Si-ming Li

Housing Consumption in Urban China: A Comparative Study of Beijing and Guangzhou

The Chinese government has made repeated attempts to end the so-called welfare provision of housing so as to reduce the burden on the state and the individual work units. Development companies have been set up to undertake housing construction and the housing units sold as commodities; these are referred to as ‘commodity housing’. The author conducts a comparative study of housing consumption in Beijing and Guangzhou, drawing upon two surveys of newly completed commodity housing conducted in 1996. In Beijing, which is dominated by the traditional socialist system of economic and social organisation, only a tiny portion of such housing is traded on the open market. In Guangzhou, where many of the market-oriented reform measures were first experimented with, the open market already accounts for a substantial proportion of the newly constructed stock. In both Beijing and Guangzhou, however, the work unit still constitutes the single most important buyer and distributor of commodity housing. Further, if the analysis is restricted to the subsidised sectors, which also include housing managed by the municipal housing bureau and resettlement housing, a comparison of the two samples reveals quite similar differential factors underlying housing consumption in the two cities, despite their difference in social and economic structure. The traditional redistributive system still exerts tremendous influence on housing consumption, even in cities renowned for their openness and market orientation. Certain differences in the results between the two cities are also revealed. For example, seniority is important only in Beijing, whereas professional and technical workers assume a special position only in Guangzhou. These differences point towards the importance of contextual considerations in the study of housing consumption in China.

Housing Preferences in a Transitional Housing System: The Case of Beijing, China

For a prolonged period of time, the Chinese state had monopolised housing provision. Chinese people had virtually no choice of housing. Much has changed with the deepening of the market-oriented reform launched since 1979. A housing market, though not yet a full-fledged one, has been established. People now have greater freedom to choose their homes. More and more people buy houses from the market. There is, therefore, an urgent need for an inquiry into how housing decisions in China are made, what peoples preferences for housing are, and what factors influence their housing choices. To this end, the authors study the joint choice of dwelling and neighbourhood by potential homebuyers in Beijing. Because the housing market in China is still in an embryonic state and highly regulated by the government, one may not be able to get information on actual housing choices to reveal housing preferences. This study thus adopts the stated preference modelling approach. Data were collected in 2001 in Beijing, capital of China. The study shows that, in general, neighbourhood variables are more important than dwelling variables in the choice of housing in Beijing. Associated with this is the importance attached to districts with a good reputation and the concern for dwelling and neighbourhood security.

Life Course and Housing Tenure Change in Urban China: A Study of Guangzhou

In the West, homeownership has been seen as the ultimate housing career. It is interesting that in ‘socialist’ China, a major objective of the urban housing reform, which began in 1979, is to privatize the housing stock and promote homeownership. The past few years in particular have witnessed rapid increases in the homeownership rate. The present study seeks to conduct a longitudinal analysis of Chinas road to homeownership, making use of retrospective life history data collected in 2001 in the city of Guangzhou. The event of interest is the transition from renting to owning. Analysis using Coxs proportional hazards models shows that age is associated with increasing homeownership, as is higher education attainment. Change in marital status is a more important factor causing the housing tenure switch than is marital status per se. The subtle relations among households, work units and the state still affect households’ housing access and tenure choice behaviour. People working in non-state work units tend to be associated with lower tenure change risks. On the other hand, membership of the Chinese Communist Party enhances the tenure switch.

Life course and residential mobility in Beijing, China

This paper analyzes the residential mobility rate in Beijing over the period 1980–2001 as revealed by retrospective residential histories collected by a questionnaire survey conducted in early 2001. The results show that there was a sharp increase in residential mobility in the early reform period; however, from the mid-1980s onwards the mobility rate has been oscillating, with a slightly downward trend. Adjusting the gross mobility rate observed by means of logit regression estimation shows that this downward trend is more than a statistical artefact. Structural forces are at work continually to restrain residential moves under the reform. The regression results also show that, although there are similarities between the effects of various life-course variables on residential mobility in Beijing and those in cities in market economies, substantial differences are also found. Age exhibits similar curvilinear effects but mobility peaks at a somewhat later age. Homeownership with partial property rights deters mobility by an even greater margin in Beijing than in cities in the West. Change in marital status is important, but does not automatically bring about a change in residence. Birth of a child, moreover, appears to carry minimal weight in residential change. In this sense, the thesis that residential mobility is a housing-adjustment process is less applicable to the case of Beijing than it is in cities in the West.

