Abstract
Housing commodification seems to suggest that a process of a state is embracing private governance. However, private governance in Chinese neighborhoods is a two-way trajectory. This paper examined two types of housing neighborhoods, namely, a work-unit housing neighborhood and gated commodity housing to understand the changes in neighborhood governance. It is interesting to observe that during the Covid-19 epidemic period, the state government enhanced its presence and public trust in neighborhood governance by changing the former ways of self-governance. As a strategy for the state to return to local governance, the grid governance is the reconfiguration of administrative resources at a neighborhood level and professionalizes neighborhood organizations to ensure the capacities of the state to solve social crises and neighborhood governance. The potential side effects of changing neighborhood governance are that while the implementation of grid governance has improved internal connections among residents, the empowered neighborhood governments acting as the “state agent on the ground” leads to an estrangement between residents and private governance. The underdevelopment of neighborhood autonomy is not only due to the restriction of state government, but more importantly, the reciprocal relationship of state-led neighborhood governance in the context of housing privatization development in China.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is regarded as a global disaster in which society or its larger secondary systems, such as neighborhoods, suffer social damage and material loss [1,2,3].Since a form of social life, the neighborhood, acts as the primary ‘responding organizations’, representing the ‘very effort’ involvement of neighborhood organizations; since a disaster tests the governance capabilities, ‘occasion’ demonstrates the ongoing nature of such a crisis [4]
The original rational of consolidating grid governance in the outbreak was to re-create a territorial form of social relation, which might be described as state-to-citizen, similar to the relationship between leaders and subordinates in the socialism, where neighborhood officials were familiar with their residents
Different from past social participations in the neighborhood governance for the purpose of enhancing residential autonomy, China’s political system emphasized the priority of national interests, resulting in social participations that are supported by neighborhood governments, including administrative and legal support
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is regarded as a global disaster in which society or its larger secondary systems, such as neighborhoods, suffer social damage and material loss [1,2,3]. Private governance does not possess social capitals at a neighborhood level [16] This is because the emerging forms of neighborhood. The approaches of grid governance do not show a return of state to the control of a totalitarian society, but rather reflect the emergence of a new neighborhood relationship, combining authoritarian coercion elements with a series of neoliberal strategies in the form of emphasizing local autonomy and individual discipline. This study attempted to analyze how China state government can use grid governance strategy to extend the governance capacity into neighborhood governance and to rebuild social trust by observing the outbreak as a crisis of private governance. This article reveals the impacts of a grid governance scheme on the private governance in China in post-pandemic times.
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