Most of us, in our childhood, probably had the experience of peering down at some sort of insect in the grass of our neighborhood park and wondering what the world must look like to him, dwarfed as he was by all that was around him. The average Beijing pedestrian could most likely identify with that insect.
Perhaps the most striking, and intimidating, feature of Beijing is its enormous scale. Little, at least in the heart of the city, is built to human scale. Massive stone buildings tower above the masses of people walking in the streets. Major roads are constructed in a grandiose manner. Huge monuments throw long shadows. Tiananmen Square seems to stretch indefinitely.
This scale is not coincidental. It is important to remember that urban planners in Beijing are very closely attached to the government. Urban planning, then, serves government interests and expresses government messages. The message inherent in the overpowering scale of Beijing is that the government and the country are all-powerful and the main focus of life in China. The needs of the individual person are to be subsumed to the needs of the government and the country. The individual is minuscule and insignificant next to the Communist Party; s/he exists in its shadow.
This may seem conspiratorial and far from the experience of American cities until one considers, for example, Washington, D.C. How many of the major governmental buildings and monuments in Washington are built to human scale? The Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Mall--all tower above the thousands of people who pass by them every day. Even Lincoln sits in his monument as a copper giant, peering down at the tourists at his feet, looking as though he could rise at any moment and crush them beneath his big toe.