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 A thousand kilometres from the nearest coast, a towering glass wave rolls over the plains of Sichuan, the roof of what Chinese officials say will be the world's largest standalone structure. 
 
 The 100-metre-high New Century Global Centre is a symbol of the spread of China's boom, 500m long and 400m wide, with 1.7 million square metres of floor space, big enough to hold 20 Sydney Opera Houses, according to local authorities. 
 
 By comparison the Pentagon in Washington - still one of the world's largest office buildings - is barely a third of the size with a mere 600,000 sq m of floor space. 
 
 The Global Centre is just a few kilometres from the US consulate where the police chief of Chongqing fled to seek asylum, triggering the fall of his patron Bo Xilai and exposing the biggest scandal to rock China's Communist Party for years. 
 
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 But it represents a different side of China, where lower costs and government subsidies are still fuelling double-digit growth in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. 
 
 The city of 14 million people plans to expand its subway from two lines to 10 by 2020, build a new airport and become a new Silicon Valley. 
 
 The Global Centre will house offices, conference rooms, a university complex, two commercial centres, two five star hotels, an IMAX cinema, a "Mediterranean village", a skating rink and a pirate ship, among other attractions. 
 
 About 400,000 sq m will be devoted to shopping, most of the outlets high-end luxury brands. 
 
 Despite Chengdu being around 1000km from the sea the complex has a marine theme, with fountains, a huge water park and an artificial beach, accented by the undulating roof, meant to resemble a wave. 
 
 "This is an ocean city built by man," said guide Liu Xun. "There will be 1000 rooms (in the hotel) and all will have seaside views." 
 
 The thick smog that normally blankets Chengdu risks making it a sunless sea, but visitors will not need to worry about that, she said. 
 
 "We have borrowed a Japanese technique. There will be an artificial sun that will shine 24 hours a day and allow for a comfortable temperature," Liu said. The system uses specialised lighting technology that heats as well as illuminates. 
 
 The centrepiece will be a 5000 sq m artificial beach, to include a rafting course and a "seafront" promenade, complete with parasols and seafood outlets that can accommodate 6000 people. 
 
 A giant screen 150m long and 40m high will form the horizon and offer sunrises and sunsets, accompanied by nautical breezes. 
 
 The exterior facade is near completion and an army of workers are rushing to finish the Chinese-designed building in time for a June 2013 international forum hosted by US magazine Fortune. 
 
 China's incoming president Xi Jinping is expected to attend the event and meet the heads of some of the world's biggest multinationals. 
 
 Another enormous building is planned across the road. Award-winning British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid's Chengdu Contemporary Arts Centre is to include a theatre, an opera house and a museum. 
 
 In a video developers China Exhibition and Travel Group describe Chengdu as a "world class modern city of idyllic beauty", and say the Global Centre - including restaurants serving "the rarest oceanic fish species" - will bring to mind "the fabulous heavens". 
 
 It is, they say, "a landmark which commands the world and is looked upon by the world with respect". 
 
 Photos: China constructs the world's largest building 
 
 AFP ||||| Beneath smoggy clouds in the Chinese mega-city of Chengdu, waves lap against sandy shores and a salty breeze blows across the beach. 6,000 holidaymakers look out on a glowing sunset, dining on platters of "the rarest oceanic fish species", while a stage rises from the water, ready for the evening's multimedia music spectacular. China's fourth largest city may be 620 miles from the coast, but that hasn't stopped it having its own seaside – newly opened inside the biggest building in the world. 
 
 A 100m tall cliff-face of blue mirrored glass, stretching 500m along a triumphal plaza, the New Century Global Centre houses an entire seaside resort, along with a 14-screen Imax cinema, Olympic-sized ice rink, two five-star hotels and its own Mediterranean shopping village – all wrapped with a vast ribbon of offices. Sprawling for 1.7m square metres, it could fit 20 Sydney Opera Houses beneath its glass roof. It is declared by its creators to be "a landmark which commands the world and is looked upon by the world with respect," a pleasure dome that Kubla Khan could only dream of. 
 
 Positioned at the heart of the city's Tianfu district, a new hub for finance, IT and biochemical industries, the building squats like an overfed prize fowl, teetering out in all directions and looming above a neighbouring art centre by Zaha Hadid – a dwarf in comparison, at 140,000 square metres. Its design, say the developers, is "themed with a comprehensive and profound oceanic culture and inspired by the design concept of sailing seagulls and undulating waves". 
 
 On entering the echoing 18-storey atrium, lined with a stratified cream cake of hotel balconies and zig-zagging escalators, visitors are blasted with artificial sea breeze, designed to "make one intoxicated, as if he were enjoying himself in the fabulous heaven". Moving past aquarium walls and through a strange hybrid townscape of Polynesian huts crossed with a middle eastern kasbah, tourists arrive at the 400m-long coastline, where the largest artificial waves in the world break in front of the longest LED screen in the world – on which "the alternating morning cloud and twilight afterglow extend the horizon limitlessly in the temporal and spatial directions". 
 
 For one of the most polluted cities in China, the sun shines through the glass barrel-vaulted roof in a remarkably blue sky. "We have borrowed a Japanese technique," guide Liu Xun told the Sydney Morning Herald. "There is an artificial sun that shines 24 hours a day and allows for a comfortable temperature." 
 
 With offices that are both "comfortable and pompous", entertainment facilities that offer "the most exquisite and extravagant audiovisual pleasures", 1,000 deluxe hotel suites that all enjoy a sea view, and one of the largest shopping malls in China, citizens of the New Century Global Centre are given no reason to leave. But nor might they be able to escape their work: "It is a world class modern city of idyllic beauty," trumpets the promotional video, "where recreation has become the core value of modern business concepts and business will become a way of life."
– China's city of Chengdu has new bragging rights with the newly opened New Century Global Center, billed as the biggest building in the world, reports the Guardian. The entrance is 18 stories high, and the building itself is 1,600 feet long and 1,300 feet wide. But even those dimensions don't seem to capture it. This is closer: Among the office buildings, ice rink, movie theater, miniature village, five-star hotels, and shopping center is a massive artificial beach, complete with sand, water, and the world's biggest LED screen (for sunrises and such). And speaking of the sun: "We have borrowed a Japanese technique," one guide told the Sydney Morning Herald for a story while construction was still underway. "There is an artificial sun that shines 24 hours a day and allows for a comfortable temperature." The Aussie paper adds some context for readers: Twenty Sydney Opera House could fit inside.