There's a famous factory-turned-art gallery in central Beijing called 798... Ai Wei Wei was getting big there when i lived there, i knew an Australian diplohusband who rented a space there... it was great... and i heard of another one further out, called the [i forget] factory, anyway renovating abandoned industrial sites is a legitimate architectural thing there.
I think this is ego.
Some intern had a cheesy idea and his auteur boss took it as his own and, with a huge budget, found the biggest complex he could and totally screwed up the scale ratios. The upshot is, as the OP said, a calamity of tasteless architecture.