The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing (Planning, History and Environment Series)
Abstract
This book focuses on describing the changing life of Beijing and its inhabitants throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It analyses the complex forces that interplay in the city’s quest for modernity. Based on four case studies, the author delves into exploring how Beijing markets and sells itself, mainly how it went through considerable refurbishment for the 2008 Olympic bid. According to the author, constructing the city’s public image will be fundamental in providing an avenue for opposition groups to challenge the hegemony of the political elite. In the analysis, Broudehoux (2005) focuses on the development and controversies of two specific urban sites and how the Beijing government approached the management and marketing Beijing’s image through its different fin de millénaire spectacles, including the Olympic Games bid in 2001 and the Asian Games of 1990.
Summary of Main Points
Fin-de-Millénaire Beijing: The Making and Selling of a World Metropolis
In the first chapter, the author uses passages by Liu Sola (1994)-Chaos and All that and David Bonavia (1978)-Peking to illustrate the distinct realities of the two cities. While Pekingdepicts the drowsy Chinese capital during the late Mao period, Chaos and Allrepresents the modern world metropolis of fin-de-siècle Beijing. According to the author, although two decades separated the time when the two passages were written, it is difficult to decipher that they depict the same city. The second excerpt pictures Beijing as a monotonous socialist city that lacks an urban life and culture. Nearly three decades later, Sola, a renowned blues singer in China, depicts the city as a muddled city whose inhabitants are engulfed in the swirl of global consumerism. In essence, the two passages critically analyze how the 1970s and 1980s were periods in which China underwent unprecedented changes. Beijing has adopted a new urban life characterized by a traumatic and radical transformation process. Moreover, the author adds that Beijing’s austere conditions as a result of the socialist era.. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Considerably, the two passages also describe Beijing’s metamorphosis in its unprecedented material context thatepitomized the beginning of a new period for China. The two excerpts exemplify the major social, cultural, political, and economic transformations in the Chinese society, which had begun with the country opening up to global trade dimensions in addition to the government’s decision to implement significant trade and economic reforms. In essence, the government designed and implemented new reforms that saw an influx of foreign investors’ permeating the country’s borders, allowed imports into China, stimulated the flow of capital in the country as well as introducing effective market mechanisms. Accordingly, the first chapter of the book helps the readers to understand the various structural changes and policy reforms that significantly supported the emergence of critical urban sites such as Beijing, which joined the share of a worldwide connection of cities that competed for foreign investment.
Broudehouxefforts of reinforcing the Fin-de-Millénaire Beijing revolves around her absolute reliance on such literature to craft her lens. For instance, the author states that The Fin de Millénaire in Perspective The changes that are taking place in Beijing cannot be isolated from the global movements that marked the end of the second millennium and impacted societies around the world. The turn of the 19thcentury was an extremely volatile period that perfectly embodied the deep ‘ambivalence of modernity.’ On the other hand, Broudehoux reveals that marked by the acceleration of time, the simultaneous shrinking of space. By a sense of historical discontinuity, it was experienced as both a beginning and an end. Despite the arbitrariness of their periodization, both fins de siècle was felt as important transitional moments. They were eras of extraordinary technological advance, of intense transformation, and of new social formations, which were also filled with optimism and cynicism, and marked by an exhilarating sense of possibility.
On the other hand, from Beijing’s Fin-de-Millénaire perspective, the end of the 20th century constituted the end of an era.Some saw in it the end of history, of ideology, even of civilization; for others, it heralded the death of the nation-state, and, by association, of the modern project as a whole.6 There was, however, little agreement on the geopolitical consequences of this series of endings. While Fukuyama claimed that the end of history signified the triumph of the West, others foresaw the end of Europe’s political supremacy and hegemony. According to the author’s opinion, despite the absence of a consensus on the characterization of this moment of rare intensity, at least one point was unanimously supported. In other words, Broudehoux affirms that the end of the 20thbrought the success of capitalism, accompanied by the rise of consumption as the new world ideology. Indeed, major global restructuring at the end of the twentieth century brought the creation of a unified and predominantly capitalist world economy organized around the ability to communicate and process information. Moving away from manufacturing and the production of goods, this new, more flexible regime of capital accumulation was reoriented towards the service industry.
