Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
round the clock, and still do. New shopping malls, office blocks, hotels and luxury hous-
ing developments were thrown up at astonishing speed. Only a dictatorship with the vast
human and industrial resources of China at its command could ever have achieved this.
Jiang wanted to turn Běijīng into another Hong Kong, with a forest of glass-and-steel
skyscrapers. The new municipal leadership threw out the old zoning laws, which limited
the height of buildings within the Second Ring Rd. It revoked existing land deeds by de-
claring old buildings to be dilapidated slums. Such regulations enabled the state to force
residents to abandon their homes and move to new housing in satellite cities. Under the
plan, only a fraction of the 67-sq-km Ming city was preserved.
Designs to demolish the Forbidden City and erect new party headquarters on the site were
drawn up in the late 1960s but never implemented. The palace was closed for nearly 10
years and became overgrown with weeds.
Looking Forward Only
Some see the rebuilding as a collective punishment on Běijīng for its 1989 rebellion, but
others see it as the continuing legacy of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the late Qing dyn-
asty reformers. Many of China's recent leaders have been engineers and ex-Red Guards,
including former President Hu Jintao, who graduated from Qīnghuá University during the
Cultural Revolution. Běijīng's new architecture seems designed to embody their aspiration
to create a new, forward-looking, hi-tech society, and mark the realisation of the goal of a
new modern China.
