Abstract
Housing privatization seems to suggest a process of state retreat. However, this is not always the case in China. This paper examines an estate that is mixed with work-unit housing and municipal public housing to understand its changing governance. It is intriguing to observe that the state has had to return to this neighbourhood to strengthen its administration following housing privatization, because the attempt to transfer responsibility to commercial property management failed. The neighbourhood governance, however, has transformed from one based on work-units to a government-funded administrative agency. The return of the state has been achieved through professional social workers, but it is struggling to operate, leading to the alienation and disempowerment of former state work-unit residents. The side effect of this approach on governance is that, through encouraging market provision and commercial operation which is not fully working, reciprocal activities are restrained. Since housing privatization, the neighbourhood has deteriorated; from a brand-new estate to an “old and dilapidated neighbourhood” in less than 25 years.
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Notes
- 1.
This was the concern raised both in an interview with a street officer in 2004 and ten years later in 2014 by another officer.
- 2.
This is the conclusion inferred to by this study, because our interviewees constantly mentioned the importance of “financial independence,” suggesting that “we surely could have done more at our wish if we had our own source of money” (a street officer, November 2014).
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professor Xigang Zhu for helping with interviews in 2014. This paper was first published in Urban Geography, 39:8 (2018).
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Wu, F. (2020). Housing Privatization and the Return of the State: Changing Governance in China. In: Jacoby, S., Cheng, J.(. (eds) The Socio-spatial Design of Community and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6811-4_8
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