The following lament for the 798 arts district is featured on artforum.com.cn under angle.

The games are approaching, and China’s most infamous arts district is being scrubbed and shined to make way for tourist traffic. The reality of the immense changes that have occurred here over the past few years now lies below a new layer of concrete and the Italian leather sandals of al fresco diners. This maturation has been rapid and thorough, but for all the media gushing over 798, few have taken time to ponder the effects of her changes, or in what way they have been ministered by her new nanny, the “Beijing 798 Art District Office of Construction Management.”

The “798 Management” office is an office representing the interests of the Beijing Municipal and Chaoyang District governments and the Seven Stars Group. Seven Stars is not a constellation or group of celestial bodies, it is the electronics conglomerate heir to the original factories, and the property management group that now rents to the galleries in 798, comprised of factories 700, 706, 718, 797, 798, and 707. Six factories. Where is the seventh? Maybe the last star is you, or harmony, or maybe it stands for “art zone” with Chinese characteristics.

Established in 2001, in part to deal with factories vacated since being rendered irrelevant by changing electronics technology, Seven Stars was happy to rent to people such as Sui Jianguo the sculptor, Hong Huang the publisher, Liu Suola the composer and many others who began moving in around 2001. Then, the entire area seemed distant and dilapidated, although its former glory was quietly echoed in East German designed Bauhaus style factories. In the mid-1950s this area was the highly celebrated “Factory 718” complex, the national standard in integrated and efficient production, and a model for similar factory complexes across the nation. It is said that Factory 718 was a household name, reaching heights of production amidst swells of socialist ideological hype that encouraged the embrace of industry.

Reverberating with its past fame, 718 has been reincarnated as 798, and sits atop tourist “top ten” lists. One of the government’s “development zones” of the new cultural variety, 798 is prided as a model of official tolerance for artistic expression, as evidence of the booming “cultural industries” and touted as a “healthy” tourist location spotlighting “contemporary culture” where visitors can snap photos of themselves amidst steaming, peeling pipes or shiny fiberglass sculptures, embodying the contrast of a proud industrial heritage with a booming contemporary art scene. 798 has emerged as a media-friendly archetype of the contradictions that define modernizing China. Or does it define something else?

These days, the 798 Management Office won’t deign to mention its “chaotic” past, much less hitherto uncooperative characters who played seminal roles early on in congealing the community that became known as 798, such as artist Huang Rui. Once, true creativity was at work in the generous industrial spaces, live performances seemed spontaneous and ubiquitous, and art festivals such as the DIAF and the Dadao Live Art were grassroots and artist organized. Then in 2006 the management sent these packing, instead hosting a festival in the former’s scheduled time slot. Their first sanctioned festival, ironically titled the “798 Creativity Culture Festival” included such fine works as the diabolical Olympic Mascots, “the Friendlies,” rendered in clear plastic beads and pipe cleaners, and then again in latch-hook. It was a grim day for exhibition-goers.

It should be known, not long before that, residents living in the “Yard” worked with paradoxical drive to realize their dreams, even despite rumors that they would be ejected and galleries forced to close. Perhaps it was when Galleria Continua signed a 5-year lease as the first foreign gallery that people knew there would be change. Suddenly, activities were “managed” through hard to obtain permits, new restrictions banned outdoor performance art and exhibitions were monitored by plainclothes police (who remained conspicuous in belted khakis). Cosmetic and infrastructure improvements were amplified, and the industrial detritus was swept away. Of course, 798 is the classic picture of gentrification, but unfortunately, this is gentrification “with Chinese characteristics”: the prospect of raw creativity was swept away along with possibilities for freedom of speech or creative control.

In the early stages of this transformation, many a weary Western visitor came to 798 and left grumbling with disappointment: where was the atmosphere, the art––what were people raving about? Galleries were ridiculously commercial, festivals had been closed and artworks deemed subversive were behind curtains or taken away, and “Seven Stars Road” appeared with the implementation of a long-term development plan. But experimental galleries such as Beijing Commune and Platform China also moved in, the Long March Space, growing out of an idealistic curatorial project tracing Mao’s journey through China, came to occupy an enormous central position in the yard, and the long awaited Ullens Center for Contemporary Art opened, finally giving a point of focus to international eyes. Confined to their “private” quarters, gallerists and curators attempted to counter the dearth of inspiration that seemed to be the price paid for this newfound visibility.

Of course, I do not mourn the death of raw creativity nor artistic imagination in Beijing––which long ago moved ten minutes north to grey brick Ai Weiwei warrens of Caochangdi, or beyond to artist villages inside the Huantie, a circular train track the Ministry of Railways uses to test its rolling stock. I fear that the user-friendly “798 Arts District” of today might succeed at replacing visitors’ conception of the Chinese avantguard that actually lives elsewhere, or that it may completely bury the history of a unique grassroots community and the loving, not-for-profit toil of many. They made it into something special (gentrifiers), but the management took over from there (usurpers).

I’ve always loved café culture, just as I’ll always enjoy the community feeling that this historic factory complex offers its inhabitants; if I were a gallerist, high tourist density would makes it an enviable platform or showroom. Perhaps in the future it truly will become the “model” for the cultural industries and similar “art zones” around the nation. Anyways, that is the picture 798 Management Office likes to paint.

However, I ultimately think the official decision to proceed with 798’s gentrification was the hope it could be ammunition to counterattack international criticism of Chinese censorship, especially related to the contemporary arts sector; it was also a timely opportunity for certain parties to profiteer based on expectations about the art market. More insidiously, it offers a new lexicon officials can use to portray themselves on a world stage, yet behind the iron and glass windows, in the foam on your cappuccino and lurking in gallery backrooms, an enduring bureaucratic system monitoring cultural development is still in place.