Peking City Centre to Get UN Heritage Status?

According to the China Daily:

“Liu Qi, secretary of Beijing Municipal Party committee, said Beijing government on Jan. 16 would try its best to preserve the appearance of an ancient capital, and in particular it aims to pay much more attention to protecting and planning around the city center as it tries to apply for U.N. World Culture Heritage…”

The words better, late, than and never spring to mind

According to the newspaper this would cover the following: an area of 7.8 kilometers from the Yongding Gate (pictured below) to the Bell Tower including the Bell Tower itself, Prince Gong’s Mansion, the Royal City’s wall, the Forbidden City, the Imperial Ancestral Temple and, wait for it and unsurprisingly, Zhongnanhai (the heavily guarded leadership enclave).

This follows long running worries about the Drum and Bell Tower (see here) where preservationists have already seen some hutong bulldozed and tried to oppose a plan to redevelop more of the area. The government got a bit touchy about that, protest meetings etc etc were cancelled.

So we shall see what happens with the long overdue application to the UN – one fear must be that th corrupt and the property developers will get in and do as much damage as possible prior to any UN Heritage status being awarded.

Also note that this ‘zone’ does not include a large number of threatened hutong across the city including around Jinbao Jie, near Wangfujing, behind Beijing Railway Station, towards the Summer Palace and other locations.

Still we can but hope…