Richard Spencer charts the architectural changes in Beijing:
A few weeks ago I mentioned Jasper Becker's new history of Beijing, City of Everlasting Tranquillity, and said I would return to it. Becker writes a lot about Liang Sicheng, and hammers home a point that is on the one hand obviously true but had previously rather escaped me. While the shutdown of industry reflects the end of Mao's specifically industrial vision for Beijing, the rampant capitalism of the last 15 years has reinforced a more generally Maoist sensibility……along with the rebuilding of Beijing has come privatisation of old, genuinely collective housing so that more and more residents own their own flats. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper: one thing that has struck me about the Olympics in Beijing is what an opportunity it has been for the reimposition of collective rule, albeit at a more elevated level.
Through state-owned construction, development and property management companies, the state has preserved and in many ways reinforced its control over the population, which had been retreating behind the walls of courtyard houses as owners gradually reclaimed their property deeds and the neighbourhood committees lapsed. Now you might think you "own" your apartment, but you lease the space it occupies from a state developer, or a foreign company working in partnership with one, you pay your fees to a state property management firm and in all cases you are now subject to their whim - and monitoring.
The point is that collectivity has been re-imposed through individualization. Instead of hutong life with its mix of the private and the voluntary-collective, you have a population divided by accommodation into individuals or small family groups, facing the joint power of the state and private capital. That’s the political payoff of the general Olympic reconstruction of the capital.
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