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Housing attainment among rural migrants has received wide attention. However, studies on the homeownership gap between ethnic minority and Han majority rural migrants in China remain unexplored. Using data from National Migrants Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey (NMPDMS), present study applies the logit regression and Blinder–Oaxaca–Fairlie decomposition method to address this. The results suggest that ethnic minority rural migrants are less likely to become homeowners than the Han majority, and that this homeownership gap may differ across various ethnic groups. Compared with the Han majority, the Manchu have a higher probability of owning a home, whereas other ethnic groups are often associated with a lower homeownership rate. Observable socio-economic characteristics play a minor role in this ethnic homeownership gap, whereas most of them are attributable to unobserved factors, such as discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how an increase in home value affects fertility decisions of homeowners in China by exploiting regional heterogeneity in housing markets driven by local regulatory and geographic land constraints. In sharp contrast to the literature on developed countries, our instrumental variable results show a negative fertility response to house value growth driven by the recent housing boom in China, where a 100,000-yuan increase in lagged home values—about 43% of the average housing wealth at baseline—results in a 14% decrease in the likelihood of home-owning women giving birth. Further evidence suggests that underdeveloped credit markets may suppress the positive wealth effect of house value growth on childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is an ownership society, but with a paradox – many homeowners do not live in the apartments/houses they own, and instead live in rental housing. This is different from the pattern in Western economies where households own multiple properties but still live in an owned unit. The paper is situated within the literature on the financialization of housing and the changing meaning of homeownership. We examine the paradox by studying its patterns and dynamics using 2017 China Household Finance Survey data. We find that the owner-renting in China is a result of spatial, temporal and functional mismatches between housing needs. The intrinsic investment strategy and services linked to homeownership have made it imperative to own homes, regardless a household's housing needs. Young, single, better-off and split households, and those in large, expensive cities are more likely to be owners-renting. In addition, institutional barriers in the housing market such as migrant status, housing purchase limit policy, and subsidized housing encourage owner-renting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the concept and practices of "participatory representation" in the Chinese context, a subset of substantive representation that emphasizes "authenticity" and participatory engagement in solving neighborhood problems. Through examining Chinese homeowner associations (HOAs), we explain how representation operates at the neighborhood level in a grassroots organizational context without a Western style of democracy, identifying the determinants and capacities of participatory representation. By proposing a model of representational capacity and using logistic regression analysis, we find that four factors have an impact on the quality of participatory representation: (1) homeowner attributes (i.e., gender, occupation, and length of residence), (2) problem-solving effectiveness of representative organizations, (3) transparent and open elections, and (4) level of homeowner participation. We further suggest that in a transitional society like China, these representative organizations, namely, HOAs, act as important training grounds for democratic skills, through which participatory citizen engagement is being learned and cultivated. This study contributes to contemporary accounts of participatory representation by identifying the informal representation patterns within HOAs and their potential to foster civic participation and social democracy in China in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban communities in China have undergone fundamental transformations with increasing awareness of property rights among homeowners. This study investigates homeowner right protection in urban China by examining the link between rights recognition and conflict escalation. Based on questionnaire surveys conducted in Shanghai, Xiamen, and Shenzhen, this study identifies escalated conflicts associated with rising awareness of property rights in Chinese cities. Homeowners have become increasingly aware of—and started to adopt aggressive means for—their right protection. A high level of community mobilization can have significant impact on conflict escalation: in the short run, community mobilization increases the likelihood of conflict escalation, but in the long run, better-mobilized communities tend to engage in less confrontational ways of rights protection. Socially and technically well-mobilized communities can serve as a key to protecting housing rights while mitigating conflicts in the fledging urban society in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese urbanites' housing differentiation is a subject that attracts increasing scholarly attention. Previously, housing differentiation was measured by access to homeownership and housing tenure. Given high Chinese homeownership rates, however, heterogeneity among urban Chinese homeowners should be further decomposed. Many studies identified links between housing differentiation and social stratification, but few have examined