Significantly, the first chapter of the book describes how the increased mobility of capital investment also promoted the reorganization and geographical dispersion of industrial production and the development of a new international division of labor. This Deindustrialization and tertiarization triggered significant societal changes around the globe. They caused the intensification of flows of commodities, money, images, information, and technology, enabled in part by the invasion of transnational corporations selling their products through a worldwide market. They also brought the increasing cross-boundary movement of people – tourists, businessmen, and migrant workers – and the compression of time and space, enabling distant places to become familiar, accelerating the pace of life, and making fashion, products, values, and established practices increasingly transient. Consequently, based on Broudehoux’s comprehensive analysis, the reader gains a deeper understanding of the socio-economic, cultural, and political influences that led to the transformation of Beijing city.
The Concerns for Post-Fordist Urban Condition
While cities are increasingly run as businesses, deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy have also made them increasingly dependent upon consumption rather than production as their primary source of profit and tax revenue. Similarly, the author asserts that the rise of the entrepreneurial city prompted the development of a new urban culture, as the city was gradually turned into an immense urban spectacle, centered upon commodity display and symbolic consumption. With the proliferation of thematic shopping complexes, festival marketplaces, convention centers, theme parks, and downtown consumer paradises, urbanity itself was redefined as a consumption experience.
According to Broudehoux’s depictions, in the modern, intensely competitive world, cities are growing more aware of the role their image can play in attracting investors and boosting the local economy. Many local governments are investing and innovating to make their cities more Introduction 5 attractive as a business, consumer, and cultural centers. An essential part of this is the exploitation of local heritage – even spuriously appropriated – as part of the creation of a unique identity. In the process, local culture and history are repackaged and put on display to be consumed by paying tourists. The transformation of cities into centers of consumption similarly resulted in the aestheticization of the urban fabric, with rising concern for appearance over substance, and the proliferation of urban projects set on creating elaborate urbane disguises which threatened to reduce the city itself to a landscape of visual consumption.
Neo-liberal ideology, coupled with declining tax revenues in inner cities, has resulted in the privatization of many of the city’s public spaces, and the growing involvement of the private sector in service provision and management. The gradual interiorization of urban life has provided a new order of urban experience, which blurs the distinction between public and private and promotes social and cultural homogeneity.According to the author, as city spaces become privatized spaces of consumption accessible only to those valued as consumers or producers, marginalized sections of society are pushed out of the public eye. These recent changes in the post-Fordist modern city carried serious social implications.
Deindustrialization and the emergence of the flexibly organized economy have resulted in the simultaneous growth of both wealth and poverty, and the emergence of greater social polarization. Additionally, the intensification of transnational flows of people across boundaries has dramatically altered the social composition of many relatively homogenous societies, often creating ethnic and religious divisions. On the other hand, the author postulates that the Deindustrialization of inner-city areas and urban improvement strategies to revitalize central districts led to the emergence of new forms of inequality and return to ghettoization and spatial segregation. In other words, the state-sponsored development of sites of cultural consumption favored middle- and high-income groups and helped promote the creation of leisure enclaves for the elite. Metropolitan redevelopment also helped speed up the renovation process, resulting in the increasing exclusion of a vast underclass from areas of the city embellished for more affluent members of society.
