Ah, commercial imperialism with Chinese characteristics.

Get this: from the one-day summit about the Jing's CBD just a few days ago, those taking part wanted Beijing to build its own Empire State Building. But then again, they did not want New York with Chinese Characteristics. Nor were they interested in a Ghirken a la London with Chinese Characteristics. Et Paris avec les Characteristiques Chinois or 中国バーションの東京? Na-ah. In Mandarin-speak, "it had to have a Chinese 'feel'".

Okkie... so we are looking at a thousand-metre tall semi-airborne pagoda? The Pagoda With 999 (1,000?) Floors... could Beijing cook that kind of stuff up?

Still, on that same note from the official Beijing Daily, city officials have already found out that, while your Beijingologist's pick for an existing Empire State Building with Chinese Characteristics (the Big Pants no less) and their ilk pops up more and more around our city, we are beginning to see the emergence of the super-rich and the super-poor. Beggars in the CBD? Nothing new. Somehow, those "capitalist roader running dogs" must be suppressed so that the Jing won't stir up with a fair bit of yelling — as the super-rich come face to face with the super-poor. How important is this? Leave it to the official papers: "It's very important."

(And that already in a city which is known to be much more open than Shanghai. Your Beijingologist is no fan of Big Knife City, where folks from the rest of China are uniformly treated as poor farmers.)

And why does Beijing think it has a shot at being a big-time World City, a la the Big Apple, London, Tokyo and gang? It's got a good economy (and it's pretty big), and the city is mainly in the service and info industries (and look at all of our "World Friends" establishing their regional or even worldwide HQs in our capital!) We're also feeding off / giving back to economies nearby (a la Tianjin and Hebei), and while we have scary-as-hell jams around Guomao, we do have a Subway system which is longer than the Paris Metro. Finally, we've "advanced technology" (whatever that means... it probably means we've the technology that's good enough to block Facebook and Twitter), and finally, "we have superior living conditions".

Yes. Including a Subway Line 15 stop at Hualikan. Right by the city's so-far-only expat territory Starbucks in the suburbs...