"Supreme", "Royal", "Luxury", "High Class", "Best", "Unique", "Irreplaceable". Come April 15th, these words will cost more than their definitive value. If you’re a Beijing-based business, using them for your outdoor advertisements, that is.

The Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce has given a deadline for all brands advertising outdoor in the Beijing area to correct all offending ads or face fines upwards of 30,000 Yuan ($4,600). The move is part of an initiative by the government to tighten the widening income gap in China and to thwart brands “excessively advertising foreign things”.

This all comes after China began to cave under heavy criticism over the weight its economic inflation is having on the nations hundreds of millions of low-income farmers and factory workers.

There is rampant imbalance of wealth distrobution in China and Premier Wen Jiabao says that the state economic plan over the next 4 years will resolve this particular issue.

So, when the signifiers of luxury are banned, how does luxury survive?

The definition of “luxury” must change.

By 2020, it’s predicted that China will become the worlds largest luxury market. If there is to be a sense of balance, the change cannot be one of superficiality. Words removed from outdoor adverts may nurure the wounds of moral with low income denizens, but it will not illicit true change. The change needs to be lasting and meaningful. The model of luxury in China is of the old world, where opulence is king.This is slowly changing through out the worlds leading communities.

The definition of what luxury is what needs a reexamination, not the words that signify it.