Imagethief made a rare trip back to Beijing last weekend. It was hot and muggy, but at least the air was clear on Thursday and Friday. That's not something to be taken lightly. During my previous visit to Beijing, three months ago, the air was so bad, so opaque and filthy, that I had to invent a new word to describe it: "nastulous".

During a taxi ride on the East Third Ring, near my old stomping grounds, the clear air provided me with a wonderful view of the Third Ring's hundreds of hoardings and billboards, all of which were mysteriously blank. Normally they are cluttered with ads for new office developments, villas, mobile phones, foreign corporations and heaven knows what else. But that day there was nothing but bare metal glinting in the sun. Nowhere was it more conspicuous than along the hundreds of meters of hoardings that front the CCTV Tower development site.

In fact, this is not surprising. Two weeks ago The Economist covered the situation in an article on the harmonious society's backlash against conspicuous consumption:

Last week the mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, went a stage further by calling for controls on outdoor advertisements that promote “luxury” or “ultra-distinguished” products, on the grounds that they “encourage luxury and self-indulgence, which are not conducive to harmony.” The Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce, the local market regulator, added that “there is a problem with certain advertising not conforming to the demands of socialist spiritual civilisation.”

Local politicians proposed that advertisements should not focus on wealth and luxury. One even hinted that some billboards might be taken down on the pretext that they were poorly made and might fall and cause accidents. Luxury-goods firms may now have to devise ways to promote exclusivity without highlighting inequality—and become experts in billboard construction.

Imagethief remembers only one such previous wholesale expropriation of Beijing advertising real estate. That was the Sino-African summit of last November, when all the billboards in Beijing were spangled with photographs of giraffes, elephants and what appeared to be a New Guinea tribesman who perhaps got lost in Africa. But that was temporary (although a few dusty remainders still haunt some of the capital's more remote hoardings).

The conspiracy minded among us (Mrs. Imagethief) believe that entire scheme is a ruse to claim Beijing's most valuable billboard space for Olympic advertising or Olympic-related propaganda. I must confess, I've heard crazier theories about Beijing's billboards. 

In fact, the foreshadowing about "poor construction" appears to have blossomed into reality. Over the weekend I caught up with a friend who is the director of North Asia PR and Marketing for a mobile phone maker whose products that are widely used by Chinese consumers but which might, if you were to cross your eyes and squint hard, look like "luxury goods". One of her company's Third Ring billboards had been among the victims, apparently due to "poor construction".

"Any compensation?" Mrs. Imagethief asked her.

"Are you kidding?" she said. "This is China. It's the cost of doing business."

So it is. Perhaps instead of a mobile phone she should try a billboard of an elephant next time.

The future. 

 Coming back?