Each shift in history, he says "from dynasty to dynasty, from imperial rule to communism, from communism to the market economy," seeks an erasure of history. Certainly the scale and pace of destruction and construction under capitalism has exceeded that of the Communists in the 1950s, who knocked down countless hutongs and parts of the city wall in order to widen roads, modernise the city's infrastructure and create that permanent desert of neo-classical Sino-Stalinist concrete, Tian'anmen Square.