As mentioned earlier (with the wrong number of steps, now corrected), 600 climbed Beijing’s tallest building as part of the Vertical World Circuit. We prefer to call the building “World Trade Center 3”:

The WTC3 seen from my home in Beijing on a clear day and a close-up.

Germany’s Thomas Dold came first, sprinting up the 82 flights – and 2,041 steps – to the observation deck of the China World Summit Wing hotel in nine minutes 55 seconds.
The event was co-hosted by the Shangri-La hotels group and the International Skyrunning Federation.

Picture from SCMP.

See the original article:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1294215/600-climb-beijings-tallest-building-part-vertical-world-circuit
The rankings of the tallest building in China is changing.
At 632 meters and 121 floors, the Shanghai Tower (Pudong district) is now the world’s second-tallest building.
When completed in 2014, the building will have retail and office space, and a luxury hotel. It was designed by the U.S. architectural firm Gensler. It replaces the Shanghai World Financial Center (completed in 2007) as China’s tallest building.

Seems the building permits have not been completed yet for the “sky City” according to the SCMP.
The building would be made of “prefab” steel modules built off site, would be able to accommodate 30,000 people with flats, a school, hotel, hospital and offices, as well as an 8,000 sqm garden. Broad Group said that 3,000 workers would do assembly work at the construction site for three months while 20,000 would finish manufacturing in four months in factories.
Super high-rise buildings usually take years to build using conventional techniques. The Burj Khalifa took 47 months to build.
If you watch the movie clip (see earlier post) showing how they build that other highrise then you understand how exciting and puzzling the whole story becomes. If it would go ahead, that would be a revolution in construction. Of course, all “if”.

The battle for the tallest building in China continues.
According to China Daily, the property developer behind plans for the world’s tallest skyscraper, to be built in Changsha, Hunan province, said that the project is still awaiting final approval from government authorities.

(picture Xinhua/China Daily)

The statement from Broad Group comes after a Xinhua News Agency report that said the company had not completed all the necessary application procedures before it started construction. The Xinhua report claimed the company was acting illegally.
According to Broad Group’s website, the tower will have 4,450 apartments between the 16th and 170th floors and will include offices, a hotel, kindergarten, school, hospital, shops, gym and restaurants. The cost of construction is now estimated at 9 billion yuan – the figure has nearly doubled since the first media announcements.
By the end of 2012, China had 10 of the world’s 20 tallest skyscrapers, and more are planned, some aimed at grabbing the title of China’s tallest, all according to China Daily.
In 2012 after Wuhan said it would add 30 m to a planned 606 m building in order to make it the tallest, the developer of a skyscraper in Shenzhen announced that it would build a 660 m tower. The record was soon trumped by another developer, which said it had started to select the location for a 700 m skyscraper in Qingdao.The higher the better? Don’t count on me to live in one of those.

China has embarked on the construction of an 838-metre-tall building in Changsha that is billed as the “world’s tallest”.

An illustration of Sky City in Changsha, which will be 838 metres tall, 10 metres taller than the current title-holder, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Photo: Xinhua
Changsha-based developer Broad Group recently held a ground-breaking ceremony in the capital city of Hunan to start building the 208-storey tower, according to the South China Morning Post.
The project is expected to be completed in April 2014 and will contain a total area of 1.05 million sqm (so, smaller than the Chengdu building). Estimated cost: RMB 5.25 billion.
Named “Sky City”, the mega building is designed to house various public facilities so the “building can serve as a city”, the developer said. It would house schools, an elderly care centre, hospital, offices in lower levels, while apartments and hotels would make up the upper levels.
The developer dazzled the world when it built a 30-storey hotel within 15 days. Now as it aims to construct the world’s tallest building in a mere nine months, experts are raising questions about safety and wondering whether the project is part of a technological revolution or a public relations campaign. Some construction experts have expressed doubts over the developer’s projections, questioning whether the astoundingly short construction period would be possible and whether the timeframe would compromise safety.
Using a novel modular construction method, Broad Group pre-manufactures most parts of the building in factories, and then assembles them once construction starts – like building with giant Lego pieces. In 2011, a time-lapse video shocked the world, showing Broad Group building a Changsha building at a rate of two days per floor. See here the incredible clip:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQxMTU2MTY4.html

China is home to five of the world’s top-10 tallest buildings, according to a list in Forbes magazine last year. According to Forbes plans for an even taller building are underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom Tower has been approved for construction on a site that overlooks the Red Sea. If completed as designed, it will be the first building in the world to surpass the 1 Km mark.
Beijing has 62 super high-rise buildings, taller than 100 m according to the city’s fire department. The tallest hotel is Shangri-La China World Summit Wing Beijing (or, also known as WTC3). The highest point is 330 m with 82 floors and 2,041 steps (crazy stair runners are expected to do those in under 10 minutes in August!)
The under-construction Shanghai Tower (632 m high) was supposed to become China’s tallest building, now Suzhou is planned for Suzhou with a height to exceed 700 m; the blueprints still need to be finalized. But if Changsha goes ahead …

According to Chinese officials, the New Century Global Center in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province) is the largest freestanding building in the world, and took three years to complete.
|The building is capable of fitting 20 Sydney Opera Houses – or three Pentagons – inside.
It is a staggering 1,765,158 sqm and contains shopping centres, a Mediterranean village, a water park, an ice-skating rink, and multiple hotels.
The building is 500 m long, 400 m wide and 100 m high.
The building sits directly opposite the Chengdu Contemporary Arts Centre, designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, at the heart of a booming area of Chengdu.
Visitors to New Century Global Centre can browse 400,000 sqm of shops inside the complex.The gigantic dome-like glass roof is 100 m high and has an “artificial sun” that will provide light and heat 24 hours a day. As well as the shops, hotels and the artificial sun, the building also has an indoor water park.

Looking for the biggest building in the world is pretty interesting as opinions differ on how to establish the ranking.

Till recently, the second largest administrative building in the world, was in Bucharest, Romania, the “Palace of Parliament”, 330,000 sqm, built by the megalomaniac dictator Ceausescu; I visited that place on 13 September 2011 (see the picture) and it is indeed gigantic and… looks pretty similar to the Jinan government office building: the largest office building in the world would be the Long’ao Building, Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province (China), with 370,000 sqm. It is used by the city government. The Pentagon counts 600,000 sqm totally but only 340,000 sqm is used as office.
It is one of those excesses of local government in China and received a lot of criticism on the Chinese Internet. The building’s cost: US$ 640 million. Never mind poor kids who have no decent schools. The office space for the “leaders” is well above the Chinese government norms. The good thing is, people talk about it and even Global Times. But you wonder why nobody mentioned it earlier: the monstrosity was completed in 2007. It took the media five years to “discover” it.

Picture of the Jinan building, see the original article and the picture: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/749633.shtml