It's not the dragon so much as what the dragon may do to the environment.

The top environmental watchdog said Monday it has suspended construction of a 21-kilometer concrete dragon due to serious environmental concerns.

Planned as a tourist destination, the dragon in Shizu Mountain, near the city of Xinzheng, which was designated a national forest park in 2005, may never be completed based on findings of an environmental impact study.

The State Environmental Protection Administration said in a statement published on its website that the project had been started without necessary environmental assessments.
 
A 30-meter-high head and 460-meter-long body section of the dragon are done.

The Environmental Impact Assessment Law says that environmental assessments for all construction projects must be completed before the construction starts.

The administration said an expert team had been sent to study the project's environmental impact.

"If it fails the assessments, we'll order the project stopped and the completed part demolished," the administration said.

The administration also called for better coordination among government departments to avoid such events in the future.

The plan calls for the concrete and marble dragon to snake its way along the top of a ridge of the mountain.

Once completed, the dragon's head would be 30 meters high and 14 meters wide, while the body would form a 9-meter-high wall along the backbone of the ridge.

Subsidiary projects include a square, a white marble arch and some pillars. The total cost was given as 311 million yuan (US$40 milion).

Media reports said the dragon's construction began without approval in 2001, and since it did not go through proper planning and land requisition procedures, the construction was ordered suspended in 2003. However, work restarted last March.

Li Shumin, president of Zulong company, the private developer behind the project, told local media that some 5.6 million pieces of white marble and gilded bronze would be used to form the dragon's scales to "symbolize the country's 56 ethnic groups."

Display rooms offering themes of filial piety and patriotism are to be set up in the dragon's hollow body.

However, experts argue that the project will damage the local environment.

"The planned dragon is like an expressway which will damage vegetation, affect the landscape and destroy the local ecological system," Wu Mingzuo, director of Henan Ecology Society, was quoted as saying.

An online survey by Sina.com, the biggest news portal in China, showed that more than 90 percent of the respondents disapproved of the dragon.

(China Daily April 10, 2007)