The founder of Hengdian World Studios, Xu Wenrong, said he wanted to recreate the beauty of the original palace, which included not only Chinese buildings but a few European style structures built with the help of European Jesuit  scholars: “I want to present the old days' glory to nurture patriotism among the young generation, by letting them better know our ancestors' creativity – and turn people's sorrow to eagerness for peace,” Xu was quoted as saying by the China Daily. 

Some Chinese Internet users have praised the move, saying it will enable them to see one of the long-lost jewels of Chinese architecture. One Taiwanese antique collector even donated three items, which he saidhad been looted from the original palace, to the founders of the newly constructed replica, according to the China News Service. 

However, some experts are unimpressed. The deputy head of China’s most famous architecture school, at Beijing's Tsinghua University, told state media that while the original represented the final “peak of ancient Chinese architecture,” it lost its “meaning as a garden the moment it was burned.”

The administrators of the real Old Summer Palace, meanwhile, have described the replica as “intolerable.” They have threatened to sue for infringement of copyright, and have said that only the government should have the right to organize any reconstruction project. (Plans to reconstruct more of the palace on the ruins of the original site have been discussed, but remain mired in controversy.) 

But one legal expert quoted by China Daily said that since the replica was not in Beijing, and was not a copy of the existing ruins, there were no legal grounds for a lawsuit.  

And the deputy head of the Yuanmingyuan Society told China’s official news agency Xinhua that building a replica in another part of the country was a “good experiment.” (A partial replica was previously built at a theme park in southern Guangdong province in the 1990s, but unlike the Hengdian version, it was not full size.)