China’s race to modernise has wrought as much damage on its heritage as the destruction of ancient monuments by rampaging Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, a senior government official has said.

Qiu Baoxing, Vice-Minister of Construction, railed against the devastation of the traditional urban landscape. “Some local officials seem to be altering the appearance of cities with the determination of ‘moving the mountain and altering the water course’,” he said.

He described the destruction as the third round of havoc since the 1949 Communist takeover. In the late 1950s, when Chairman Mao called for a Great Leap Forward for China to overtake the world, city dwellers and peasants hurled every scrap of metal they could find — from knives to ancient Buddha statues — into furnaces. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, temples, ancient buildings, books and porcelain were destroyed. This time, the object is the pursuit of modernisation.

Mr Qiu said that officials were unaware of the value of their cultural heritage and were producing cityscapes that were an eyesore. “Many cities have a similar construction style,” he said. “It is like 1,000 cities having the same appearance.”

Tong Mingkang, of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, accused some local governments of pulling down valuable historical sites in need of repair and replacing them with fakes. “It is like tearing up aninvaluable paintingand replacing it with a cheap print,” he said.

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