Throughout the city, stunning buildings are breaking ground in time for the 2008 Olympics, the symbolic moment, the country believes, when it will resume its place among the world's great powers.

The "Duck Egg'' - the new national theater - is almost complete. The "Bird's Nest,'' as the Olympic stadium has been called for its steel lattice-work, and the ``Blue Cube,'' the swimming pool complex, are rising.

Elsewhere ever grander state buildings are materializing as they are stripped of their scaffolding. But just at the moment of glory, the new designs by celebrated architects from Europe and Australia have set off a major controversy. Public figures are criticizing the billions of yuan being spent, while leading members of the architectural establishment have added their own complaint: there is nothing at all Chinese about them.

Long before Beijing was awarded the Games, it was clear that for the party leadership they were a chance to clear the stain of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and to reassure itself that it was now a "grown-up'' country.

No expense was to be spared: perhaps 40 billion (HK$568 billion) is to be spent creating a new city.

Leaving aside the venues themselves, there will be four new subway lines, an airport - designed by Norman Foster to be the largest in the world - and a new financial district.

That is on top of the encouragement given to private developers to raze old neighborhoods and replace them with apartment blocks. More than 300,000 people will be relocated.

The first indication that there was a problem with this vision, essentially the work of former president Jiang Zemin, came when work ceased on the new tower for China television.

Budgeted at 400 million, and designed by Dutch avant-garde architect Rem Koolhaas, it resembles two upside-down Ls leaning against each other like a pair of drunks.

It emerged that incoming Premier Wen Jiabao, a man whose reputation was built on being down to earth and concerned for the poor, had called for a review. Eventually it was deemed too late to stop. But in the meantime the national theater building was also under fire. Its controversial dome was the work of Paul Andreu, the Frenchman whose terminal building at Charles de Gaulle airport suffered a fatal collapse in May last year.

Proposals for the Olympic village had so far been immune from criticism.

Indeed, China took pride from jokes in spring 2004 that its Olympics would be ready before the Athens ones.

But then even the International Olympic Committee began to get cold feet, and suggested that the city moderate its pace.

Work on the Swiss-designed ``Bird's Nest'' stopped while its exorbitant use of steel - 160,000 tons, or 22 Eiffel Towers - was cut, by deciding not to go ahead with the sliding roof. The rebuilding is now on track again.

But while many residents are resigned to the destruction of what remains of the Ming city, in return for modern conveniences, some establishment voices have begun to raise their voices. In a speech this month, Wu Liangyong, a professor at Qinghua University, said the city was an ``experimenting ground for foreign architects.''

``These buildings will be a scar left on the face of time, which will record our pains forever,'' he said.

``Once the land is used and this unreasonable urbanization spread, it is irreversible.''

In contrast to the early days of the Olympics, state media have allowed a debate, with even the People's Daily publishing attacks on the loss of the city's character. Even some of the defenders

have pointed out that China, despite its Olympic-sized ambitions, was still too underdeveloped to have the expertise to design world-class buildings.

Some issues, however, are still too sensitive.

Few newspapers or architects mention the grand boulevard intended to connect the Olympic village to the city's historic center.

It is being designed by Albert Speer, a well-respected architect but also the son and namesake of the man who built Nazi Berlin, including a similar boulevard for the 1936 Olympics. Comparison of Beijing 2008 and ``Hitler's Games'' are a step too far in modern China.