Beijing’s billboards brought down

Pallavi Aiyar
The Hindu, August 4

Advertisements that glorify luxury face the axe; Mayor says they are not conducive to “social harmony.”

Plastered alongside the multi-lane highways that slice through the Chinese capital are massive billboards exhorting readers in technicolour to “Conquer the world” or “Be a foreigner’s landlord” by buying homes in apartment blocks with monikers such as “Merlin Champagne Town” and “Park Avenue.” Or at least Beijing’s roads were thus adorned until weeks ago.

In May this year, Mayor Wang Qishan expressed his unhappiness at the frequent presence of billboard advertisements that glorified luxury through the use of certain catchphrases including “deluxe,” “supreme,” “ultimate,” and “luxury” itself. The Mayor said the public expression of such sentiments went against the interests of “social harmony.” Soon after, the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce issued a statement that certain advertisements in the capital did not “conform to the demands of socialist spiritual civilisation.”

Ever since, squads of workers have been swarming Beijing’s avenues, dismantling advertisements for luxurious goods, tearing down offending posters, and scrubbing clean all traces of the promise of “La Dolce Vita” that upmarket real estate developers had been using to lure in their nouveaux riche prey.

The face-scrub that Beijing is thus currently undergoing is more than a mere municipal matter. Over the last 30 years, China has transformed from being one of the world’s most equal, albeit poor, societies to one with a rich-poor gap that is larger than even than that of India’s. According to the United Nation’s 2005 Human Development report, China’s gini coefficient — a commonly used statistical measure where 0 represents perfect income equality and 100 perfect income inequality — was 44.7, compared to 32.5 for India.

Urban incomes in China are now more than three times those of the 750-million-odd peasants who live in the countryside. A recent study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences revealed that the richest 10 per cent of Chinese hold 40 per cent of all assets, with the poorest 10 per cent owning only two per cent.

Over the last few years, tens of thousands of mass protests have broken out all across China’s countryside, owing their origin in large part to disaffections resulting from perceived inequalities of income and power. These protests have set off alarm bells in Beijing. Since 2005, the government has thus made the creation of a “harmonious society” the centrepiece of policy. The concept of “harmony” emphasises more equitable growth and opportunity in order to ensure social stability and stem any nascent rebellion against party rule.

To this end, agricultural taxes have been abolished and subsidies increased. After decades of following Deng Xiaoping’s precept “to get rich is glorious,” the party has begun to frown upon conspicuous consumption. The crusade against advertising luxury products in Beijing is only one part of a broader national campaign. Steep taxes on products such as yachts and jewellery have been instituted. In March, Premier Wen Jiabao criticised the use of land for golf courses and the building of expensive villa-style homes. Some weeks later Xinhua, the official news agency, warned that the rich risked sinking “into depravity.” With several instances linking party officials to corrupt lifestyles having come to light, Beijing has also forbidden the building of indoor gardens, multi-storey atriums or hi-tech karaoke rooms in government and Communist Party offices.

In China, official corruption and real estate development are strongly linked in the public perception. In Beijing, for example, a property boom driven by speculation fuelled in the aftermath of the city’s winning the Olympic bid, led to large-scale and often illegal destruction of vast tracts of the historic city centre. The resultant glass and chrome creature of “New Beijing” has emerged from the ashes of the proletarian concrete blocks and old-style alleyway housing that used to be the home to the city’s laobaixing, a term that refers to the “average local.” The laobaixing, however, have had their own homes demolished to make way for shopping malls and luxury villas which they themselves are unable to afford. Thus the majority of Beijingers have been consigned to living on the outskirts of the constantly expanding city while the wealthy from around the country and abroad buy up property in the centre.

Real estate prices in Beijing have jumped 42 per cent in the last three years and nine per cent in the first quarter of this year alone. A survey conducted earlier in the year by the Beijing Municipal Social Sciences Academy revealed a lack of affordable housing to be the number one concern of city folk. Average prices for apartments within the fifth-ring-road of the city are between 8,000 and 10,000 Yuan ($1,000-1,300) per square metre. In the central business district, an area that till a few years ago housed hutongs and factories, super luxurious apartments complete with swimming pool and gymnasium access, jacuzzis in the bathrooms and gilt-filled lobbies, cost upwards of 30,000 Yuan ($4,000) per square metre.

The annual average salary in Beijing, however, is just over 36,000 Yuan ($4,800). In the countryside average annual incomes are closer to $400. To have the capital city covered in billboards urging people to move into deluxe apartments, one square metre of which costs several times the annual income of the millions of migrant workers who toil to build those very apartments, has understandably caused a few raised eyebrows.