Words Dept.: entry

World Architecture News claims its servers have been attacked by the Chinese government after “ruffling some feathers” over its reports on Beijing.

The London-based news service this week ran a comment piece by editor Michael Hammond, which suggested the Chinese are “deliberately courting controversy” by hiring Frankfurt-based AS&P, to redesign part of Beijing. The practice was founded by Albert Speer – son of Hitler’s favourite architect of the same name.

Hammond makes a series of rather bold connections between the Nazis’ 1930s Welthauptstadt Germania plan to create a three-mile “central axis” through Berlin and the Chinese government’s current plan for the “new Beijing”, which includes a huge new central thoroughfare. For example:

The Geneva based Centre on Housing rights and evictions has estimated that about 1.5 million Beijing residents will be displaced by the creation of the “New Beijing”. In Berlin, thousands of Jewish tenants were forcibly evicted to make way for the scheme but the outbreak of the Second World War stopped the construction.

Both Speer and the Chinese may find such a forthright comparison rather difficult to stomach. Hammond acknowledges that there has been a long, wide thoroughfare going through Beijing since the the 17th century. But he remains concerned about the selection of AS&P.

Did the Chinese authorities really expect that the media would not pick up on this or must we draw the conclusion that this could have been their intention? Assuming this was the case, they clearly wanted to send a message. That’s scary.

The piece concludes with a note revealing that WAN’s servers have suffered “four massive hacker attacks”, which “were traced back to an IP address in Guangdong controlled by the Chinese Government”.