by Sun Lingli

The Beijing News recently reported that thousands of theme parks had sprung up in China in the past two decades. But 70 percent of them were losing money.

Despite that, plans to build the Water Margin Theme Park in Shandong, a Shanghai Disneyland and the World Chocolate Dream Park in Beijing were all announced in quick succession.

A commentary in the Beijing News points out the reasons behind this theme park craze.

The article says so many theme parks could not have been built without government help.

In fact, a major state-owned enterprise based in Shanghai's Pudong District will reportedly invest in the Disney project.

This means the Shanghai municipality will be involved in the construction of the park. The Shandong provincial tourist bureau is involved in a similar capacity in the Water Margin Theme Park.

The article points out that building a theme park adds to the local government's political achievements, and these costly projects help increase land prices, create jobs, invigorate GDPs and raise government revenues.

The commentary concludes that even if a theme park loses money, the local governments are still crazy about building them because taxpayers will always be there to foot the bills.