Taiwan may not be recognised by many as a country, but it has global ambitions and they were displayed on Friday as the countdown began for opening the world’s tallest building.
Facing an election next year, President Chen Shui-bian cut the ribbons at the opening ceremony for the first part of the new, 508m tower open to the public, a five-storey shopping mall at the base. The rest of the tower will open to the public next year.
”The success of the Taipei 101, the new landmark in the capital, will bring business opportunities, prosperity and progress and push Taiwan on to the world stage,” said the president of the island regarded by China as a renegade province.
Speaking at the same ceremony, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou said the building was ”the pride of Taipei residents” and a mark of Taiwan’s global ambitions.
The building, which soars above the rest of a largely low-level city, was built to signal those ambitions now bursting out all over Asia, just as they did across Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Then, European and American entrepreneurs and politicians put up buildings from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State building, to showcase the nations that built them.
Now it is Asia’s turn to show a surfeit of pride, and in this Taiwan already has considerable competition.
Taipei 101, as the building is known, will have only a brief reign as the world’s tallest, having surpassed Malaysia’s 452m Petronas twin towers when its top was put on earlier this year.
In 2008, India will best Taiwan with the 224-storey Centre of India Tower in Katangi, projected to stand a remarkable 676m.
Fears about these buildings abound, however, particularly in the wake of the attack on New York’s Twin Towers in 2001.
Taipei 101 was designed to withstand the frequent earthquakes that shake the island and the typhoons that hit it every year. But few buildings could withstand the sort of attack launched in New York in 2001.
Hu Jone-hui, from the Tao Architects and Planners in Taipei, said the craze for building skyscrapers in Asia was about national pride, not commercial logic or even safety.
”Building the world’s tallest skyscraper is traditionally a way for a developing capitalist society to show off its wealth and attract attention.
”For a country that is seeking to advance itself to the rank of developed countries, such a symbolic building is considered a pride,” said Hu.
On Friday, thousands of people scrambled to becoming the first-day visitors of the Taipei 101 Mall, small beneath the building that dominates the skyline today.
”Having witnessed the building rising up floor by floor, I can’t wait to go inside to take a look myself,” said a visitor coming from southern Taiwan.
The mall will house 163 brand-name stores such as Sogo, Esprit, Ralph Lauren, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rinaldi, Marina and Issey Miyake.
The final phase of the construction of Taipei’s new landmark is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2004. — Sapa-AFP