Beijing Bans Airbnb, Shuts Clubs and Bars for Plenum

This article was originally published on TheBeijinger.

As important as the 19th Party Plenum will be for the future of China, it will mean weeks of disruptions and inconveniences for Beijing residents.

Newly announced security measures will make traveling around and staying in Beijing next to impossible for new arrivals and extremely difficult for locals when the Plenum begins on Oct 18, restricting everything from transportation to communications to lodging.

Want to celebrate your wedding (or the Plenum, perhaps?) with fireworks? No way, Jose! The city has prohibited the sale of hazardous chemicals and fireworks from Oct 15 to 28. Traffic volume has also dropped significantly on busy local roads, perhaps due to the recent ban on the self-service sale of gasoline, and reports that local motorists will also have to deal with traffic police spot-checks, while those without cars won’t be able to rent one in Beijing for the rest of October.

Do you feel the beckoning welcome of Beijing, and want to come and stay at an Airbnb? Nein, bruder! Airbnb has outright canceled all reservations for the rest of the month for listings located within a 20-kilometer radius from Tian’anmen Square, where the Plenum will take place. Airbnb’s competition has likewise followed suit with Tujia and Xiaozhu also removing their Beijing listings for the rest of October.

Want to spend a relaxing night at a hutong bar, but without being forced to submit to a mandatory drug test that may get you deported from the country? Net, brat! Last month’s police raid of Hot Cat Club was the latest in a series of stings on expat establishments this year, and all signs point to such incidents becoming more common in the near future. There are also rumblings that clubs and bars will be forced to closed during the Plenum, with Temple Bar and DDC confirming that they both received an official notice to shut between Oct 16-25 and the new Xinyuanli-adjacent Zhao Dai will be closed until Oct 28. Gongti’s Mix has also given word that they will be closed but don’t have specific dates as of yet. Expect many others to follow suit.

Additionally, expect smaller events to also be affected, with the Farm to Neighbors announcing that they have been forced to cancel their Sunday event for the next two weeks.

Want to enjoy a stress-free train trip to the capital? Mais non, mon frère! Rail passengers traveling to Beijing will be subject to a secondary security check at train stations, as seen in Ganzhou, Jiangxi and Tai’an, Shandong. What’s more, this past week has seen train stations in major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan begin employing “face-scanning technology” as a way to improve “convenience.”

Feel like taking a jaunt out to the sunny climes of Tibet? Mi dispiace, fratello! Although no official notice has been issued, travel agencies say they aren’t allowed to issue Tibet travel permits to foreigners from Oct 18 to 28.

Inclined to meander throughout the city without the constant scrutiny of authority hanging over you? Ahniyo, oppa! Besides the red-colored arm-banded grannies that will be out in full force, the police and military are already taking up their positions in high-traffic pedestrian areas of the city, as seen by the recent appearance of soldiers riding the escalator at Chaoyang Station on the Beijing Metro (shown below).

The police presence isn’t just human. This past National Day holiday, police began deploying surveillance robots at Beijing tourist landmarks like the National Museum (shown below). Branded with a police badge and equipped with facial recognition technology, the surveillance robots are weaponized with an “extendable electroshock arm.”

If you can’t go anywhere or do anything, maybe you’d simply like to stay at home, bother no one, and surf the internet in peace? Fat chance, hermano! If this Plenum is going to be anything like the last one Beijing hosted in 2012, it will mean all VPN use will become impossible. And if that’s not enough, Beijing internet users are being warned that an internet “fire moat” may be erected around the city in time for the Plenum.

No word yet if Beijing residents will be granted a “special holiday” to make way for the event, as happened in 2014 for the APEC summit or recently in Hangzhou for the G20 summit.

Sadly, we’re sure that there’s more to add to this list of unfortunate eventualities in the days to come; for our part, we can only hope that there are more different languages to say “no, brother” than the number of restrictions handed down by authorities.