Emerging Public-Private Partnership in the Provision of Affordable Housing in China’s Major Cities

Abstract

With rapid urbanization, Chinese cities are growing bigger, and their residents are becoming more diverse. This chapter highlights the challenge of developing livable cities, in particular ensuring sufficient affordable housing of adequate quality. China transformed the urban housing provision to the market through a housing marketization reform in 1998. Since then, housing market prices have increased rapidly in major cities, resulting in the decline of housing affordability. This chapter assesses both the government’s affordable housing programs, as well as emerging public-private partnerships aimed at improving housing affordability for the low-income households and migrants. With promising schemes for increasing housing affordability in the works, it remains to be seen whether and how China will succeed in boosting the livability of its cities.