Last May, a five-storey quarantine hotel in the south-eastern city of Quanzhou collapsed due to shoddy construction, killing 29. Watch: China skyscraper wobbles, spreads panic in downtown Shenzhen Shenzhen - The videos show screaming shoppers running away from the 300 metre-high building. It is home to the world's fourth-tallest skyscraper, the 599-metre Ping An Finance Centre.īuilding collapses are not rare in China, where lax building standards and breakneck urbanisation lead to constructions being thrown up in haste. Many Chinese tech giants, including Tencent and Huawei, have chosen the city to host their headquarters.

Shenzhen is a sprawling metropolis in southern China, close to Hong Kong, which has a booming homegrown tech manufacturing scene. The new guidelines for architects, urban planners and developers aimed to 'highlight Chinese characteristics' and also banned tacky 'copycat' buildings modelled after world landmarks.įive of the world's tallest skyscrapers are located in China, including the world's second-tallest building, the Shanghai Tower, which stands at 632 metres. It is the 18th tallest tower in Shenzhen, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat skyscraper database.Ĭhinese authorities last year banned the construction of skyscrapers taller than 500 metres, adding to height restrictions already enforced in some cities such as Beijing. The tower is named after the semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are based in the building. 'SEG has been completely evacuated,' wrote one Weibo user in a caption to a video of hundreds of people milling about on a wide shopping street near the tower. It was not immediately clear how authorities will handle a dangerous building of its scale in the heart of a city of over 12 million people.īystander videos published by local media on Weibo showed the skyscraper shaking on its foundations as hundreds of terrified pedestrians ran away outside. 'The cause of the shaking is being verified by various departments.' 'After checking and analysing the data of various earthquake monitoring stations across the city, there was no earthquake in Shenzhen today,' the statement said. The devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake caused over 69,000 deaths and the disaster ignited a storm of public controversy over poorly constructed school buildings - dubbed 'tofu dregs' - which collapsed killing thousands of students.Completed in 2000, the tower is home to a major electronics market as well as various offices in the downtown of one of China's fastest-growing cities.Įmergency management officials are investigating what caused the tower in Shenzhen's Futian district to wobble, according to a post on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. Last May, a five-storey quarantine hotel in the south-eastern city of Quanzhou collapsed due to shoddy construction, killing 29. It is also home to the world's fourth-tallest skyscraper, the 599-metre Ping An Finance Centre.īuilding collapses are not rare in China, where lax building standards and breakneck urbanisation lead to constructions being thrown up in haste.

The building is named after the semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are based in the complex. It was not immediately clear how authorities will handle a dangerous tower of its scale in the heart of a city of over 12 million people.īystander videos published by local media on Weibo showed the skyscraper shaking on its foundations as hundreds of terrified pedestrians ran away outside. The district said in another statement late Tuesday that everyone inside had been safely evacuated and that no further movements of the building had been detected.Įxperts 'found no safety abnormalities in the main structure and surrounding environment of the building,' and the interior and exterior components of the building appeared undamaged, the district said.