Residential Mobility and Urban Restructuring under Market Transition: A Study of Guangzhou, China

Residential mobility can be conceptualized as an outcome of a choice process exercised under complex institutional and personal constraints. Chinas rather unique pattern of housing market segmentation under market transition impinges directly on residential location and relocation. Drawing upon data from a sample survey, this paper analyzes the pattern of residential moves resulting from commodity housing construction in a major Chinese city, Guangzhou. Most moves are of short distance, although the general direction is towards the urban periphery. Danweis and the municipal housing bureau, rather than the market per se, are the primary driving forces behind suburbanization in China today.

Redevelopment, displacement, housing conditions, and residential satisfaction: a study of Shanghai

Chinese cities are undergoing massive transformation. One after another, inner-city neighbourhoods of pre-1949 origin and work-unit compounds built in the socialist period are being torn apart, giving way to glossy office towers and luxurious condominiums. Millions of people have been uprooted and forced to be relocated. Mass media and research based on case studies generally convey a message of widespread grievance among the displaced residents. Based on a survey of 1200 households conducted in Shanghai in 2006, the present study provides a systematic account of the profiles of the displaced residents, juxtaposed against other resident groups of the city. The major conclusion is that, irrespective of all the criticisms concerning unregulated demolitions and forced evictions, the housing conditions of displaced residents are somewhat better than those of other Shanghai residents, both objectively and in terms of subjective evaluations.

The Road to Homeownership Under Market Transition: Beijing, 1980-2001

The gradualist housing reform over the past quarter century has produced a highly complex mix of housing tenure forms and consumption patterns in urban China. Using a sample of sixteen hundred residential histories derived from a survey conducted in 2001, this article traces how individuals and households in Beijing responded to the different phases of the urban housing reform and gradually moved from renting work unit housing to owner occupation over the period 1980 to 2001. The proportional hazards model is used to analyze the factors that affected the tenure change at different points in time. The findings show that despite gradual introduction of market mechanisms, established rules that favored seniority in the workplace and people holding redistributive powers continued to be practiced in reform China. Cadres in Party and government organizations and state-owned enterprises and people with many years in the work unit were those who were most likely to experience the ownership switch.

IMPACTS OF THE NATIONAL TRUNK HIGHWAY SYSTEM ON ACCESSIBILITY IN CHINA.

Abstract Recently, China has launched a major programme of motorway construction – the National Trunk Highway System (NTHS). The present study analyses the impacts of this highway development programme on the pattern of accessibility gradients, trying to draw implications for regional growth. Obviously, this programme will bring about substantial improvements in accessibility across the nation. There is evidence, however, that highway investment exhibits diminishing returns over time. Greater improvements in the nodal accessibility of the major coastal cities, as compared with cities in interior and periphery provinces, in the initial stage of the highway development programme are found. But as time progresses, the NTHS will bring about more balanced development in the spatial sense.

The Changing Meaning of Neighbourhood Attachment in Chinese Commodity Housing Estates: Evidence from Guangzhou

The housing reform in urban China since the 1990s and the ensuing spatial and social dynamics gave rise to new kinds of neighbourhoods with new logics of neighbouring and neighbourhood attachment. Meanwhile, neighbourhoods are actively promoted as platforms for policy implementation. Both are reasons to revisit the meaning of neighbourhood attachment in the Chinese context. This article focuses on the roles of neighbourly interaction and physical environment, juxtaposing post-reform commodity housing estates against traditional neighbourhoods. The analysis draws on both qualitative and quantitative datasets from three case studies in Guangzhou and a city-wide survey. Results indicate that, compared with traditional neighbourhoods, residents of commodity housing estates have weak neighbourly interactions but strong neighbourhood attachment, which is based mainly on their satisfaction with the physical environment and less on their neighbourly contacts. Neighbourhoods in China have apparently shifted their function from social arenas to privatised living environments.

Urban Housing in China: Market Transition, Housing Mobility and Neighbourhood Change

Re-commodification of urban land and housing has produced a highly complex tenure mix and a much more vibrant and differentiated urban landscape. Land leasing, being a major source of fund to urban municipal governments, fuels the expansionary drive and urban sprawl. It also underlies massive redevelopment of inner city districts. On the other hand, institutionalised separation of the urban from the rural, epitomised by the hukou system, has remained largely intact. Massive influx of migrants has produced a two-class urban society comprising de jure residents and migrants. Differential claim to land ownership under the hukou system has turned villages in former suburban areas into migrant enclaves. The six papers in this theme issue examine various aspects of how individuals and households in Chinese cities have coped with the never-ending changes in the policy and built environment. The focus is on housing behaviour, but neighbourhood issues also feature prominently.