Residence Status and Housing in Urban China

Ce document est un fac-similé de l'édition imprimée. Espace Populations Sociétés est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Residence Status and Housing in Urban China – the Case of Beijing Housing is one of the key resources separating the haves from the have-nots in urban China. As recently as the early 1980s, when incomes were low and relatively equal among urban residents, the more salient dimension of inequality was in the housing system [Logan, Bian and Bian, 1999]. At that time, the source of inequality was not price but access to public rental housing (and to better equipped and larger units), and this was contingent on political position, work unit authority, and education [Walder, 1992]. Only official local residents had any entitlement at all. Subsequently much discussion has centered on the spiraling cost of housing, suggesting that financial resources might become the prime determinant of housing market outcomes. But housing purchase at a full market price is still among the least common forms of tenure, and the ability to buy at a discount – a core policy for the privatization of housing in China over the last two decades – can offset the disadvantage of modest wealth. Two decades into the history of market reform in post-socialist countries, it is still unclear to what extent market forces have fundamentally affected people's daily lives and livelihoods. What was once a scarce resource available at cheap rents is becoming a consumer commodity for a nation of home-owners. But the market pathways to having a