Subsidized Housing Policy Transfer: From Liberal-interventionist Hong Kong to Marketized Socialist Shenzhen

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the comparative housing and policy transfer scholarship by analysing marketized-socialist Shenzhen’s processes of transferring liberal-interventionist Hong Kong’s subsidized housing policy between 1988 and 2020 and by explaining the transfer trajectory and policy outcomes. Data were collected from in-depth interviews, published policy documents and site visits. Applying policy transfer concepts, the study reveals that the transfer evolved from almost wholesale transplant to self-policy development, then lately signs of re-convergence emerged. Overall, Shenzhen utilises more market resources and regulatory tools in subsidy provision but operates a much smaller public housing sector than Hong Kong. The transfer trajectory and policy outcomes are rooted in incompatibility and changes in policy contextual environment, specifically socio-economic functions of housing policy and the cities’ jurisdictional and spatial scales; and in policy operational environments: differences in planning governance, tenure policy and housing finance model. Temporality is essential for understanding policy transfer and its efficacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Subsidized housing policy
• policy transfer
• transferability and temporal dimension
• liberal-interventionist Hong Kong
• marketized socialist Shenzhen

Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was funded by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 17612215 HKU).

The author wishes to thank all interviewees for their valuable input and generous sharing. All errors and misinterpretation are nonetheless those of the author. The reviewers’ valuable comments are also much appreciated.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Data collected from a research centre in the March 2017 field trip. They were similar to the housing statistics contained in the Shenzhen Municipal Development Plan for Housing Security (2016–2020) p. 2–4 (Shenzhen Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau), but with more details.

2. The number of household comprised of permanent population is calculated from the number of permanent population (12,528,300) and average household size of 4.04 found in SMSB (2018).

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was funded by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 17612215 HKU).