What Should Beijing Be Like?

Xidan Cultural Square at one of Beijing's main shopping centers.

Its history of 800 years as a capital city has left Beijing with a layout centered around the Forbidden City, with Tian'anmen Square before it -- a legacy of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). The Forbidden City is the largest and best preserved imperial palace in the world, and sits on the central axis of the old city.

When selecting where the administration center should be located in the early 1950s, there were two prevailing opinions. One - that of Soviet experts and certain Chinese architects, in particular Hua Nangui, Zhu Zhaoxue and Zhao Dongri, was that the administration center should be located in the old city. The second was that it should be located west of the old city, somewhere between the western sections of the present second and third ring roads. This was the opinion of Liang Sicheng and Chen Zhanxiang. Liang and Chen cited two aspects of the difficulties involved in locating a governmental center in the old city. First, the old city is a complete and artistic artifact that reflects the rules and systems of ancient China, and as such is a rare world treasure. It would be difficult to incorporate into it a massive administration center, and, second, sufficient land was not available.

The two suggested that an administration area immediately to the west of the old city could encompass two centers -- the old city center and the new governmental center. If a central business district (CBD) were to be built to the southwest of the old city, Beijing would actually have three centers, which would greatly alleviate the pressure of concentrated population. Agreement was reached on neither proposal, and argument continues to this day, but as regards actual implementation over the ensuing years, the first proposal was followed.

Beijing West Train Station

Today, citizens frustrated by constant traffic jams amidst relentless subway extension and road expansion, and construction that has been ongoing since the 1980s, are perplexed by the lack of order in urban construction. They think of Liang Sicheng and his plan for Beijing, and bitterly regret that it was not adopted.

Some, however, argue that adoption of the first proposal was inevitable back then, when new China had just been founded, and that the government lacked the financial resources for a new administration center. Another aspect was that, as a people's government, it could not build an office area for itself at the time when the majority of Chinese people were living an extremely hard life. Premier Zhou Enlai stated on several occasions that during his term there would be no construction of a State Council office building. Lastly, the general mentality of the time was one that still venerated the imperial palace in its position of city center, and that could not conceive of any deviation from this tradition.

Wu Liangyong, former assistant to Mr. Liang and now a professor at Tsinghua University and academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering, explains that the rejection of Mr. Liang's plan also had a technical angle. "When considering the level of city planning in the early years, the plan for the new governmental center was not satisfactory, as it would have been placed too much in a corner, in too obscure a position, and with a distinct lack of grandeur and magnificence. This was probably a reason why the plan was not accepted." He further points out that Mr. Liang's suggestion to create a new urban center was one intended to solve the conflict between preservation and development. "Unfortunately," says Wu, "this idea was not well argued from a philosophical perspective."

Liu Xiaoshi, former chief architect and director of the Beijing Municipal Planning Administration, also expressed his retrospective feeling of powerlessness. "It was a mistake to reject Mr. Liang's proposal. Lack of money was no excuse, as the plan was flexible and could have been carried out stage by stage, in accordance with the funds available. The problem was that if there had been three foreign experts, one from the United States, one from Britain, and one from the former Soviet Union, it was inevitable that the received opinion would have been that of the Soviet expert, as the general trend was to learn from the Soviet Union."

Dong Guangqi points out that the material and cognitive limits of the time made it inevitable that the plan put forward by Liang and Chen would be rejected, but that it was regrettable no heed was paid to precautions and suggestions raised in the plan as regards preservation and transformation of the old city.

This mistake is irreversible, and people finally realize why city traffic is always congested, despite continuous construction of roads and flyovers, and now see the wisdom of Mr. Liang's idea of synchronized preservation and development.