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2.1 Globalization, Place, and the Politics of Identity
An examination of Broudehoux’s texts reveals that an essential aspect of the condition of post-industrial societies has been the resurgence of expressions of collective identity.Globalized society is characterized by a degree of interdependence not found in earlier times and by increased exposure to alternative modes of living and ideas through the media, the spread of consumer culture, and through direct contact with ‘others’ at home or abroad. In many parts of the world, globalization has given rise to disturbing feelings of insecurity, immersion, and destabilization, which have exacerbated societal and ethnic self-consciousness and have triggered a revalorization of individual and collective distinctiveness.The author uses the current picture of Beijing’s cultural diversity to illustrate how globalization’s impact on local identities has been widely debated. Denounced as a Eurocentric vision, it is often equated with Westernization and blamed for erasing local individuality and creating cultural homogenization. However, the author believes that this vision of globalization has been dispelled for resting on a false dichotomy between the ‘local’ and the ‘global,’ presented as two opposite forces while they are, in fact, inalienable parts of the same process. Arguments about homogenization have been refuted for overlooking the fact that all local cultures have historically been constructed by the incorporation of outside influences and have, in turn, affected other cultures beyond their boundaries. Cultural globalization would thus be much more a matter of the interfusion of diverse particularities than of the diffusion of a single form.28 Homogenization theory is thus criticized for its erroneous conceptualization of identity, presented as a stable, permanent, and coherent entity. In reality, identity is not something fixed or inherited; it is highly unstable, symbolically constructed, and continually reinvented. By failing to acknowledge the increasingly hybrid quality of all identities, Broudehoux strongly asserts that homogenization theorists deny local agents a role in resisting, reinterpreting, or internalizing outside influences to serve their interests.
Subsequently, in the second chapter, the author describes the critics of homogenization theory who contend that globalization may foster heterogeneity and diversity, by triggering renewed interest in local distinctiveness and invigorating the expression of local identity. However, they also warn that increased exposure to other cultures may not necessarily induce greater tolerance for cosmopolitanism, but that it may rather lead to a retreat into the security of ethnicity, nationalism, and fundamentalism.A similar debate has developed over the impact of globalization on the spatial organization of social relations and their manifestation in the built environment. Since the late 1970s, it has become common to suggest that the identity and cultural distinctiveness of local places are being eroded by the forces of capitalism and that post-industrial cities are increasingly characterized by sameness and place-lessness.
2.2 Homogenization and its Influence in Redevelopment of Beijing
In a bid to provide a comprehensive analysis of the concept of homogenization, the author of The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing relies on the works of renowned scholars like Manuel Castells, who claims that homogenization and deterritorialization are limited to the ‘space of flows.’ Moreover, in his theory, Castells further explains that these “space of flows” usually comprise of exclusive global sites that were used by corporate jet-setters around the world, which have more in common with each other than with their own localities. International airports, corporate buildings, and world-class hotels across the world are said to share uniformly the same ‘global’ image, deprived of any references to place. Equally, visions of globalization as place absorbing and deterritorializing have also been challenged by scholars, arguing for the persistence of the site. According to John Agnew, place identities continue to characterize localities because of the physical uniqueness of individuals’ paths, which constantly build and transform places. Broudehoux further states that Castells himself maintains that areas which are not connected with, or relevant to, the space of flows retain their quality and distinctiveness. As a result, he claims, most people still live in the space of places. Accordingly, this implies that the allegations of place-lessness and fears of homogenization and deterritorialization can be blamed on a misconception of the nature of space.
In the early years of the reforms, China’s economic system faced major problems inherited from more than three decades of Maoist socialism. As the country emerged from the dark years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), it became critical to develop a workable economic system; one which could bring national prosperity without undermining the Party’s political legitimacy or compromising the internal consistency of its official ideology. Essentially, the author claims that, by selectively incorporating free-market policies into the official economic system under the umbrella concepts of ‘socialist market economy’. The result was a form of authoritarian developmentalism inspired by the experience of the newly industrialized countries of East Asia, which rely on centralized bureaucratic states committed to managing national economic growth. But unlike East Asian authoritarian states, which have the leisure to define growth, productivity, and competitiveness as foremost priorities, without having to struggle with ideological commitments, the Chinese state’s legitimacy continued to rest on revolutionary and socialist values. Irreconcilable tensions inevitably arose from the paradox which stood at the heart of the new economic system that justified capitalist economic policies as a means of ‘enhancing’ socialism. As economic imperatives gradually required the state to give up some of its commitment to social welfare issues, the Chinese Communist Party – one of the last major world institutions formally to claim its commitment to communist ideology – eventually faced a new legitimacy crisis. In summary, the significant changes took place as the century neared its end. The 1990s saw the emergence of a new social, cultural, and economic revolution in China, which promoted the adoption of consumerism as part of the official ideology.
