The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, issued guidelines on Tuesday to ban the construction of skyscrapers over 500 meters high, and China will strictly limit construction of buildings over 250 meters high.

The regulations were listed in the latest issued new urbanization outline during the 14th Five-Year Plan 2021-25 which vowed to optimize city landscapes and rectify the pursuit of excessive architectural scale, direct copying foreign designs, and nonstandard buildings. 

According to the statistics from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a US nonprofit organization, China has 2,928 buildings taller than 150 meters, 953 skyscrapers higher than 200 meters and 102 super high-rise buildings above 300 meters as of now. All three indicators remain number one in the world. 

China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Emergency Management said in a statement on October 2021 that skyscrapers higher than 150 meters are not allowed to be built in cities with less than three million people while buildings higher than 250 meters must not be constructed in cities with large populations due to safety concerns.

NDRC had announced relevant regulations in April 2021 targeting the construction of skyscrapers over 500 meters in height, and the commission officially implemented a ban on construction of buildings taller than 500 meters in July.

SEG Plaza, a 356-meter-high tower in downtown Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province, reportedly began swaying due to multiple factors including strong wind, vibrations from the subway and rising temperatures in May 2021. Use of the building was suspended for nearly four months, raising concerns about its safety. 

Global Times