New Beijing airport 新北京首都机场

Beijing Capital Airport
北京首都机场

běijīng shǒudū jīchǎng

A new airport being built by the Chinese government in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics will be the world’s biggest and be “truly awesome”, according to its British architect, Lord Foster.

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In further evidence of the Chinese obsession with building bigger, faster and higher than any other country, the plans for Beijing Airport will outdo both the current biggest, Hong Kong’s, and Heathrow, which is set to double in size when Terminal 5 is finished.

It will also take less than three years to complete, Lord Foster said. That compares with Terminal 5, which was put before a public inquiry in 1995 and approved in 2001 but which is not expected to open until 2008.

The only people who may shrink from the architect’s triumphalism are China’s new leaders, his clients. They have been keen to present a more modest image in recent months, reducing the scale of plans for the Olympic stadia and saying they wish to focus more on poverty reduction.

They may, too, be aware of the precedent set by Hong Kong airport, also designed by Lord Foster.

Its opening in 1998 coincided with the Asian financial crisis and the start of a five-year slump in the Hong Kong economy, which culminated in widespread anti-government and pro-democracy protests in the former colony.

Lord Foster has a high reputation in the Far East, having built HSBC’s futuristic headquarters-on-stilts in Hong Kong as well as its airport.

“The scale is truly awesome,” he said in an interview with Hong Kong’s Sunday Morning Post. “Hong Kong airport is currently the biggest of its kind. But that will be eclipsed by Beijing.”

China is already building the longest bridge in the world, from Ningbo to Shanghai, the biggest dam, at the Three Gorges, and a contender for the highest building, also in Shanghai.

But in a burst of modesty in the summer it scaled back plans for new facilities for the Olympics, fearful that a construction boom funded by a growing budget deficit might be followed by bust.

The showpiece stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest due to its intricate steel lattice design, was redesigned without its sliding roof to cut costs. Beijing’s new television centre, which takes the extraordinary form of two upside-down Ls at an impossible angle, was briefly put on hold before being quietly given the go-ahead again.

But this new-found prudence has not put off Lord Foster. When asked in the interview whether there was anywher apart from England wher he felt a greater bond than Hong Kong, he replied: “I don’t feel particularly close to my native England, as a matter of interest. It is not a big deal.

“Hong Kong is amazing, as is the pace of change and evolution in China in general. If there is one thing that is extraordinarily stimulating, that would have to be the 24-hour, seven-day energy of the Asian nations.”

It helps, he might have added, that government-funded developments in China are not subject to planning procedures, environmental objections or public inquiries.