Housing allocation with Chinese characteristics: the case of talent workers in Shenzhen and Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, the Chinese state has been developing new public housing programs, which are widely used to distribute public housing among talent workers. This paper examines public housing allocation to talent workers, especially to talent migrants. It argues that local governments have established a unique housing allocation approach best described as a state-employer model and that this model demonstrates a state-market hybridity in urban governance. The hybridity largely results from the “Chinese characteristics”, the party-state’s use of socialist institutions and management of the market based on these institutions. Although local governments have significantly improved migrant housing conditions, this hybrid model of housing allocation has inevitably resulted in both inequity and inefficiency in urban housing provision.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing allocation
• state-employer model
• talent workers
• migrants
• employer
• public rental housing
• talent worker housing

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for constructive and insightful comments. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Consistent with Morrison (2014), we use the term “talent worker” to describe people who work in professional, managerial, and highly-skilled occupations that usually require one or often more academic credentials, typically in science, technology, engineering or medical disciplines. Talent worker housing is reserved for occupancy by talent workers. Many Chinese government documents have regularized the use of the word “talents” as a noun to refer to talent workers; see e.g., the “Thousand Talents Plan” (Chinese State n.d.).

2. According to Shenzhen (2016, 2015a), the government of Shenzhen defines talent workers based on five heterogeneous types: (1) zhuanye jishu (professions and technology), (2) gao jineng (high skills), (3) jingying guanli (management), (4) dangzheng (party and state), and (5) shehui gongzuo (social work). Talent workers in the first and fifth types can be categorized as professionals. Talent workers in the second type are highly-skilled technicians. Talent workers in the third and fourth types are managers.

3. According to the 2010 Census of Shenzhen, there were about 7.5 million migrants with high-school (or equivalent) diploma or below, accounting for 88% of the total migrant population in Shenzhen. Under the city’s housing allocation policies (Table 1), this migrant majority is not eligible for either PRH or TWH, similar to the challenges encountered by the migrant majority in other top-tier cities.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [Grant no.: 2017A030313248] and Peking University (Shenzhen) Future City Lab Tiehan Research Fund [2020-2023].