2.3Role of City Managers in Selling the City
The second chapter examines the creation of the material and imaginary landscapes of the city. It explores both the theory and practice of selling places and investigates the different strategieshistorically developed in the construction of urban images for ideological, social, and economic purposes. The central irony of the second chapter revolves around the role of city managers in the preservation and reconstruction of the city. The author states that worried about their city’s marketability on the international stage, city managers, working collaboratively with local entrepreneurs. This seeks to create a distinctive image for their city by using different strategies of urban beautification, visual and social rehabilitation, and promotional activities to boost local distinctiveness and advertise their locality abroad.The author also describes how urban image construction activities obey an economic logic by luring capital into the city, either by encouraging economic enterprises and their workforces to locate there or by enticing up-market tourists and conference organizers to visit the place in large numbers and consume what it has to offer.
Urban images are both visual and mental constructs, constituted through discourse – as found in city marketing campaigns, promotional brochures, and tourism advertising – and through more concrete transformations of the built environment including public works, preservation of historic sites, and urban redevelopment. The literature in urban reconstruction indicates that the ready-made identities assigned by city boosters and disseminated through the mass media often reduce several different visions of local culture into a single vision that reflects the aspirations of a powerful elite and the values, lifestyles, and expectations of potential investors and tourists. The author indicates that these practices are usually highly elitist and exclusionary, and often signify to more disadvantaged segments of the population that they have no place in this revitalized and refurbished urban spectacle.
The reconstruction of Beijing has resulted in urban managers taking up different roles that focus on conscious manipulation of the culture, history, and spatial configurations of local places, urban managers and local entrepreneurs recreate the semblance of a familiar image, thereby appeasing popular opposition by giving an accommodating face to large-scale redevelopment schemes and convincing people that good things are done on their behalf.Imaging the Third World City Current literature on the social and political dimensions of image-making and city marketing refers predominantly to the experience of First World cities.However, Broudehouxidentifies that the impact of such practices is being felt even more in cities of the developing world where scarce public funds must be stretched to respond to acute urban problems. In most Third World cities, recent global restructuring has contributed to a widening of income disparities and growing social conflicts.
On the other hand, in desperate need of foreign investment, these developing economies strive to distinguish themselves by building an image that asserts their stability and exalts their cultural character, be it real or imagined. In addition, worldwide concerns for idealized visions of modernity and prosperity have brought a considerable burden on developing economies that are trying to ‘fit’ in the world system. Nonetheless, this idea is often resulting in greater hardship for the local population, including social exclusion and repression. In their attempt to boost their self-confidence and secure global trust in their economic potential, local governments use their limited funds to improve urban infrastructure in areas most visible to outsiders, or where foreign investments are concentrated. As a result, modest budgets are often squandered to serve the needs and expectations of potential investors and visitors, rather than those of the needier local population. Additionally, recent studies have demonstrated that foreign investments in the tertiary sector, especially in the tourism industry, carry little economic benefit for local Third World populations who rarely have access to upwardly mobile employment and are only offered menial service jobs.
- New Idea.
4.1 The Politics of Heritage, Memory, and Identity
One of the new ideas I drew from the book concerning the role of urban aestheticism in urban renewal. I learned that the past performs a pivotal role in the selling of places. In an effort to enhance the appeal and interest of places, city marketers increasingly exploit the history of their locale as an important cultural capital to lure inward investment from enterprises, visitors, and shoppers.In the process, they consciously repackage culture and history to convert them into commodities that can be bought and sold in their own right. Tourism plays an important role in the commodification of the past by attempting to transform the material reality of places into a cultural imaginary for mass consumption. The rise of tourism as one of the leading world industries has created a growing demand for built environments that promise a unique cultural experience. In their efforts to turn localities into consumable places, tourism and entertainment industries tap historic resources through the evocation of memories of past events, people, and places, often lumping together cultural and historical elements in a creative redeployment of tradition.
