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Beijing
Beijing's not going anywhere (2)Posted by Joel Martinsen, November 15, 2007 2:18 PM
Beijing is the seat of government in China, but for how much longer? It's an overcrowded city on the edge of a desert whose future prospects rely heavily on an expensive project designed to bring in water from rivers far to the south. Rather than move the water, why not move the city? In a column for the Financial Times' Chinese website (now available on China Dialogue), Ministry of Commerce researcher Mei Xinyu argued that China should seriously consider moving its capital elsewhere. Southern Weekly ran an excerpt of the piece, followed by an editor's note that read:
If the capital must be in Beijing, does it really have to be so huge? Yan Lieshan of the Southern Media Group argued in a Southern Metropolis Daily column that it really doesn't; the Chinese people's need to have a massive cultural and political center could be adjusted in the same way that their love of collective pageantry has faded in the wake of economic reforms since the 1980s. Impossible, says Qiu Feng in an answering column, translated by Black and White Cat. Here's an excerpt:
Qiu Feng goes on to explain how the "solid roots, weak branches" power structure adopted in imperial China is still at work today, and how that power structure encourages unequal resource distribution. The people of Jilin City often talk of how, some day, the leaders of the province will wake up to the fact that moving the provincial capital to Changchun wasn't the smartest idea in the world. But despite Jilin's charms, it's hard to imagine abandoning decades of development to move the government back. Moving the national capital out of Beijing is even less likely to happen. Links and Sources
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Comments on Beijing's not going anywhere (2)
They could very easily do what the Malaysian authorities did and set up a new administrative centre, a mini-capital if you like, just outside the capital (in the Malaysian case, at Putrajaya). This would solve a hell of a lot of problems in one shot, while also meaning that nobody else would feel they needed to move in the government's wake.
This could be put in, for example, Langfang. Instead of that ridiculous Potemkin-like "university town" there.
At the moment, different bits of the government are all over town in Beijing. This means the government suffers as much as anyone else from the horrendous traffic, and is responsible for quite a large proportion of it - witness what happens when government cars are taken off the road eg during the African summit.
Admittedly, Putrajaya didn't solve KL's transport problems, but the latter are much deeper-rooted. But a new administrative centre in Langfang would make life much easier for the government, and for everyone else too. And hopefully help them to project a better image.
This article by Dai Qing, a writer based in Beijing, seems appropos, if insistently grim. The current capitol certainly faces some major environmental challenges.
Great link, Du Yisa.
Thanks. That was the second time I sent the link, in which I neglected to include my original recognition of the translator Geremie R. Barmé (whose work is consistently impressive, and has appeared on this site), but at least I managed to misspell apropos.
Kudos also to Joel and Black & White Cat for following this.
Cheers
Although it could be the gateway to even more obnoxious behavior, I feel I should both comment and link again, as Ms Dai has just been quoted in an article by Jim Yardley at the New York Times.
Cheers
it's all the fault of the mongols. and building the canal was one of the reasons for the decline and fall of the ming