residents' responses to their homes. Based on the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this study decomposes homeowners' housing differentiation along three dimensions: housing conditions, housing wealth, and neighbourhood environment. We also examine the impacts of these dimensions on homeowners' subjective social status (SSS). Significant differentiation is found among homeowners in housing conditions, neighbourhood environment, and housing loans. Furthermore, housing wealth and neighbourhood environment affect homeowners' perceived social status. These findings advance housing differentiation studies and have important implications for policies aimed at reducing social inequality and housing poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades have witnessed a substantial growth of the owner-occupied housing sector in urban China, where most people tend to follow a conventional life course in terms of ascending the housing ladder towards homeownership. Yet, with skyrocketing housing prices in the real estate market, fragmentation in housing opportunities has become more important in reshaping the structure of social inequalities. This paper investigates the disparities in housing careers between skilled migrants and their local counterparts in Nanjing, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects. Specifically, this paper examines how skilled migrants' housing tenure and location change over time, to what extent these changes differ from those of skilled locals, and what factors contribute to the disparities between migrants and locals. The results verify that there are indeed disparities in housing careers between migrants and locals, and the foremost difference lies in the tenure, especially the tenure of the first residence. Spatially, migrants exhibit an outward-bound pattern, often associated with the transition from renting to owning. These disparities in housing careers could be primarily attributed not only to the gap of the intergenerational transfer of wealth between migrants and locals, which can be traced back to regional disparities in economic development, but also to the self-selection of migration. While facing skyrocketing housing prices, the timing of making a foray into the housing market is pivotal. This study also revealed the diminishing marginal utility of education that is found in terms of establishing a superior housing career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between home ownership status and individual subjective wellbeing in urban China. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study finds that home ownership is positively associated with one's overall happiness, which is consistent with previous findings reported in the literature. Importantly, we find that the association between home ownership and subjective wellbeing varies across ownership types. Joint ownership wherein property is jointly owned by spouses is associated with higher levels of happiness relative to sole ownership wherein property is solely owned by the husband or the wife. In terms of sole ownership, property rights held by a spouse is associated with higher happiness compared with that held by oneself. We also explore mechanisms through which joint ownership provides an increased sense of security in marriage and marrying a home owner increases one's social class. In addition, we find that owning a home increases the happiness of households with male offspring, whereas it exerts a negative effect on households with female offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of a neoliberal housing regime triggered extensive housing activism during the last decade by middle class homeowners who were protecting their rights to their neighbourhood. Yet such actions also signify the quest for autonomy from the ubiquitous control of the local state as the vanguard of political power hegemony at the grassroots level. Yet there is evidence of an escalation in "non-peaceful" actions in the richest cities in China despite the tight control of the authoritarian state. With data taken from official documents and interviews as well as from news reports about neighbourhood disputes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this article gives an analytic account of the disputes and actions of homeowners in residential neighbourhoods while making their claims as well as on the strategies used by the local state in controlling the homeowners' associations. The article is able to enrich our understanding of housing activism in a non-democratic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average real house price in Beijing rose by roughly 41.8% between 2012 and 2015, and the appreciation differs across low- versus high-priced homes. The rising house price might be caused by changes in the characteristics of housing units, and it might also be induced by the changing returns to housing characteristics in the underlying hedonic price functions. In this paper, we use a comprehensive housing transaction dataset and analyze the changes in the distribution of house prices over time through a decomposition approach. The result of Oaxaca-Blinder mean decomposition suggests that the proportion of the price gap between 2012 and 2015 due to altered returns over time is greater than the proportion caused by changes in housing characteristics. The quantile decomposition shows that the decomposition effects are heterogenous across the complete distribution of house prices. We also find that low-priced homeowners are exposed to a decline in house prices, while there are deteriorating housing conditions from 2012 to 2015. The high-priced homeowners experience an improvement in living conditions, but a rise in house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing