Arup's Dongtan project is a masterpiece of greenwashing on several counts.

Firstly, the project has been hailed by Arup as a visionary eco-city, a line that has then been repeated without crticism or investigation by most media organisations keen for a China good news story and being steanmrollered by the impressive Arup PR machine.

The non-existent eco-city has also given Arup excellent guanxi (connections) with the Chinese govenrment who, in return for maintaing that the illusory Dongtan is a 'green' project have awarded Arup numerous projects in China from decidely ungreen airports to skyscrapers.

Still, the mere fact that this mythical eco-city on the outskirts of Shanghai in the city's green belt is rumoured to exist has been enough to win Arup praise from numerous quarters including Ken Livingstone and John Prescott - again without any independent investigation or critique.

Apart from concerned environmental bloggers so far hardly anyone has actually sought to dig deeper on the Dongtan myth, with the honourable exceptions of the BBC World Service and Al Jazeera English.

So congratulations to Arup for creating an eco-myth to rival Atlantis and Shangri-La far away from the Thames Gateway (Arup too) in eastern China by the shores of the Yangtze which has brought them so much non-green business globally.

Let's hope that word will spread of Arup's greenwashing and that the suits at Arup HQ will start to look as nervous as the migratory birds who now inhabit Dongtan and who's natural habitat may one day be destroyed by Arup's bulldozers to make way for the con job that is Dongtan.