residence for both government officials and the merchants who sold to them, due to its proximity to the palace. They built themselves the siheyuan courtyard-style houses that remain a valued part of the district's cultural heritage. The Qings stationed four divisions of their army in the district, which was officially at the time part of Daxing County (now a district south of the city). The overthrow of the Qings and the establishment of the Republic of China in the wake of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 led to the area northeast of the Forbidden City being opened to the public for the first time. Under the government of the new Republic of China, the districts of Beijing were reorganized. Today's Dongcheng was known as the inner first and inner third districts. Four decades later, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War led to the People's Republic of China displacing the Republic as the sovereign government of mainland China. This had two effects on Dongcheng. First, the two districts in the area were renamed Dongsi and Dongdan, corresponding to streets that still exist in the northern and central portions of the district, in 1952; six years later the two were merged and renamed Dongcheng. That district was then merged with the Chongwen District to its south in 2010. Secondly, many of the wealthy siheyuan residents fled to Taiwan or elsewhere in anticipation of the Communist victory and the likely expropriation of their property; those who remained or did not leave in time indeed suffered that fate. The new government subdivided many of the houses in order to deliver on its promise of better housing for the working class, and the neighborhood culture of the hutongs was sustained. However, the increased wealth in China created by the economic reforms of the late 20th century, following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, put pressure on Beijing's city government to demolish hutongs in Dongcheng and elsewhere. They were perceived as architecturally undistinguished substandard slums that could not be fully modernized, to be replaced by urban renewal projects such as the Oriental Plaza mall complex that would impress visitors to the 2008 Summer Olympics. Often many poorer residents found themselves displaced, unable to afford the luxury housing that replaced their demolished homes. In the 1990s it was estimated that 40% of Beijing's Old City, which includes Dongcheng, had been demolished; some predictions suggest that