Beijing in billboard crackdown as Olympics approach
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
BEIJING, July 9 (AFP): Beijing has launched a blitz on billboards promoting luxury lifestyles to tone down the city's image before next year's Olympics-and remind visitors it is the capital of a communist country.
Board by board, workers are pulling down many of the giant strips of ad space around the capital, especially those peddling expensive apartments, much to the frustration of Beijing's advertising industry.
The long airport expressway has also been cleared of the posters that had punctuated visitors' entry to the city.
Lu Haijun, from the Beijing 2008 Environment Headquarters, last month told the official Xinhua news agency that it was the "biggest-ever crackdown on unlicensed and unsafe billboards," and that all would come down by September.
However, while the operation is partly aimed at rogue operators who have put up ads illegally, authorities have also made it clear that they are unhappy with billboards promoting the sharpest edges of capitalism.
Beijing mayor Wang Qishan in particular spoke out against posters for luxury apartments.
"Many use exaggerated terms that encourage luxury and self- indulgence which are beyond the reach of low-income groups and are therefore not conducive to harmony in the capital," Wang said in May.
He decided that, despite Beijing's capitalist-style economic boom, the city still needed to retain some appearance as a Communist city, and the notice in May announcing the clampdown was couched in typically Marxist language.
"In some advertisements, the content doesn't fit to the demands of the socialist civilisation," read the statement, released by the Beijing Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau.
Board by board, workers are pulling down many of the giant strips of ad space around the capital, especially those peddling expensive apartments, much to the frustration of Beijing's advertising industry.
The long airport expressway has also been cleared of the posters that had punctuated visitors' entry to the city.
Lu Haijun, from the Beijing 2008 Environment Headquarters, last month told the official Xinhua news agency that it was the "biggest-ever crackdown on unlicensed and unsafe billboards," and that all would come down by September.
However, while the operation is partly aimed at rogue operators who have put up ads illegally, authorities have also made it clear that they are unhappy with billboards promoting the sharpest edges of capitalism.
Beijing mayor Wang Qishan in particular spoke out against posters for luxury apartments.
"Many use exaggerated terms that encourage luxury and self- indulgence which are beyond the reach of low-income groups and are therefore not conducive to harmony in the capital," Wang said in May.
He decided that, despite Beijing's capitalist-style economic boom, the city still needed to retain some appearance as a Communist city, and the notice in May announcing the clampdown was couched in typically Marxist language.
"In some advertisements, the content doesn't fit to the demands of the socialist civilisation," read the statement, released by the Beijing Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau.