Following on yesterday's post on China's efforts in economic control comes a report from The Standard of Beijing trying to assert its authority over the provinces.

For the first time, a central government newspaper has lashed out at local officials and private investors for seeking to bypass Beijing's attempts to control the economy, citing the now infamous Jiangsu Tieben Steel and Iron Company as an example...

The Tieben project in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, violated various central government land requisition regulations, bank lending and environmental protection. Before being halted in March, the steel plant, with paid-up capital of just 300 million yuan (HK$282.9 million), was able to raise more than 10 billion yuan for a project with annual production capacity of 8.4 million tonnes...To bypass top levels of regulation, Tieben and Changzhou officials divided the steel project into about 20 smaller ones which were eventually approved singly.