Housing Policy and Practice in China (review)

Housing Policy and Practice in China is the first book in English on China's housing policy and reform. The authors' research materials are mainly derived from documentary sources, such as official policy statements, circulars, and relevant regulations of the State Council, and many academic publications by local Chinese scholars and experts. Ya Ping Wang and Alan Murie mention that they also conducted field study in China, but the findings in this book do not seem to be explicitly attributed to the results of this field study.

Nonetheless, the book has something special to offer, namely an in-depth analysis of one Chinese city, Xian, especially in chapter 3, which utilizes a substantial collection of policy papers and city regulations to describe the emergence of a socialist housing system. The book could have been even more helpful if it had been more explicit about Xian's relative position in the larger context of housing policy in China in general. For example, taking into account its size, financial strength, geographical location, progress toward a market economy, and above all special policy considerations by the State Council, has Xian been making slower or faster progress in housing reform compared to cities like Shanghai, Tientsin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen?

There are two main themes in the book: housing under state socialism and the privatization of public housing. In addition to the Introduction (chapter 1) and Conclusion (chapter 9), three chapters (2-4) are devoted to the establishment of public housing with socialist characteristics, and four chapters (5-8) cover housing policies, including housing reform, from 1978 to the mid-1990s. In a word, the book deals with the state's intervention on a massive scale in housing in China from 1949 to 1977, followed by the retreat of the state from all functional areas of housing during the reform era from 1978 onward. To maintain coherence among the chapters, however, it does not seem necessary to include a discussion of rural housing (chapter 8), because rural housing in China does not normally fall into the orbit of state intervention and the Centrally Planned Economy.

There is no question that the socialist system laid the foundation for massive state intervention in housing. However, the phenomenal growth of public housing should be directly attributed to another factor, namely, the Centrally Planned Economy (CPE), through which an enormous amount of investment was pumped into residential housing from 1949 onward and especially during the reform era. With the ascendance of a market-oriented economy, the "privatization" of housing has gradually become a key issue and has come to dominate the debates on housing reform in China today.

Wang and Murie are confronted with the formidable question of how to characterize China's public housing system. Since housing policy has been concerned mainly with employment-related benefits, the concept of "social wage" (p. 71) or "social welfare" (p. 6) is too general to highlight the salient features of China's housing policy in urban areas. On the basis of the discussions in this book, for example, housing is to be understood mainly as one of the occupational benefits of public sector employees (of enterprises, government units, and service oriented institutions: "[I]n this system, housing was tied up with employment. Only those who were employed by the institution or enterprise were entitled to housing" (p. 7). However, only in exceptional cases is housing also treated in part as a component of social welfare provided to the needy (e.g., hardship households and residents of dangerous buildings; see pp. 6 and 187-201).

In what context and by what mechanisms are housing benefits provided and distributed? In the authors' view, China, operating under a state-socialist system, follows the model of a CPE where the "state distributes costs and benefits, resulting from national functioning and development, equally among all population segments" (p. 3). China is used as an illustration of this model by suggesting...