour scandals, workers here have been putting the finishing touches on one of the biggest building programmes the world has ever seen.
Beijing hopes to overcome these negatives, and the dark sides of its roaring economy, by emphasising its ability to upgrade and modernise, at least when it comes to buildings and infrastructure.
The main Olympic stadium, nicknamed the Bird's Nest, is already admired for its striking appearance and its use of an steel mesh exterior. The nearby National Aquatics Centre, known as the Water Cube, is a translucent blue bubble that glows in the dark. And east of the main Olympic arenas, construction is winding down on the new headquarters of the country's main state television network, China Central Television, or CCTV. That $700m building, designed by Rem Koolhaas, consists of two interlocking Z-shaped towers that rise 767ft and may be the world's largest and most expensive media headquarters.
Beijing is determined to build its own architectural icons. "Beijing is a huge experimental site right now," says Zhu Wenyi, dean of the school of architecture at Tsinghua University. "This modern architecture is the identity of modern China."
But sometimes the sheer scale of the buildings overwhelms everything else. Thirty years after economic reforms began, this country has built a series of super structures that almost seem intended more for the Guinness World Records than cityscapes. China is home to the world's largest shopping mall, the longest sea-crossing bridge, the largest hydroelectric dam and the highest railway.
Late last year, Beijing opened what may be the world's largest performance hall, the a $400m National Centre for the Performing Arts.
For decades, the ruling Communist Party used huge building programmes to lure foreign investment and to create millions of jobs. But this new wave is different.
"This is just the start," said Ma Yansong, a 32-year-old architect who studied in the US and runs a practice in China. "The last 10 years we've had landmark buildings in Beijing and Shanghai. But now, the private developers are coming in, and second-tier cities want to develop."
In recent weeks, many Chinese have complained about what they say is Western media distortions about China and its role in Tibet, where riots broke out last month.
Indeed, behind the increasingly nationalistic counter-protests is a fear that China's Olympic moment is being overshadowed by critics and that the country's remarkable achievements are being ignored.
Many Chinese say that will change on August 8 – an auspicious date by traditional reckoning because 8 is a lucky number – as the world focuses on the Olympics and China's undeniable accomplishments.
The full article contains 620 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
