Beijing: Capital, Now and For Ever?

Beijing, capital of China. But for how long? And what would it really mean if that honor was moved from Beijing to another city? Some serious debate has been undertaken on both those questions since reports surfaced online suggesting the capital could be moved from Beijing to Xinyang, Henan province, by 2016. The reports appear to have little credibility behind them, but their veracity hasn't stopped the possibility from capturing imaginations, with domestic and overseas media outlets, bloggers and hundreds of Weibo users throwing out their own views on the subject.

Tea Leaf Nation (which partners with The Atlantic, where the same article was also published) has a breakdown of how the rumor got started, but since both those articles are blocked, here's the main paragraph:

On February 8, social media user @Victor倪卫华 tweeted on Sina Weibo a rumor that Xinyang, a small city in Henan Province, may become the capital of China in 2016, citing information leaked by a local government website in the city. He claimed that a group of more than 160 experts descended on Xinyang to explore the possibility for the 28th time in July 2012.

On February 17, a Weibo user named @新布伦瑞克 posted a "news report" purporting to show a meeting of officials discussing moving the Chinese capital from Beijing to Xinyang in 2016. That Weibo post is now marked with a message declaring that "the information contained within is not true and that the situation has been dealt with." Whatever that means.

So it seems the capital is not moving. Not right now.

But even bare-faced rumor has prompted many Beijingers to take to Weibo and other sites to cheer the benefits they believe the city would accrue by virtue of no longer being the capital. If you read Chinese, check out the comments on this Weibo post.

Tea Leaf Nation cited a few comments made by Weibo users expressing enthusiasm for a less polluted, overcrowded, traffic-jammed Beijing free of the shackles of capital-dom. Some of those comments might have been made jokingly. Or perhaps the commenters really would like to see the capital moved away from Beijing. But would Beijing really be much less polluted, crowded or congested just because it wasn't the capital?

Let's deal just with population alone. Many of the commentators adopting an "It really could happen" stance seem eager to cite the precedent of Brazil, where the capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in 1960. So let's compare the populations of Brazil's biggest cities ...

1. Sao Paulo 11.24m
2. Rio de Janeiro 6.32m
3. Salvador 2.67m
4. Brasilia 2.56m
(figures from 2010 Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics report as quoted on Wikipedia)

A perfect comparison is impossible, as many factors must have been at work affecting the population of Brazilian cities over the past half-century. But let's face it, Rio hardly has a reputation for being the quietest, least crowded or most convenient place to live.

The idea that Beijing would magically become a convenient, clean and breathable place to live overnight seems at best pretty naive. Perhaps there would be some change, but even cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have plenty of people, pollution and traffic. In fact, crazy as it seems to those of us who live here, Beijing would very possibly be even more polluted if it were not the capital, where regulatory eyes are keener than in the hinterlands.

Most of those jumping in to comment seem not to have considered what it really means to "move the capital." It doesn't mean shipping everyone out of one city and dropping them in another. It doesn't mean shutting down factories. It doesn't mean banishing all four-wheeled forms of transport.

Mainly, it means shifting administrative functions to another city (Xinyang or not). So there would be less politics (that may be a good thing), but it's outlandish to suggest Beijing would consequentially decline as an important center of economic activity, arts and culture, tourism and higher education (and whatever else you care to add to this list). All the overseas precedents of capital shifts (Brazil, Myanmar/Burma, the Netherlands) prove that it's perfectly possible to shift administrative duties away from the big cities without robbing those cities of their many other attractions. In fact, let's play a game. You choose which city you'd rather travel to. Rio de Janeiro or Brasilia? Rangoon or Napyidaw? Amsterdam or The Hague? (Even the Dutch seem not to have decided definitively which of those is the capital) Now, Beijing or Xinyang? Point proven.

Above all, China seems like the kind of place where a capital city is revered as a symbol, a totem of continuity. We'd hazard a guess that the current incumbent of capital status is extremely unlikely to be offered up at the altar of pragmatism without very serious consideration. And before you history buffs jump on us, we say this well aware that the Chinese capital has shifted on multiple occasions before.

Still, a few things would definitely change if the capital was moved away from Beijing. Here's what we would foresee:
- less occasions of entire lanes of traffic being stopped for 20 minutes for the benefit of dignitaries' cars passing by- less visa crackdowns
- no embassies (potentially more complex visa/passport processes, no embassy functions for those of you who get invites to such things)
- less high-end KTV parlors
- less abalone
- less shops selling "prestige" alcohol
and obscure cigarettes
- a cottage industry of capital nostalgia products and theme parks

Some of these would be good, some of these would be bad. You decide which we mean. And what do you think? What would Beijing gain or lose if it were not the capital? Leave your comments below.