China Daily reported that construction authorities in Xian capital of Shaanxi Province over the weekend ordered builders to stop using thin steel bars that do not meet construction standards.

Mr Liu Lin director of the construction and real estate management department under the Xi'an Industry and Commercial Administration Bureau said his colleagues found in a recent inspection that a number of steel bar processing plants in the city illegally manufactured bars too thin.

He said that "By making the steel bar thin, both the processing plants and the construction firms’ decrease their cost but these bars will do harm to the quality of the building projects."

According to local construction and real estate management officials, the processing plants are pulling the steel bars longer and thinner than the minimums required. The 10 mm bars are pulled to 9 mm in diameter and the 8 mm diameter bars are only 6 mm thick.

An incomplete investigation by local authorities showed that more than 100 processing plants engage in such illegal practices which have become the unspoken rules for the company leaders to gain better profits.

Mr Dai Jun an engineer with Shaanxi Provincial Building Research Institute, one ton of 10 mm diameter steel bars should be 1,620 meters in length but when it is pulled to a 9 mm diameter, 1 tonne of the steel bars is 2,000 meters in length. The extra part is valued at some CNY 760.

Statistics by China Real Estate Information Group showed that some 11.98 million square meters of building projects are under construction in Xi'an. Xi'an Construction Engineering Quality Supervision Station found in a recent inspection that nearly 10% of some 1,000 construction sites used the thin steel bars.

The state standards for the processing of the steel bars stipulate that the pulling rate of the steel bars cannot be more than 4%. The 10 mm diameter steel bars, for example, cannot be pulled to less than 9.6 mm in diameter.

(Sourced from China Daily)