Scaling Down; A new spirit of frugality is shrinking many grand Asian building projects from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi.

Byline: Melinda Liu (With Craig Simons in Beijing, Lorien Holland in Kuala Lumpur, Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi and Jonathan Adams in Taipei)

From the Taj Mahal to the Great Wall, the Asian landscape is littered with monuments to imperial ambition and engineering. In recent decades cities from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei have competed to build the world's tallest building. But just when it seemed that Asia's "edifice complex" was reaching near-pathological proportions, it peaked. In the past year new leaders have been pulling their nations out of the race to build the tallest, biggest, longest and most expensive of everything.

A new sense of moderation is ending the era of ego-driven megaprojects. When Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi took office a year ago, he postponed a $3.8 billion railway-building plan that was going to be one of Asia's biggest infrastructure projects. In India, newly elected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently called for a rethink of a vast river-linking scheme promoted by his predecessor. And Beijing last month announced the cancellation of five out of 10 major new venues for the 2008 Summer Olympics, including facilities for tennis, baseball and badminton. Officials have quietly dropped a slogan predicting "the best Games ever" in favor of the "frugal Olympics."

What's happening? A more modest approach is one way to differentiate new governments from previous regimes, of course. But that's not all. The downsizing represents growing concerns about environmental protection, engineering safety and, above all, fiscal prudence. In China, where the regime is jittery about an overheating economy, one foreign architect involved in a current megaproject has seen a palpable "shift in strategy" away from "extreme designs" that were often publicity-grabbing stunts. Now, officialdom is " worrying that they're going to seem silly and squandrous," the architect said.

Early signs of the trend date to 2000, when Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party won the presidential election after five decades of Kuomintang Party rule. To press home his party's green credentials, DPP winner Chen Shuibian fulfilled a campaign promise to halt a controversial Kao-hsiung county dam project and the island's fourth nuclear power plant. Since then, work on the nuclear power plant has resumed. But Chen's populist politics helped him win a second term.

In Southeast Asia, megaprojects are often linked with a lack of transparency, cronyism, corruption and waste. Dialing back the most notorious ones can be good politics for a neophyte leader. In October 2003--just days before the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad retired--the contract for Malaysia's rail project was granted without competitive bidding to well-connected local tycoon Syed Mokhtar. The electrified double-track rail line was to cross the Malaysian peninsula as part of a planned 5,600-kilometer trans-Asia link. But Abdullah quickly postponed the scheme after taking office, saying that "socioeconomic projects to ensure the well-being of the people" had to take priority.

Since then, Abdullah's administration shelved an aluminum smelter that was to be powered by the huge Bakun Dam. Bakun itself has been downsized. Just last month Kuala Lumpur scrapped a planned second bridge linking the high-tech island of Penang to the mainland. A ...