deprivation is central to economic deprivation. Identifying disadvantaged group(s) suffering from housing deprivation is a necessary step before the government can design effective housing assistance programmes. Using a nationwide micro-level data-set from the Chinese Family Panel Studies, we evidence the disadvantage that internal migrants face related to extreme overcrowding. We find that renters, whether natives or internal migrants, are more likely to suffer extreme overcrowding than homeowners, nationally and in most Chinese regions. However, both rural and urban migrants are less likely to be owner-occupiers than native residents. By comparing homeowners vs. renters, we further discover that migrant homeowners are less likely to suffer extreme overcrowding than the native residents of China's cities. Conversely internal migrant renters face the highest odds to live in extremely overcrowded dwellings. Overall, findings suggest that the Chinese government needs pay special attention to improve internal migrant tenants' living condition, particularly so for those renting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an innovative and flexible Bayesian spatial multilevel model to examine the sociospatial variations in perceived neighborhood satisfaction, using a large-scale household satisfaction survey in Beijing. In particular, we investigate the impact of a variety of housing tenure types on neighborhood satisfaction, controlling for household and individual sociodemographic attributes and geographical contextual effects. The proposed methodology offers a flexible framework for modeling spatially clustered survey data widely used in social science research by explicitly accounting for spatial dependence and heterogeneity effects. The results show that neighborhood satisfaction is influenced by individual, locational, and contextual factors. Homeowners, except those of resettlement housing, tend to be more satisfied with their neighborhood environment than renters. Moreover, the impacts of housing tenure types on satisfaction vary significantly in different neighborhood contexts and spatial locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates factors associated with mortgage usage and the share of income that Chinese use for mortgage payments. Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Study, we found mortgage usage shows a hump-shaped income effect. Workers in government-controlled nonprofit institutions are more likely to use a mortgage to purchase a house because banks treat them favorably. Notably, government employees borrow less to purchase a residence because they have advantages by way of subsidies. Individuals who have attained higher education are more likely to use a mortgage and have a larger share of their monthly income devoted to mortgage payments. For housing investors, risk tolerance is positively associated with mortgage use but not with the share of mortgage payments in the household’s monthly expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intends to enrich the literature of comparative studies on growth machine and urban regime through contextualized analyses of growth politics in Shanghai, China. An analytical framework is developed to advance our understanding of the variation of growth politics in a different urban setting. In particular, this study contends that local government’s dual goals of promoting economic growth and managing development-related conflicts are the key to making sense of growth politics in Shanghai. This specific configuration of institutions suggests that growth coalition has to extend itself spatially into neighborhood level and temporally into postdevelopment phase to sustain urban growth. This extension requires pro-growth players to exploit infrastructural power to contain homeowners’ activism. This research calls for attention to the nexus between economic and political dimensions of urban growth, a refined conceptualization of local states, and the interaction between pro-growth and antigrowth forces which shapes the forms and dynamics of urban regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 2011 China Household Finance Survey data to estimate the effect of changes in housing value on homeowners’ labor force participation. Using the average housing capital gains of other homes in the same community as an instrument for the housing capital gains of a given household, we find that a 100,000 yuan increase in housing value leads to a 1.37 percentage point decrease in female homeowners’ probability of participating in the labor force and a 1.49 percentage point increase in their probability of becoming housewives. We find little effect on men's labor force participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the evolution of urban homeowner activism in two senses: internally (growth through internal diversity) and externally (advancement in interaction with the state). The combination of these two aspects has directed the activism toward the expansion of its boundaries, as well as advanced representation and participation. Based on cumulative fieldwork carried out since 2007, I discuss two homeowner organizations in Beijing as core cases. Rights activism by homeowners has grown beyond the state-set boundaries of individual neighborhoods and has begun deploying innovative strategies and adapting existing institutions for its own use. Rights awareness and manifestation by social actors has evolved continuously. This evolution suggests the emergence of a complex interplay between state and society which goes beyond a confrontational or lopsided relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conventional discourse in citizenship studies tend to assume that individuals are clearly aware of their rights and this