The Hunan authorities of cultural heritage protection held a news conference Monday to clarify the controversy around the protection of the ancient city wall of Changsha.
Despite claims by officials and their hired experts that the remaining segment of the wall is the most valuable part, tearing down 100 meters of the city wall and leaving 20 meters behind can hardly be called "protecting" it.
The city wall was built during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), but after surviving for centuries without any cultural heritage protection laws, the bulldozers finally tore it down in an age when such laws exist. How could they do all this in the name of protection?
As the local administration and experts see it, having the 20-meter remainder of the city wall left is already good news, given how hard, according to them, their jobs are, and how devastating the pursuit for economic interests was. Officials claimed that the administration managed to balance conflicting factors such as cultural heritage protection, geographic conditions and the feasibility of the reconstruction plan by the developers.
The high sounding words from local officials cannot change the fact that they were just escaping blame and bailing the developers out of criticism. The news media has not been so subtle though, pointing out that the remaining fraction of the wall is a negotiated result reached by the government and developers.
If the government had stood resolute on this issue, the developers would have been in no position to bargain with the government. As we can see, not only did they negotiate, but also the result of the negotiation, namely bulldozing 100 meters of the city wall to make room for business construction, was basically what the developers wanted.
With new phrases such as "protective demolition" and "maintenance demolition" becoming popular, the ancient city wall of Changsha is a symbol of the deplorable state of our cultural heritage in miniature. What we are sweeping away is not merely a segment of wall, but our nation's common history and memories.
Southern Metropolis Daily