[xrd]

There are lots of comments on HN over the years lamenting the cost of building infrastructure in the US, compared to China or elsewhere. I'm genuinely curious if this kind of corruption described in this article would be more or less common in China, or if this practice is rampant whenever you have construction projects anywhere in the world.

[analog31]

It doesn't seem to be all that uncommon to read about a building collapse, or fire, somewhere in the world. Invariably one learns about some kind of corruption in the process.

Fortunately the cases I know about haven't been life threatening, but there have been road construction projects in my town in the US, that had to be torn up and re-done at the contractor's expense because they missed some crucial specification such as the required thickness of the materials, and the roads started to crumble and buckle.

[x0x0]

Is there a reason to jump to this was corruption, rather than a fuckup? When you look at the price of rebar per linear foot, this doesn't seem like the first place I'd look to cut costs.

A fuckup aggravated by what seems like not particularly aggressive maintenance of the structure generally.