rights-consciousness drives them to participate actively. This assumption, however, neglects the cases of interest-driven participation before the advent of rights-consciousness of the participants. By studying the homeowners' collective action in Beijing, this study finds that the most direct incentive motivating the homeowners to participate in the first place is self-interest rather than strong rights-consciousness. Homeowners become actively involved in the process of democratic participation well before they have acquired a clear and strong sense of rights-consciousness. Nevertheless, despite starting off as interest-oriented, homeowners' democratic practices have awakened their rights-consciousness and further cultivated a sense of citizenship identity. This interest-driven participation has paradoxically helped to create the democratic ethic of Chinese urban citizens. It has important implications for understanding political participation as well as citizenship formation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a relative measure of housing wealth to explain the difference in effects between self-reported and regional housing wealth. Our theoretical model predicts a negative (positive) relationship between individual housing wealth (regional housing wealth) and labor supply. By using China's housing market boom, we find that self-reported housing wealth significantly reduces homeowners' working hours while regional housing wealth does not significantly affect their labor supply. Moreover, the results show that the negative effect of housing wealth on labor supply is mainly driven by the change of relative housing wealth. Further, several robustness checks are performed to corroborate the validity of our identification strategies and to test the sensitivity on the effect of relative housing wealth. • This paper develops a theoretical model incorporating relative wealth. • Relative housing wealth imposes a negative effect on homeowners' labor supply. • This effect is driven by female homeowners' response to the change of relative housing wealth. • These results are robust to different model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The move towards access to private homeownership represents a "revolution" in urban China during the reform era. New private residences not only symbolise "modernity"; they also set the scene for conflicts that pit homeowners, property developers, residents' committees, and local authorities against one another. By studying the attempt to form a "federation" of homeowners' committees in the city of Beijing, this article recounts and analyses the steps taken to construct a collective mobilisation, which involved the formation, in 2006, of an "application committee" requesting the creation of a federation of Beijing homeowners, the national petition launched in 2007 at the time of the debate on the Property Law (Wuquan fa), the organisation of "training classes" for homeowners in 2009, and the process of developing a new local regulation in Beijing in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the logic and framing of homeowner protests against Waste to Energy (WTE) incineration in Guangzhou. I argue that the concept of "rational resistance" emphasised by homeowner activists represents one way of understanding urban environmental contention in China. Urban homeowners use rational resistance to distinguish themselves from both villagers and the state. Their focus on rationality is a critique of the government's reliance on technology to resolve the social problem of waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1998, the Chinese housing market has played a fundamental role in driving macroeconomic stability and economic growth. This paper attempts to estimate the income elasticity of housing demand in Shanghai based on a household survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2007. We utilize a two-stage model, which integrates analysis of both tenure choice and housing demand. Our findings indicate that both permanent and current income has significant influence on tenure choice in Shanghai, and that owner-occupiers' permanent income elasticity of housing demand in Shanghai is between 0.375 and 0.447. Our research also suggests that migrant homeowners have higher permanent income elasticity than Shanghai natives and that most Chinese households are liquidity constrained with regards to obtaining homeownership. We also find that permanent income elasticity increases with age. Finally, the existence of an urban–rural and regional difference is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on interview and documentary data from three anti-incinerator campaigns in Beijing and Guangzhou to examine how urban middle-class homeowners respond to potential local health hazards. It illustrates how and why campaigners shifted from a heavily localized “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) approach that opposed incinerators based on their siting towards a much broader critique of incineration that exploited weaknesses in waste management policy. Although public health concerns remained central during the course of the three campaigns, how they were presented changed as campaigners developed expertise through self-study. This enabled them to construct an alternative narrative about incineration and present their arguments from a public interest perspective, thus deflecting the pejorative NIMBY label. