Why I don't Want to Go to Jail

The Socialist Plan of Yanjing (Beijing), commonly known as the “Chinese Tsinghua Plan of the National Capital 1950”, was initiated by architect and historian Liang Sicheng and his professional group, including planner Chen Zhanxiang, in 1949. The plan was drawn up assets of comprehensive blueprints, however, it failed in competition with another plan: The Soviet Union’s centralized plan of Beijing (see Fig 01) – the basis for Beijing’s urban form today. Although it was abandoned due to various political and ideological views as well as various social and anthropological reasons, and despite several subjectivities, reviewing and unpacking Liang’s decentralized planning approach and initiatives shows there is a convincing argument that it embodies several advantages compared with Beijing’s current urbanization, which is experiencing challenges.

The widespread demolition of heritage fabrics has led to the loss of historical and cultural values; the poor hybridization and interaction between modern infrastructure and traditional fabrics have led to traffic congestion, causing difficulties in reaching significant urban nodes; and social and economic issues, such as uneven distribution of urban resources, economic dividends, services, and social welfare, have been caused by the centralized approach to planning.

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By looking through the lens of these critical problems with the current urbanization of Beijing, a detailed unpacking of Liang’s plan shows that this “road not taken” successfully envisioned the diverse urban challenges of current Beijing. It also embeds potential strategies for confronting these challenges, which may not perfectly solve these problematic objectives and subjective matters, but offer alternatives of envisioning the future of Beijing.

