Great Things from China Now - apart from the bike, sewing machine and mobile phone...

Richar Carr on the China Design Now show at the V & A

Map of northeast Beijing, 2007: Guang yu (MEWE Design Alliance), Commisioned by the V&A for China Design Now.

"Beijing churns out an infinite amount of printed papers daily, a testament to the city's unprecedented speed of development. Every price of paper on the map is collected from the exact area of the city it represents." - Guang Yu.

THERE SEEM to be several ways in which the China Design Now exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (and its accompanying catalogue) can be interpreted.

The first is to see it as a description of how the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaping abandoned its strictly Marxist economy in favour of a capitalist economy under socialist rule; or as a description of how its break from the Marxist economy was led by the graphic design developed in China's first Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen. Close to Hong Kong, its graphics were influenced by Hong Kong, Taiwan and Western design practices.

A third interpretation shows how there has been a complete break between the generations born since the 1980s, who have experienced nothing but the capitalist economy, and those born earlier whose memories may go back to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, or even earlier.

However, there is also a fourth way of looking at China Design Now: as an example of how the urbanisation of rural populations (some 100m people in China leave the countryside every year) and the unashamed worship of consumer goods is going to shape the world in the 21st century.

Expressed by a Chinese phrase, Four Great Things, in the 1960s and 70s, people's aspirations were to own a bicycle, watch, sewing machine and radio; in the 1980s, a tv, fridge, tape-recorder and fan; while today, the aim is to own a laptop, car, apartment and mobile phone.

The result of some 50 per cent of China's 1.3 billion people now living in cities is that major centres such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing have expanded at breakneck speed, while in the country there are now more than 90 cities each with more than 1m inhabitants.

In Beijing, more than 2000 new highrise buildings are either on the drawing board or on site; in Shanghai, 4000 new tall buildings have been built since 1990. In fact, its Pudong business centre looks very much the realisation of a Futurist dream. Known as the Paris of the East in the 1920s, Shanghai has led the resurgence of China's fashion industry and leads, too, in the creation of stylish boutiques, restaurants and bars, and domestic interiors.

It is hard to believe that, until housing was made a commodity in 1992, so that commercially-developed properties began to augment land and housing entirely owned by the state, most Chinese were living in very primitive conditions occupied by extended families. Today, the middle class (some five per cent of the population) is being housed in apartments with living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens (the last often seldom used except as a social centre) whose furnishing is seen as a way of establishing status. And status is very important in China.

In terms of planning and architecture, though many cities have virtual plans and replica public squares, symmetrical highrise buildings and huge lawns, much development is chaotic and many cities are in a constant state of flux.

In Beijing, not only has much of the traditional, low and predominantly horizontal city been torn down to make way for this year's Olympics (and some 250 underground stations, for example), but the capital is being surrounded by nine satellite cities of more than 1m people each.

And, though China took the decision to promote the use of renowned architects such as Herzog & de Meuron (Switzerland), the AREP Group (France) and Foster & Partners (UK) through international competitions, the result has been a proliferation of iconic buildings that take little note of their surroundings as they celebrate their technical wizardry and eccentricity.

If such buildings demonstrate how fitting into the existing environment is no longer important, then individuality is also the dominant nature of China's youth.

The growth in graphics, followed by the growth in fashions and individual lifestyles, often inspired by Western sources, has been accompanied by an awareness of non-Chinese music whichled a Chinese punk and rock scene based on Beijing at the turn of the century. In addition, local music was created by 'bedroom composers' who used the Internet as a way of by-passing conventional means of distributing music.

The Internet has also led to widespread use of the web, email, text-messaging, peer-to-peer networks and chatrooms, and to Chinese versions of YouTube. There has also been a huge growth in online and mobile gaming. All this constitutes what the Chinese call the 'middle landscape' in which the young, in particular, lead a life that is intensely personal and is far removed from the days when the Long March and the Cultural Revolution united people in a single, political purpose.

Indeed, the possibility of acquiring new ideas about democracy and political change may be what worries the Chinese government as it downplays protests about Tibet and fails to live up to the human rights promised when it won the bid to hold the Olympic Games.

As the exhibition and catalogue demonstrate, such has been the speed of social, economic and physical change in China during the past 30 years that the whole fabric of the country may be unstable. And this could be true of other parts of the world that are also trying to modernise at breakneck speed.

RICHARD CARR

China Design Now continues at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London until July 13, 2008.