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last few years, the demands of homeowners in Chinese cities have gradually shifted away from economic rights and towards political ones. At the same time, alliances across different communities have emerged and vigorous attempts to form citywide solidarities have been made. In this process, a group of dedicated leaders has emerged, contributing greatly to the escalation of collective actions. This article focuses on a core group of Beijing activists behind the organization, expression and participation of homeowners' associations. Relying on data collected from interviews, documents and participatory observations conducted over a period of more than two years, we were able to pin down the socio-economic, social and political backgrounds of these leaders, as well as their attitudes, objectives and repertoire of actions. We describe leaders as falling into a two-by-two typology that is defined by a motivation dimension and an activeness dimension. Depending on his or her goals and approaches, a protest leader can be variously viewed as a political actionist, a frustrated changer, a double harvester or a tiger rider. These different types of leaders are all in one way or another promoting socio-political changes in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ABSTRACT: Ownership fragmentation in multiowned housing (MOH) necessitates collective actions from homeowners for management and maintenance of the communal facilities. Yet, rationality dissuades individuals from participating in collective action which provides no positive net benefit. Rational homeowners in MOH tend to free-ride on others' efforts and, in theory, no collective action in housing management will take place. In fact, however, some homeowners of MOH do actively participate in housing management. It is thus worthwhile to examine why some are willing to participate and others are not. This study identifies determinants of homeowners' willingness to participate (WTP) in MOH management using the collective interest model (CIM). Based on the findings of a structured questionnaire survey in Hong Kong, the explanatory analyses suggest that homeowners' WTP is generally a function of beliefs about self and group efficacies, value of the collective good, and selective benefits and costs of participation, but the results are sensitive to the type of management activity. Although the existence of neither homeowners' associations nor property management agents is found to have significant impacts on homeowners' WTP, a research agenda which extends the CIM to study how the perceived efficacies of these management agencies affect WTP is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study investigates the interaction between the homeowners of commodity housing and the Internet in transitional urban China. It examines how the homeowners make use the Internet and weave it into their everyday life in the commodity housing estates to improve their positions in both home purchase and neighborhood management. The study analyzes the emergence and use of online neighborhood forums with a special reference to Guangzhou. It argues that the neighborhood forums provide a platform within which information exchange, organization of collective actions, social interactions, and community building take place simultaneously. In the course of both online and offline interactions, users have adopted four kinds of strategies of mobilizing and organizing: common grievances, common threats, common amenities, and common attributes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Neighborhood democracy was introduced into urban China in the early 1990s as away to manage the social conflicts associated with the housing reform. Based on a case study of Dragon Villas, Beijing, this paper explores the causes, processes, and consequences of neighborhood democracy at the microlevel from a longitudinal perspective. Three insights are particularly noteworthy. First, the decrease in rental revenue and occupancy rate and the arrival of Chinese owner-occupiers contributed to the emergence of neighborhood democracy in Dragon Villas. Second, the establishment of a homeowner association, far from ending in the conclusion of neighborhood democratization, was only a first step. Furthermore, conflicts between the developer and the homeowners, and among homeowners, played a crucial role in lengthening the process of neighborhood democratization. Third, democratic self-governance resulted in improved governance, a more diverse built form that articulates individuation through consumption, and changes that reflect the importance of privacy and exclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Do homeowners prefer living in an area with a more equal distribution of income? We answer this question by estimating a semi-parametric hedonic pricing model for about 90,000 housing units transacted in Hong Kong between 2005 and 2006. We first identify a hedonic price function by locally regressing the rental price of the housing unit on its intrinsic and neighborhood characteristics, one of which is the Gini coefficient for household income of the constituency area. We then combine the estimates with a log utility function to obtain the heterogeneous preference parameters. Finally, we estimate the joint distribution of the preference parameters and demographics. We find that most homeowners have a strong distaste for inequality in their neighborhood, and the distaste increases with income and goes down with education level. Counterfactual experiments show that reallocating public rental housing by half can increase the welfare of homeowners by about HK$8,000 on average per year, an amount which is equivalent to increasing the housing unit by 20 square feet or reducing the age of the unit by 5 years. