At the end of July, the General Office of the State Council issued a notice prohibiting all levels of government from constructing new office buildings, regardless of any justifications or reasons they might have. It requested that the projects that have been approved but have not started construction should stop. The notice also required that the Party cadres evacuate and return the office space that is over the standard. The notice is the 11th one the central administration has issued since 1988 on restricting the construction of excess office space and the third notice since March 2013 under the new administration. However none of them have been strictly enforced.
According to the auditing results that Zhejiang Province disclosed, in the first half of 2009, out of ten provincial government units audited, six had failed the audit. The highest average space per person was 220.2 square meters (2,370 square feet). On April 20, 2012, the National Audit Office’s audit results disclosed that, of the new government offices built in 2011 in Shan Tai County of Sichuan Province, 10 offices on the seventh floor had private bathrooms. The largest space was 66 square meters (710 square feet), exceeding the standard set for county level officials by 6.3 times.
Source: Xinhua, August 4, 2013
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-08/04/c_116800252.htm