Placing public housing provision in Chinese cities: land-centered development, cadre review mechanism, and residential land supply

Abstract

Since 2007, China has launched several rounds of national low-income housing campaigns to alleviate housing affordability issues. However, little academic attention has been devoted to the actual practices of public housing provisions in Chinese cities of different fiscal, political and economic situations, as well as heterogeneities in their municipal responses. Based on a prefecture-level panel dataset (including 290 Chinese cities) from 2009 to 2017, the empirical analysis reveals an uneven landscape of public housing provision significantly associated with the local government-driven land-based development and the time horizon of the city leaders’ current tenure. The empirical results suggest that the level of public housing provision is not only negatively impacted by the degree of land finance but also influenced by the industrial-sector-biased land supply strategies. However, the local governments’ motivation in supplying public housing land is found to be stronger for cities in which the lengths of the city party secretaries’ tenures are longer.

Keywords:

• Public housing
• land-centered development
• land supply structure
• career incentives
• Chinese cities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In recent years, China’s government policy documents and state media often use the specific term ‘Indemnity housing’ (baozhangxing zhufang) or ‘Indemnity and comfortable living project’ (baozhangxing anju gongcheng) to refer all public and subsidized housing for low-income population. Recent studies investigate the emerging policies and practices of Chinese ‘Indemnity housing’ using various terms, such as ‘affordable housing’ (Dang et al., 2014; Hu & Qian, 2017; Zou, 2014), ‘low-income housing’ (Huang, 2012), ‘subsidized housing’ (Wei & Chiu, 2018), and ‘public housing’ (Zhou & Ronald, 2017). However, the nature and characteristics of China’s ‘Indemnity housing’ are very similar to those of ‘public housing’, which is a widely used and discussed term in the international housing literature. Despite various types, all ‘Indemnity housings’ in China are provided or subsidized by the state. To avoid confusion and to be consistent with the international literature, this article will mainly use ‘public housing’ to refer to state-subsidized housing for low- and middle-income populations in China.

2 Various terms have been coined to explain China’s urban development driven by land, including ‘landed urbanization’ (Lin, 2014), ‘land-centered accumulation’ (Hsing, 2010), ‘land-centered politics’ (Lin, 2009; Zhang, 2014), and ‘land-centered development’ (Gao et al., 2019; Wu, 2015; Ye & Wu, 2014). In the current paper, we used the notion of ‘land-centered development’ to characterize the popular urban and regional development patterns in which land urbanization is actively pursued by local governments to generate revenue and mobilize domestic and foreign investments.

3 Alternative housing assistance—housing vouchers have also attracted the attention of policy-makers and scholars in recent decades. Compared with public housing units, housing vouchers help low-income families afford decent housing and increase individuals’ freedom to choose their neighborhood and household size (Leung et al., 2012; Yılmaz & Yeşilırmak, 2021). Some empirical studies found that housing vouchers could improve the welfare of low-income households, but only in the short term. Furthermore, on the household level, housing vouchers may widen the quality gap between low-income and high-income families’ children (Gong & Leung, 2020). Additionally, transportation vouchers could make up for the problem of long-distance travel to some extent (Yılmaz & Yeşilırmak, 2021). Hence, low-income people tend to select public housing units in suburban districts to enjoy favorable rents.

4 Although shanty town redevelopment and CHCP have been incorporated into the ‘indemnity and comfortable living project’ since 2010, in this research, public housing land refers to the land supplied for EAH, CRH and PRH, which mainly target low and middle-income households and are the pillars of China’s public housing system. In China’s government policy documents, shanty towns usually refer to declining neighborhoods or illegally-built shanties in inner-city districts, state-owned manufacturing and mining areas, state-owned farms and peri-urban areas (Li et al., 2018). Shanty town redevelopment housing, which includes not only EAH and CRH, but also commodity housing, is reserved for relocated households.

5 Land supply areas for public housing at each Chinese city at/above prefectural level have been reported by the China Land and Resource Yearbook since 2009. These public housing units include the projects located in different locations (e.g. city centers and fringe areas) in a city.

6 Urban poverty population refers to the urban population with Minimum Living Standard Assistance (MLSA) (chenzhen dibao renkou).

7 Due to the data availability, the descriptive analysis below will include all of Chinese municipalities, but the empirical regression modeling will only contain 290 Chinese cities at/above prefectural level.

8 Although CRH has been merged into PRH since 2013, the China Land and Resource Yearbook continued to categorize the subsidized rental housing into two types (CRH and PRH) and provide the relevant land supply information after 2013.

9 The 18th National Congress of the CCP held in November 2012 witnessed the appointment of China’s new leaders and the succession of power in China. Immediately after the leadership succession, the new central authority proposed the Opinions of the State Council on Accelerating the Redevelopment of Shanty Area in July 2013, indicating the gradual shift of the emphasis of the low-income housing campaign from newly construction of subsidized housing estate to shantytown redevelopment. Meanwhile, as shown in Figure 4, shantytown redevelopment housing has become the major component of the ‘indemnity and comfortable living project’ since 2013.

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no.71403193) and the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (Grant no. 14YJC630216).