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Despite heavy regulation and penetration by the party-state, China's homeowners' organizations show potential as sources of civil society, democratic development, and effective neighborhood governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the residential building stocks in most developed cities are getting older, there is an urgent call for the management of the stocks in a more sustainable manner. Although redevelopment can completely revamp the quality of housing, this approach is far from perfect because of its negative social and environmental effects. In fact, timely maintenance can achieve sustainable housing stock management in theory. However, in a high-rise setting, a large number of homeowners are involved in the maintenance of communal building elements. Conflicts occur because of the divergent interests of different stakeholders in deciding on the way forward for a maintenance project, eventually holding the work back. Against this background, this study explores the relative importance of different criteria for decision making in the maintenance of multiowned residential buildings in Hong Kong. Through a literature review, a set of decision-making criteria were identified. The weightings of these criteria perceived by homeowners were evaluated using the nonstructural fuzzy decision support system. The results of the analysis showed that cost affordability of maintenance work and existing building conditions generally dominated the decision-making process. Practical implications for urban managers and public administrators in formulating the strategies to promote housing maintenance then follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the ever-growing problem of urban decay in Hong Kong, there is an urgent need for redeveloping derelict buildings. To overcome the inherent tribulations of redevelopment in the city, the technique of land readjustment (LR) has been proposed. LR is, by its nature, a kind of partnering project but its success depends on the homeowners' willingness to participate. This study aims to explore the acceptability of LR in Hong Kong through the analysis of the findings obtained from a structured questionnaire survey and focus groups. Based on the analysis results, policy and practical implications are drawn and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the slogan of 'weiquan' (defending our rights), homeowners in urban China are increasingly prepared to stand up for their rights of ownership, often through non-confrontational actions organized by homeowners' associations (yeweihui). There is also a growing concern for the need to create collective platforms on which homeowners' associations can support one another, muster their collective resources against powerful developers and lobby for status as legitimate organizations. The activists involved in this work are well aware of its political sensitivity in a regime that is antagonistic towards autonomous organizations, which are seen as posing a threat to its hegemony. Based on a case study in Guangzhou, this paper traces the tactics that housing activists have employed to create horizontal cooperation among homeowners' associations to defend their rights and devise 'boundary-spanning' strategies that exploit divisions within the state apparatus. The Guangzhou union of homeowners' associations can be regarded as an experiment in organizational infrastructure which has far-reaching implications. This study sheds light on the complexities as well as the institutional fluidity of state-society interactions in contemporary urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the issue of the land taking reforms in the urban areas of the People's Republic of China with respect to the self-immolation incidents of Tang Fuzhen. The incident of self-immolation was due to the demolition of the home and garment processing plant of the Fuzhen for the purpose of constructing a road. Information on the role of the government of the People's Republic of China in the enforcement of law for the protection of the individuals and the homeowners in the urban land of the country is also presented.

Abstract: Management of apartment buildings is never straightforward because of the need for collective homeowner action. Mancur Olson suggests that a rational individual will not participate in collective action which provides no positive net benefit for him or her. Based on this premise, it would seem that rationality drives homeowners to free-ride on others’ efforts and that, as a result, no collective action will take place. However, some homeowners do actively participate in housing management, and it is worthwhile to examine why some participate and others do not. Building on the wide-ranging applications of the collective interest model (CIM) in explaining political participation and environmental activism, this paper expands its relevance to the arena of housing management. The explanatory analysis which is based on the findings of a structured questionnaire survey in Hong Kong corroborates the central propositions of the CIM and provides a theoretical account of housing management activism. In brief, housing management activism is a function of beliefs about personal and group efficacy, the value of the collective good, and the selective benefits and costs of participation. These findings have far-reaching implications for the formulation of government policies promoting homeowners’ active involvement in housing management in Hong Kong and other megacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privatization of urban housing in China has altered the basic parameters of household dissolution from those that prevailed before 1980. For several reasons, divorce was rare during the Mao years, but one critical barrier was employer control over urban housing. Thirty years later, employers no longer supply new flats and the majority of urban couples are homeowners. Simultaneous with the privatization of urban real estate has been a divorce revolution. In 1978 there