Housing activism in urban China: the quest for autonomy in neighbourhood governance

Abstract

The creation of a neoliberal housing regime triggered extensive housing activism during the last decade by middle class homeowners who were protecting their rights to their neighbourhood. Yet such actions also signify the quest for autonomy from the ubiquitous control of the local state as the vanguard of political power hegemony at the grassroots level. Yet there is evidence of an escalation in “non-peaceful” actions in the richest cities in China despite the tight control of the authoritarian state. With data taken from official documents and interviews as well as from news reports about neighbourhood disputes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this article gives an analytic account of the disputes and actions of homeowners in residential neighbourhoods while making their claims as well as on the strategies used by the local state in controlling the homeowners' associations. The article is able to enrich our understanding of housing activism in a non-democratic regime.

Keywords:

• Housing activism
• neighbourhood
• middle class
• authoritarian regime
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Share of land revenue.

2 For example, China still does not have laws for the protection of tenants, whereas homeownership is encouraged by the housing provident fund. At the same time, entrance to local schools makes reference only to ownership but not residence (so renting does not count), etc, just to name a few.

3 Homeowners’ associations are still not being recognised as legal entities.

4 Lands are leased from the state

5 Only cases of property related disputes or actions that were connected with developers, property management agents, or government agencies were selected, but issues on transaction disputes between individuals, displacement and reallocation as well as those connected to the services quality of public utility companies were excluded. After combining multiple reports on the same incidents, the news reports were coded to identify the nature of the issues, the actors involved, actions taken, and the outcomes.

6 Documents forwarded by an official in Shenzhen Municipal Government.

Additional information

Funding

This article is funded by the research projects Homeowner associations and the Reinvention of Urban Local Governance in China supported by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong (#150908) and Home Owner Organisations, Resident Committee and the Reinvention of Grassroots Governance funded by City University of Hong Kong (#7002060) and Homeowner Activism, Cross-neighbourhood and Cross-city Homeownersˇ Networks in Urban China funded by City University of Hong Kong (#7004798).