Advertisement
Advertisement
China property
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Street scene of Sanya in Hainan province in southern China on 29 April 2018. The local authority has identified 84 property projects and hotels with names that fall foul of a government edict to get rid of names that were “big, foreign, weird” or based on homonyms. Photo: SCMP/Dickson Lee

What’s in a name? It’s a big deal for China’s hoteliers and real estate developers, if the brand is too ‘big, foreign or weird’

  • Chinese authorities are cracking down on property projects and hotels to get rid of names that were ‘big, foreign, weird’ or based on homonyms
  • Vienna Hotel Management of Shenzhen said the trademark of its namesake hotels in Hainan are protected by the law and is appealing the decision

China’s property developers and hoteliers are bearing the brunt of a government edict to standardise location names, as tens of thousands of apartment projects, hotels, townships, communities and office towers across several provinces are forced to rename and rebrand themselves.

The edict was the result of a 2018 policy by six government departments to get rid of “Big, Foreign, Weird” names, and names that played on homonyms. The policy required the country’s provincial and county authorities to come up with lists of location names that fell into these categories by the end of March, with the instruction to rename them.

Several provinces including Shaanxi, Hainan and Zhejiang have each listed dozens of property names – mostly real estate projects and hotels – that fall under each of these categories, prompting county and district-level authorities to instruct developers to rebrand their projects.

“To stem the phenomenon, the government should trace the problem to its root, which is the business registrar that approved the names,” said Zhao Huanyan, chief analyst for Huamei Consultancy’s hotel division. “They should avoid approving names that undermine China’s cultural confidence.”

Interactive Infographics: How China’s cities are classified

Names that exaggerate the size or significance of a project or location, with words like “world,” “grand,” “international,” or even “central” will be subject to revision under the “Big” category.

“Weird” names include those that combine numbers and symbols like “No. 6 Compound” and “EE-New Town” in Shaanxi province, and those that contain derogatory words like Mieziqiao (Anti-capitalism Bridge) between Panyang and Maoyang towns in Hainan. Homonyms are Chinese characters that sound alike, but which mean entirely different things.

And then there is the “Foreign” category, one of the most commonly used branding and marketing tactics by Chinese developers to imbue their projects with a veneer of prestige or class.

There is a Seine Residence in Tianjin, and another in Xi’an, while Shenzhen-based Overseas Chinese Town Enterprises (OCT) had replicated Switzerland’s Interlaken district on the Chinese technology hub’s outskirts. There’s also a Thames Town in Songjiang district outside Shanghai, complete with Victorian terraces, red telephone boxes and statues of Harry Potter and Winston Churchill.

“It is very common for Chinese companies to adopt foreign names to make their projects sound upscale,” said Huamei’s Zhao.

A view of Thames Town in Songjiang district outside Shanghai on Friday 21 July 2006. Thames Town is one of several satellite townships that Shanghai is building in hopes of luring residents away from the city centre. Other European themes used included Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish, Canadian, Dutch and German. Photo: Bloomberg

Vienna Hotel Management, based in Shenzhen, is one such company, operating 15 namesake hotels across Hainan province in southern China’s tourism hotspot. The hotel manager recently submitted an appeal against the government edict to rename, in a rare bout of defiance.

“Our trademark was properly registered with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), and is legally valid until 2022,” the company said in a statement, adding that it had written to the local provincial Civil Affairs Office asking to rescind the rule. “We have voiced our disagreement over the decision and are waiting for an official reply.”

The government does allow for foreign names that “reflect the friendship of the Chinese people with the world community” to remain unchanged, including the three Lenin parks in Sichuan, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces. Foreign companies such as Siemens, Hilton Hotels can also keep the names that have been transliterated into Chinese, and which are registered as business names with local authorities.

Winston Churchill’s statue in Thames Town in Songjiang district outside Shanghai on Friday 21 July 2006. Thames Town is one of several satellite towns that Shanghai is building in hopes of luring residents away from the city centre, and claims to allow people to “taste authentic British-style small town”. Photo: Bloomberg

Many Chinese developers register their projects under local names with the housing authority, but market or brand them using exotic-sounding names, said Simon Huang, a marketing executive with a Shenzhen-based developer, who declined to give the name of his company.

“The status quo is 90 per cent of the marketing names are not protected by laws, but an overnight change of these names, already familiar to locals, could cause confusion,” he said, adding that the renaming could also add huge cost for marketing teams.

Hainan’s government has listed 84 hotels and residential communities in the province with names that fall foul of the “Foreign” rule, including Californian Sunshine, Provence Holiday, and Heidelberg Residency. Nineteen locations had been listed in Shaanxi.

“The implementation should be more incremental and flexible to minimise disruption such as confusion of new addresses. The regulator should listen to public opinion,” said Yan Yuejin, a research director with E-house China R&D Institute.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: china pulls plug on ‘weird’ names
Post