Starbucks may be "forbidden" at China Palace Museum

BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) Beijing's Forbidden City may close down its Starbucks in the face of growing protests that the presence of a US coffee shop in the former imperial palace is an insult to Chinese culture, a newspaper said today.

An online campaign initiated by a television host to drive Starbucks Corp. out of the Forbidden City had won the backing of more than half a million Internet users, the official China Daily reported today.

Rui Chenggang, an anchorman on state television channel CCTV9, wrote in his blog that Starbucks' presence at the Forbidden City was ''not globalising, but trampling, Chinese culture'', the paper said.

''The museum is working with Starbucks to find a solution by this June in response to the protests,'' Xinhua news agency quoted museum spokesman Feng Nai'en as saying.

''Whether or not Starbucks remains depends on the entire design plan that will be released in the first half of the year.'' Feng said that as part of a facelift, shops in the Forbidden City were being ''reassigned'' and that one-third had already been removed.

The rectangular Forbidden City, formally known as the Palace Museum, covers 74 hectares surrounded by a moat to the north of Tiananmen Square and has a fabled 9,999 rooms. It was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1987.

The Starbucks outlet opened in 2000 amid a media backlash so severe that the museum authorities considered revoking its lease after a couple of months.

Starbucks could not immediately be reached for comment, but the Vice President for Greater China Eden Woon was quoted as saying the company had no plan to leave the site.

''As the contract with the museum has not expired, we have no plan to move out,'' Woon told Thursday's Beijing News.

In 2002, public protests led to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet being booted out of Beihai Park, a former royal garden neighbouring the Forbidden City.

Reuters SP GC1001