Prince takes on ‘appalling waxworks’

The Prince of Wales is not the Chinese government’s favourite person – he once described its leaders as "a group of appalling old waxworks". However, that has not stopped him attempting to intervene in a highly controversial planning dispute in the country’s capital, Beijing.

The Prince is trying to prevent the government from demolishing an area of historic, pre-communist housing in Da Shi Lan, an area of hutongs, low-rise courtyard homes linked by alleys and teeming markets. To achieve this end, he is using his Prince's Foundation for Architecture and Urbanism, who are working with Chinese businessmen and academics at Beijing's Tsing Hua University, who are opposed to the scheme.

Not content with that, Prince Charles also wants to persuade the Beijing authorities to do a “Poundbury” (the name of his neo-Georgian village in Dorset) and build thousands of new courtyard homes with the same traditional layout, instead of high-rise concrete apartment blocks.

Says the Prince’s spokesman: “Through his links with China the prince learned about the hutong housing being lost amid all this rapid development and he has offered his foundation's help. It is not about criticising Chinese development per se, just about ensuring vulnerable heritage is not lost.”