TITLE:
Redistribution, Growth, and Inclusion: The Development of the Urban Housing System in China, 1949-2015
AUTHORS:
Wenjing Deng, Joris Hoekstra, Marja Elsinga
KEYWORDS:
Housing Policy, China, Market Transition, Hukou Reform, Social Inclusion
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.5 No.4,
December
7,
2017
ABSTRACT: This paper explains the development of the urban housing system in China
from 1949 to 2011 with an emphasis on the factors driving housing inequality
in each policy period. We argue that the logic underpinning the housing policy
had shifted from socialist redistribution to the stimulation of growth in the
process of market economy reform and has been shifting toward social inclusionary
growth since the 2010s. Over the course of time, two institutional factors
(work units and household registration/hukou) have played a key role in
determining individual households’ housing opportunities. The role of the
work units has gradually waned since the 2000s, but the hukou system continues
to be important. In the last part of the paper, we set forth the latest
changes in Chinese housing policy. Since 2011, the central government has
been striving toward a more comprehensive system of housing provision with
the aim of making the housing market more inclusive (though not necessarily
more equal). Finally, we express concern about an emerging though embedded
source of housing inequality: the unequal distribution of family
wealth.