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Published in:
Centering Housing Questions in Asian Cities Read chapter Read first chapter

2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

7. Development and Inequality in Urban China: The Privatization of Homeownership and the Transformation of Everyday Practice

Author : Sarah Tynen

Published in: Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US

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Abstract

Whereas the existing literature on housing in urban China primarily focuses on the influence of globalization and the state’s strategies of neoliberalism on the national scale, studies of the individual experience of everyday life reveal the multidirectional character of state, market, and society relationship. This chapter based on an ethnographic study uses interviews and participant observation in Nanjing’s four different apartment complexes—two gated communities and two public housing compounds—to capture the experiences of people in the midst of dramatic changes in urban housing. The findings reveal the emerging social spaces of the middle classes, as they engage with new production and consumption processes of the housing market. Citizens negotiate the changing role of the state in service provision, the deterioration of social life in the neighborhood, and the burden of high housing prices. Dynamic conceptions of ownership, responsibility, and individuality constituted by the commercialized housing market create new practices of everyday life.

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previous chapter Beyond Property Rights and Displacement: China’s Neoliberal Transformation and Housing Inequalities
next chapter Weaving the Common in the Financialized City: A Case of Urban Cohousing Experience in South Korea
Footnotes
1
I use quotes around the words ‘socialism’ and ‘state-led capitalism’ because China’s political-economic system has never been wholly one or the other, and these terms are highly contested. The ideas of the role of the state and market in China occupy a gray area of uncertainty. The political-economic relationship in China will be further discussed later in the chapter when discussing neoliberalism in China.
 
2
The use of ‘middle classes’ in identifying interviewees will be further discussed in the methods section.
 
3
Neoliberalism refers to policies that encourage free trade, privatization, deregulation, and enhancement of the private sector. When defining neoliberalism in this way, an important distinction to make is that between ‘ideological neoliberalism’ and ‘existing neoliberalism’. Whereas ideological neoliberalism refers to that defined earlier as free-market policies, ‘existing neoliberalism’ is defined as the increased role of the state in regulating the market and ensuring the market to function (Harvey 2005).
 
4
The difference between work-unit (danwei) apartment complexes built during the socialist Mao era, which are also often gated, and the gated communities of semi-privatized homeownership of gated communities (xiaoqu) in contemporary urban China will be further discussed, with photos and description in the ethnographic empirical section.
 
5
The Chinese term ‘wuye guanli’ 物业管理 is often translated into English as ‘property management’. The character 物 ‘wu’ means ‘thing’ or ‘substance’ and the character 业 ‘ye’ means ‘profession’ or ‘business’. The characters together as 物业 ‘wuye’ are usually translated into English as ‘property’ or ‘real estate’. The characters 管理 ‘guanli’ means to supervise, manage, or administer. The term ‘wuye guanli’ has come to mean in recent years in colloquial Chinese as the organization within a set of apartment complexes that is responsible to general management of the property, such as trash, mail, ground landscaping, security guards, electricity, plumbing and other issues related to the homes, including the buying, renting, and selling of individual units. Sometimes, the wuye guanli involves participation by the homeowners, which is a different body of literature and topic outside the scope of this chapter (see, for example, Read 2008).
 
6
All names used in this chapter are pseudonyms. All research was conducted under best practices for protection of research subjects using anthropological guidelines. The research was conducted with IRB approval from the University of Colorado under IRB protocol #13-0149.
 
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Metadata
Title
Development and Inequality in Urban China: The Privatization of Homeownership and the Transformation of Everyday Practice
Author
Sarah Tynen
Copyright Year
2019
Book
Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia

Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51750-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-55015-6

Copyright Year: 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_7

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