Beijing's historic Dazhalan area, with a maze of small alleyways, is a tourist attraction with its cheap restaurants and hotels. AFP

The wrecking ball is in full swing in Beijing's historic Qianmen district, the capital's one-time business, entertainment and culinary center, leaving conservationists up in arms.

As a part of a controversial scheme to "protect historic and cultural relics,'' demolition crews have already destroyed some 800 "old and dangerous'' homes along legendary Coal Street in the Dazhalan section of Qianmen.

According to a major refurbishment plan, whose details are slowly seeping into the public domain, Coal Street will become an access road to the west of the major artery of Qianmen Street, which will be turned into a pedestrian commercial area by the time Beijing hosts the Olympic Games in 2008.

Hundreds more courtyard homes on the east side of Qianmen, whose history stretches back 700 years through the Ming and Qing dynasties, will also be bulldozed to make way for an eastern access road.

``This is going to be a disaster,'' says Wang Jun, author of An Evolutionary Record of Beijing City, a book published last year that recounts 50 years of failed efforts to save Beijing's unique historical character.

``They have been slowly destroying Beijing's character for decades and the assault on Dazhalan is just another effort to destroy old Beijing.''

Wang laments the role of government-linked investment companies in the ``renovation'' project, which critics say smacks of a crass attempt to develop lucrative real-estate in the heart of the city in the name of ``preserving'' Beijing's famed courtyard architecture.

When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Beijing was one of the oldest capitals in the world and had largely escaped widespread destruction since the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

Wang's book records how China's communist rulers have destroyed that legacy in the span of some 50 years, first by tearing down the city's walls in the 1950s and 1960s and then destroying thousands of old courtyard homes to build roads or make way for real estate projects over the last decade.

Now the government plans to continue its remake of the capital by moving five million residents from Beijing's center to the suburbs within 15 years in an effort to alleviate pressure on roads and resources.

The plan also appears to be an effort to rectify the Maoist egalitarian policies of the 1950s and 1960s when up to 10 families were crammed into a single courtyard home.

``Reducing the numbers of families living in the courtyard homes is a good idea, but if it means destroying the homes, then this is the same as destroying Beijing's heritage,'' Wang says.

Another problem with removing all those people is that China's laws on land ownership are not clear, so it will be difficult to say who should be compensated, he said.

In the Dazhalan section of Qianmen, the population density is about 44,000 people per square kilometer, one of the highest in the city, according to the renovation plan.

It says most homes, because of their age, lack plumbing and a modern electrical infrastructure so the district needs to be renovated.

The Qianmen area itself sits just south of Tiananmen Square's Zhengyangmen Gate, the front gate to Beijing's old imperial city.

The area is a maze of small alleyways and lanes and is where Beijing Opera and Chinese acrobatics were born and where culinary specialities like Beijing (Peking) Duck, Beijing pickled vegetables and dumplings became famous.

The Tongrentang Traditional Medicine Shop, which has manufactured pills, powders and ointments for Chinese emperors since 1669, is also located here along with other former banks and guilds that once made the area Beijing's financial district.

Since 1949, though the area has largely fallen into disrepair, but has still remained a key tourist attraction for domestic Chinese because of cheap restaurants and hotels. ``The Qianmen project is going to be just like what they did to Nanchizi,'' Wang says. ``They say they want to preserve old Beijing, but there is always a commercial reason that is the real driving force.''

Nanchizi was a pilot project next to the Forbidden City, the ancient palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which razed 900 ancient homes and relocated thousands of people in 2003.

Despite loud protests over low compensation and a formal expression of concern by the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization, the government forced the project through.

Following reconstruction, a handful of former residents were allowed to move back to live in subsidized housing, while other newly built courtyard homes soon appeared on the market for up to eight million yuan (HK$7.54 million) each. ``I all along opposed the Nanchizi plan because they built too many new structures and didn't renovate enough of the old courtyards,'' says Xie Zhensheng, honorary president of the China Cultural Relics Association, on the China Arts Web site.

``Not long ago, some of us old comrades proposed to the government that they must immediately stop the destruction to whole areas of courtyard homes to make way for new tall buildings. We said if you are going to demolish the courtyard homes, then you must rebuild new ones in the old style,'' says the 83-year-old Beijing native.

Since the mid-1980s, well over a third of the 62-square kilometer old city of Beijing has been demolished to make way for wider boulevards and new housing projects, say state press reports.