Experts and members of the public have reacted with anger to a report that the office building of the Jinan government in East China's Shandong Province is the second largest office building in the world, second only to the Pentagon in size.

People's Daily Online reported Tuesday that the Long'ao Building in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong, where the city's government agencies are located, covers a floorage of 370,000 square meters, making it the largest government workplace in China and also the largest single building in Asia.

The news attracted over 7,000 comments on Sina Weibo, mostly from people expressing their opposition to such extravagance.

"This indicates that government officials have excessive power in their hands but lack supervision and constraints. With such extravagance, the public will become disappointed and lose their trust for the government," Zhu Lijia, a public management professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times.

There are some 40 elevators inside the building costing 4 billion yuan ($640 million) and up to 45,000 telephones and information outlets. Some of the corridors are a kilometer in length.

The building was completed in 2007 and originally used as the command and news center for China's 11th National Games held in the city in October 2009.

 After the games, the building served as the workplace for the Jinan government, Party commission and the city's relevant departments.

An online introduction says that the 15-floor building contains around 3,600 offices that can accommodate 6,000 people, equivalent to more than 60 square meters for each person working there.

A document on standards for government office buildings released by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2009 specifies that the office area for minister-level officials should not be more than 54 square meters.

"Chinese government officials are insensitive to administrative costs and at the same time the budget doesn't impose strong constraints on their impulsion for luxury, which come together to produce the extravagant buildings that arise from time to time," Yun Jie, director of the administration research department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

The publicity department of the Jinan government could not be reached as of press time.

The Pentagon is the world's largest office building with a floor area of 600,000 square meters, of which 340,000 are used as offices for about 28,000 employees.

"Governments' decisions and programs should be made public and be more transparent, and the evaluation of their performance should also be strengthened," Yun said.

The China News Service reported in September that the government of a town in Central China's Henan Province spent over 30 million yuan on its office building with an area of 8,000 square meters for some 200 staff members.

The fiscal revenue of the town in 2011 was 82.6 million yuan.