Abstract
China has a unique experience of public housing development. Before 1998, public ownership dominated the housing provision in urban China. Nonetheless, the employer-based welfare housing program was formally abolished in 1998, and the overwhelming majority of the public housing stock was quickly privatized. However, the Chinese government again committed to developing public housing in 2007, and a large-scale public housing construction program has been implemented since 2009. This chapter aims to first provide a summary of pre-reform and post-reform public housing development in China and then discuss why the Chinese government has again turned to public housing as a solution after about 30 years of housing reform and privatization. It shows that the recent push for public housing in China should not be seen as a step backward or as the restoration of the pre-reform welfare housing system. Instead, it represents the central authority’s increasing recognition of the complexity of urban housing systems in a modern market economy.
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