was one divorce for every twenty marriages and courts handled half of the cases. By 2008 there was one divorce for every five marriages and courts finalized less than 30 percent of cases. Through a comparison of the changes in black letter law and arguments made by ordinary citizens in 24 focus groups, the article illustrates how ordinary citizens are negotiating with black letter law to institutionalize post-socialist property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governance is closely related to democratic participation and social harmony in urban China. Homeowners in Beijing have developed various models of self-government in their residential communities, which are consistent with the government's regulations. This article describes and analyzes three innovative models of self-government. It also explores institutional mechanisms to promote local democratic government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the field work conducted in Beijing, this article is concerned with how Chinese urban homeowners participate in politics to assert their economic rights and interests. In general, Beijing homeowners employ institutionalized approaches to defend their property rights, such as developing an association of homeowners' committees, submitting legislation proposals to the People's Congress at the national and the local levels, and running as independent candidates for the People's Congress at the county-level. Homeowners' political participation will help promote local democratic governance and increase the social stability in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, urban neighborhoods have seen a rapid growth of protests by homeowners for their "rights." This paper tries to study the origin and development of the rights movements from the perspectives of political process and mobilization structure. Based on field work in several homeowners committees in Beijing, the author argues that the rapid changes of the social structure, mobilization structure and general discourse on the movements contribute to the increase of homeowners' rights movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an important task for political scientists to study homeowners' rights movements in urban China. Based on extended field work in Beijing residential areas, we have completed the following five articles in this special issue. Compared with the existing literature, our study has three features. First, we employ a sampling survey to gauge the attitudes and behaviors of the ordinary homeowners. Second, we focus on the horizontal linkages among different residential areas, describing their patterns and political implications. Third, we compare and analyze the local innovations of some typical residential areas, exploring multilateral relationship among the state, market and society in transitional China, attempting to discover the transformation mechanisms of community governance and understand the local democratic system with Chinese characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on long-term field research on the Beijing Association of Homeowner Committees' Bidding Committee, this article analyzes the cross-neighborhood collective actions organized by the homeowners' protest leaders. With the expansion of the networks of the Bidding Committee, the knowledge and techniques of defending private property rights spread from one residential area to another. The Bidding Committee takes numerous measures, such as supporting member homeowners' committees, developing institutional communication mechanisms, to maintaining and increasing the political influences of the cross-neighborhood networks. Because of the effective strategies employed by the Bidding Committee, the legitimacy crisis of this informal organization has been resolved. With the rapid increase of cross-neighborhood collective actions by the Chinese middle class, a civil society will gradually emerge in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of 606 questionnaires collected in 23 neighborhoods in Beijing in 2008, this paper analyzes the degree, motivation and implications of homeowners' political participation. First, urban homeowners tend to participate in the rights movements. Second, gender, occupation and the level of income have significant influence on homeowners' participation in these movements. Third, as an important part of Chinese middle class, Beijing homeowners tend to support the incumbent regime and to be in favor of the status quo. Most of them are in favor of the social order and economic growth. However, those who have a strong sense of "status inconsistency" and a strong sense of internal efficacy are more likely to participate in rights movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China is becoming a country of homeowners, multiple homeownership is emerging. The existing literature on tenure choice focuses on the primary home and the literature on the consumption of multiple homes focuses on second homeownership only. We argue that decisions regarding whether to have multiple homes and what kind of tenures to have for multiple homes are all part of the complex decision-making for the 'housing portfolio', thus have to be understood together. With a conceptual framework that features both socio-economic and institutional determinants and 2005 China General Social Survey data, this paper studies the patterns and tenure dynamics of multiple homes in urban China. While life-cycle, affordability and generational transfer contribute to the consumption and tenure decision of multiple homes, the persisting household registration system and continuing allocation of subsidised housing lead to the peculiar tenure combination of renting one home and owning additional homes, and living in public housing