ABSTRACT
Urban development in Beijing has proceeded at an accelerated pace in the last two decades. Since the 1950s urban planners in the PRC have used the term jiucheng gaizao, which implies complete rebuilding, to refer to the renewal of China’s older cities. Beijing is confronted with an enormous challenge if it is to curtail the large-scale clearance and rebuilding that has characterized earlier decades of PRC urban development. Market reforms promoting foreign direct investment, transference of land-use rights, and housing commodification further earlier patterns of urban development which have been described as ‘anarchic and chaotic’. 1 Many scholars of urban studies diminish this destructive potential, instead portraying contemporary Beijing city planning as being governed by calculated ties to traditional forms and functions, and viewing Beijing as the epitome of a unique Chinese urban model that stands the test of time and changes in governments and their ruling philosophies. For example, in Victor Sit’s overview of Beijing city planning from its inception to the late twentieth century, he characterizes the traditional Chinese urban form as a utilitarian setting in which society functioned while also providing a symbolic function for the state to inform and guide human behavior. He argues that Beijing’s traditional role as the national center of communication and control is mirrored in its recent development as a global city at the center of finance and corporate decisions, providing communication and financial controls over material production and consumption rather than engaging in productive activities. 2 Others locate Beijing’s historical continuity in the symbolic import of Tiananmen Square. In their chapter, ‘Beijing: the expression of a national political ideology’, Zhu Zixuan and Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok sanction contemporary Beijing urban planning, particularly in relation to the city center:
Positioned at the center of Beijing’s traditional north–south axis and the new east–west axis, Tiananmen Square is the heart of the capital. Surrounded by carefully selected and designed structures, the square has taken on immense political and ideological meaning, symbolizing not only the authority but the historical continuity of the state, with the imperial dynasty replaced by the socialist republic. As Beijing moves toward the twenty-first century, Tiananmen Square is truly at the nation’s center, in both symbolic and utilitarian terms. 3
While Zhu and Kwok acknowledge the pressures brought to bear on urban planners by market reforms, they assume dichotomous public and private spheres suggesting that ‘the new contest for urban space will be between state bureaucrats and private entrepreneurs’. 4