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Abstract
After three decades of housing reform, Chinese government embarked on a large-scale expansion of public housing provision over the last few years. This very ambitious plan of public housing construction aims at reducing the negative impacts from global economic slowdown since 2008; at the same time, tackling the huge inflation in and achieve the harmonious society development strategy. This initiative signals a sharp change in housing policy from that in previous decades. It also put China on a different track in housing provision when many other countries tried to cut back public spending to maintain economic stability. This paper aims to provide a timely analysis of the recent resurgence of public housing sector in urban China by examining the policy framework, the new structure of provision, and the driving forces behind this new initiative. We will also assess the similarities and differences of this approach from the Chinese pre-reform housing system and public housing practice in other industrialized countries.
Notes
1 There are a lot of debates in China on whether SRH should be accounted as ‘public housing’ (security housing) as buyers of SRH are not restricted to low-income households. However, according to our definition of public housing—housing that allocated by government rather than market, SRH qualifies to be named after public housing in Chinese context.
2 According to the Chinese Ministry of Finance, in 2010 land revenues of local government totaled 3.01 trillion RMB, which accounts for 7.5 per cent of GDP, and about 74 per cent of total budgetary revenues of all local governments. However, it should be noted that in most years roughly half of land revenue was used for compensating those farmers losing their land or those urban households relocated due to urban renewal.
3 According to the regulation of PRH in Beijing, the rent of PRH is about 80 per cent of the market rent of nearby comparable housing. In Shanghai, the rent of PRH is said to follow the so-called ‘quasi-market rent’ principle and the average rents of first two municipal PRH projects are just slightly less than those of nearby comparable market renting housing.
4 Since 1994 fiscal reform, the ratio of central government in total fiscal revenue has increased from 22 per cent in 1993 to 51 per cent in 2010. But the ratio of central government in total fiscal expenditure decreased from 28 per cent in 1993 to 17.8 per cent in 2010. This implies that local government has to self-finance the gap with own additional resources and land revenue is the key complement of nonfiscal revenue. The per cent of land revenue as of local government's fiscal revenue sharply rose from 9.2 per cent in 1999 to 74 per cent in 2010.
5 It is reported by PFPC (Citation2012) that in 2011 only 37 per cent of rural–urban migrants are accommodated by private rental market and the rest lives in the over-crowded dorm or shanty shed at work place.