Liang’s plan focused on preserving old Beijing. As the capital of the Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, Beijing’s urban core is the product of complex layers of historical and cultural fabrics. Liang (1953) insisted that, under the communist government, “the city should be a political and cultural center, not an industrial zone”. His initial plan was later forwarded as a proposal for the building of a new administrative center, with government buildings along a north-south axis, west of the Forbidden City, and keeping a significant distance from the ancient inner city. Liang, “in a joint venture with planner Chen Zhanxiang, formed this plan of Beijing with a decentralized approach” (Wong, 2013). Liang and Chen proposed different locations (see Fig 02) for this new city center, including west of the Forbidden City, east of Gongzhufen (Princess Tomb), and west of Yue Tan, labeling them “suggestions on the location of central government district” (Lin, 2004).
The initial step in comparing Liang’s plan to the Soviet plan (the foundation of Beijing’s current plan) is investigating the reason for its abandonment. Liang’s plan was abandoned for two reasons: primarily the influence of the Soviet Union and later on, the Cultural Revolution. The influence of the USSR came in two waves of contradictory forces. First, “in the 1950s, as China’s political ideology was heavily driven by or leaning toward the USSR, the Soviet plan had an absolute political advantage.” (Li, Xu, 2016) By 1958, despite the collapse of the relationship between the two countries and Soviet planning professionals being recalled, Beijing’s plan was already heavily influenced by Soviet designs and their close similarities to Moscow. It was too late at this point to accommodate alternative forms of planning, including Liang’s plan. Second, by the 1960s and after a decade of urban growth, the basics of Beijing’s zoning codes had already been established. Any alternative suggestion aimed at promoting a completely new system of urbanization would be an intensive collective effort, particularly in the capital, given China’s limited economic power at the time (China’s GDP was only CNY 164 per capita in the 1960s). (Ma, 2016)
The Cultural Revolution was another factor. Despite Liang’s contribution to “designing the national emblem” of the People’s Republic of China and his help with the reconstruction of Beijing during the ROC (Republic of China) era, the core value of the plan, which emphasized the Chinese building tradition and the preservation of heritage, was severely and publicly criticized. Liang was accused of “thinking that the Communist Party did not understand architecture,” and his affinity with traditional designs was called a “phenomenon of waste in construction” (Lin, 2004). In 1956, “Liang was forced to self-criticize and admit that he had made “mistakes” (Wang, 2005); these were deemed by the authorities to be “academic mistakes” rather than “political mistakes,” which marked the end of his 1950 Beijing Plan.
Although Liang’s plan of Beijing was buried in the dust of history, reconsidering this discarded alternative reveals that it envisioned and addressed many of Beijing’s current urbanization problems more than half a century ago. These approaches were decided upon in a logical manner, which makes them directly relevant to the corresponding contemporary issues. These aspects boil down to three issues involving the differences between centralized and decentralized planning.
Issue one
On the question of “heritage conservation and loss of traditional culture,” Liang foresaw today’s problems of the loss of historical and cultural value. This has manifested in the widespread demolition of heritage, such as hutong (alleyway) housing and local historical monuments, which included pairing (arches or gateways) and other significant buildings originally in Tiananmen Square, due to the invasiveness of the vast development of modern housing into the traditional hutong housing.
Upon further unpacking, the Soviet’s centralized plan was based on the merger of modern planning strategy with the existing hutong fabric of Beijing—the traditional courtyard housing of northern China with its associated alleyway fabrics, embodying 3,000 years of history. This is a significant historical heritage and cultural feature of Beijing. Altogether, about “500,000 single units had been built around the Forbidden City and formed the foundation of Beijing’s urban fabric.” (Ma, 2016)
Traditionally, hutong living was the daily social lifestyle of Beijing locals. However, due to the Soviet planning, a vast amount of such fabric was demolished for two major reasons: (1) political architecture (large scale civil buildings) was built over this housing fabric due to the heavy construction of capital buildings after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and (2) a large amount of danwei housing (socialist housing typology of the communist era of China, literally translated as “housing villages for workers” built under the socialist economic plan was powerfully invasive to these traditional hutong fabrics. Later, in the 1980s, because the Soviet plan interacted closely with the traditional fabric, the hybridization between the two became poorly bridged—such as the real estate towers. As a result, “50% of traditional hutong heritages and pairing-orientated alleyways were demolished” (Ma, 2016). For example, in 1985, after the 7th congress meeting of the Communist Party of China, significant numbers of developers began demolishing hutong units and replacing them with condominium towers. “The poorly developed hutong houses were considered ‘old and outdated as they did not capture a valuable cultural image’” (Luo, 2016).
“As the government planned to urbanize Beijing, the biggest demolition of hutong took place in the 1980s.” (Wong, 2013) By comparing Beijing’s figure-ground maps from 1972 to those from 1989, significant demolition of the hutong fabric is clearly apparent. A typical example of this demolition would be Tianqi Paifang and the associated hutong street. Tianqi Hutong was built during the Qing dynasty (1668 AD); it was the entrance gate to the “singing” (Temporary palace for emperors) of Prince Aisin Gioro Hongli (Manchu-Gaozhong Qianlong Emperor, his residence at his prince time), who later became the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty. Based on historical information, other than the hutong architectural body itself, there was also a “large number of cultural relics destroyed or lost in this demolition. Historical documents from the Qianlong prince’s period were also lost due to this action.” (Han, 2006) Today, historians still have been unable to confirm a few critical historical events due to the lack of relics and historical documents.
In contrast, Liang’s plan may provide an alternative. Despite the issue’s complexity and diverse subjective matters, Liang’s crucial intention was clear and deliberate in his plan—proposing that the second center be away from the traditional fabrics to maximize urban space while preserving heritage architecture in the old center. This is demonstrated in two ways. First, by creating a new center on the west side of the “princess” gate, half of the new housing development would be placed away from the Forbidden City, thereby securing the area around the palace, where most traditional hutong fabrics are located. Second, Liang’s rich knowledge of traditional Chinese architectural treatises helped him to gather together relevant professionals who generated a detailed strategy for preserving the old Beijing. This intention was transferred to the plan, which individually captured old buildings, with listed damages and outcomes. It also detailed the corresponding methodologies for fixing them. In general, Liang’s plan, which embraced a decentralized approach, directed the vast majority of the modernization of city development, such as housing and industrial sectors, away from heritage zones.
Issue two
The second issue is about the question of traffic-system planning and urban-node accessibility—specifically referring to the daily traffic congestion of Beijing. Numerous professionals, such as doctor Luo Tianqing (2016) of Tongji University, believe that the “centralized approach to planning—the ring road system and its uncontrollable growth—causes difficulties in reaching significant urban nodes.” This is due to the poor hybridization of modern traffic-system planning with the traditional urban fabric. The ring road system also lacks classifications of urban typologies, causing industrial sectors to be disorganized: “factories are close and limited to being built following the ring system, surrounding the core of Beijing, thereby leading to destruction among many residential districts” (Luo, 2016). Liang’s plan, in a way, correctly envisioned such issues.
Upon further examination, the ring road system appeared long before the Soviet influence on Beijing, with the ring road around the Forbidden City created after the fall of the last imperial Qing dynasty. The Soviet plan adopted this orientation and superimposed the modern plan onto the existing system with multiple other rings moving outward from the palace at the center. “The notion of ‘1st Ring Road’ briefly reappeared after the end of the Cultural Revolution, during which the original names of the roads described above were changed to names with strong political propaganda meaning that eulogized and advocated the ideologies of the Cultural Revolution, and when the political turmoil had ended, the names changed. One suggestion was to completely rename those roads as ‘1st Ring Road’ to symbolize the new start in the era of reform, as well as to reflect the willingness of China to embrace modernism and globalization” (Du, 2018).