- The Role of Tourism in Urban Renewal
Secondly, I learned the part of tourism in urban renewal, especially how tourism similarly turns competing for histories into reductionist constructions, promoting some version of history over others, or even manufacturing fictitious versions of history. It also colonizes local culture by demanding that expressions of identity respond to the expectations of first world tourist consumers. These fabricated visions of shared history are not, however, passively accepted by those they intend to represent. They are re-appropriated continuously, adapted, and reinvented by different people remembering the past in different ways.3 Notions of heritage – understood as collectively inherited cultural capital. It has become common practice for cities around the world to capture, reconstruct, and invent social and built heritage for commercial consumption. Considerably, it is also important to note that the exploitation of history and culture has become a complex and dynamic process of creation, as heritage managers must increasingly juggle with the demands of the tourist market and the political goals of national and local governments. The selection and designation of sites as national heritage is a similarly complex and contentious process because of the multiplicity of pasts that compete for recognition. Which places do or do not become part of the culture and what transformation they undergo in this process of recognition is a key arena for identity and power struggles.
Controversial Commercialization
Finally, an important element in the text that increased my knowledge about the dimensions of urban life is a controversial commercialization. The author examines the debate surrounding the commercial exploitation of Old Summer Palace. Which has been heavily criticized, particularly among the intellectual community. According to of Broudehouxcritics claim, Yuanmingyuan has become a site of consumption rather than reflection, where ruins and landscapes compete for people’s attention with papier maché animals, trinket vendors, and carnival stands. The debate over the proper use of the ruins has reawakened an old class war that had long opposed idealistic scholars and pragmatic bureaucrats, a conflict that decades of communism have failed to eradicate. Members of the academic elite Selling the Past: Nationalism and the Commodification of History at Yuanmingyuan deplore the vulgar and ostentatious quality of Yuanmingyuan’s commercialization, which they blame on the Park administration’s lack of refinement. Most cannot hide their contempt for the ‘illiterate peasants’ who have been put in charge of managing the historic gardens.
Equally, the author uses the example of Yuanmingyuan’s commercialization to illustrate how intellectuals deeply resent the way the administration has repeatedly ignored the recommendations of an academic advisory committee established to oversee restoration work and advise on the protection of the park’s cultural heritage. ‘Yuanmingyuan was planned and built by Emperors, who were themselves accomplished scholars. It was designed with such discernment that any attempt at its reconstitution should be led by historians, architects, and restoration experts, not incompetent farmers,’ said one architecture professor in a personal interview. Academics also condemn the administration’s choice of income-generating activities, and its attempt to capitalize on the growing popularity of theme parks – triggered by a rise in discretionary income and leisure time over recent decades – to attract people to Yuanmingyuan. Intellectuals have denigrated the administration’s efforts to cater to the masses’ taste for thematic entertainment for lacking in cultural sophistication. Accordingly, this shows how commercial exploitation of a city profoundly affects its socio-economic progress as well as its reconstruction.
Conclusion
Contemporary image construction efforts in Beijing must be placed in the context of a long Chinese tradition of concern for public recognition and personal prestige – or for what Western anthropologists have called ‘face.’ The concept of face provides fundamental insights into the widespread preoccupation with self-perception and sincere concern for the outside opinion, which have long characterized by modern societies.For instance, in the Chinese society, the term mianzi, which is generally used to communicate ideas about how one is perceived by others, actually connotes a much wider range of meanings than can possibly be indicated by the English word ‘face.’ Mianzi can be translated as ‘reputation’ or ‘prestige’ and refers to a sort of public recognition ‘that is accumulated by means of personal effort or clever maneuvering’. In the article, the author affirms how the elements of a city’sface continue to play a major part in contemporary societies, and its significance cannot be overestimated. ‘Keeping’ face is a perpetual concern which requires constant caution and diligence. While face can secure social approval by encouraging ‘correct’ conduct and personal dignity, the face can also be easily ‘lost’ when rules of conduct are not observed, and one is seen at a disadvantage. And if face represents an important social capital – fundamental to the constitution of the Chinese self – too much face is not necessarily a good thing. People who are overly concerned with promoting their own reputation are reproved for ‘loving face.’