and owning additional homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accompany with the growth of homeownership, China has also witnessed a sweeping increase of homeowners' protests in the urban grassroots. When these actions are read from the meaning for civil society, action features per se are ignored. Many scholars agreed that the grassroots protests in rural China follow the logic of rightful resistance. But there is little attention paid to the urban neighborhood activism. Do the homeowners employ the rightful resistance for their protests? Is there any difference between the rural and urban rightful resistance? And what factors influence homeowners' action choice? When the proactive claims emerged in countryside, have the homeowners shown some requirement beyond the existing rules and regulations? The study is is to explore these questions and further the understanding on the characteristics and substance of grassroots resistances in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of civil society set high expectations for grassroots associations, claiming that they school citizens in democracy and constrain powerful institutions. But when do real-life organizations actually live up to this billing? Homeowner organizations in the United States and elsewhere have sparked debate among political scientists, criticized by some as nonparticipatory and harmful to the overall polity and defended by others as benign manifestations of local self-governance. With this as a backdrop, China's emerging homeowner groups are used as a testing ground for exploring variation in three criteria of performance: self-organization, participation, and the exercising of power. Comparisons are drawn cross-nationally, among 23 cases in four Chinese cities and over time within neighborhoods. The article puts forward several factors affecting the properties of grassroots groups, highlighting the role of conflict, the political-legal environment, and collective action problems in shaping the way they engage their members and take political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the interest structures which results to collective conflicts over the protection of private property in the middle-class residential compounds in Beijing, China. The status of homeowners is formed in the context of local socialization patterns in the neighborhood and workplace. Thus, through the linkage of work and residence, it leads the creation of communities of consumers. The enclosed residential spaces of the gated communities serve as the reason behind autonomous mobilization of collective resources and new social units for the Chinese state to govern the complex society.

Housing tenure is widely accepted as an influential factor on neighbourhood satisfaction in developed countries, where tenure choices are largely dichotomous (homeowner or renter) and are subject to market forces. However, in urban China, housing reforms in 1998 have allowed the intersection of both market and institutional forces and created diverse tenure types in the owner-occupied sector, which may have mixed effects on individuals' neighbourhood satisfaction. This study therefore examined neighbourhood satisfaction among owners of four housing tenure types—commodity housing, privatized danwei housing, Economic and Comfortable Housing, and resettlement housing—in Changchun, China. Data for this study came from a city-wide sample of 1,722 homeowners living in 93 neighbourhoods in Changchun and from the Census. The findings show that housing tenure type significantly affects neighbourhood satisfaction. Commodity housing owners are the most satisfied with the determinants of neighbourhood satisfaction resembling those in western countries. However, among the other three government-subsidized homeowner groups, neighbourhood satisfaction levels are affected, although to different extents, by institutional forces. Nuanced results suggest that institutional forces can promote certain owner groups' neighbourhood satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, energy efficiency retrofit of residential buildings is entering a new stage in which homeowners are the main subject. In order to investigate homeowners' willingness to invest and to analyze its influencing factors, interviews and a questionnaire survey were conducted in central Tianjin, China. The results show that homeowners have a certain willingness to invest in energy efficiency retrofit but that their willingness to pay (WTP) is far from enough to cover the total cost. Among the influencing factors, the homeowner's age, education level, and retrofit experience as well as the age and floor area of their home are significantly related to their WTP. The reasons for the impact of these factors are further discussed, including the influences of China's previous housing policies and retrofit policies. Policy recommendations to promote investment by homeowners are suggested based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers presented at a symposium in China that is published within the issue, including the recent research on Chinese housing, housing market in the Netherlands and the impacts of housing reform on homeownership in China using the 2001 Beijing Housing Survey data.

Using the data from "China Migrants' Dynamic Survey" conducted by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, we examine the impacts of affordable housing programs on migrants' social integration in Chinese cities. We measure social integration in terms of migrants' participation in local activities and sense of belonging. We find that, after controlling for individual characteristics, the social integration level of migrants living in affordable housing program communities is significantly higher than that of migrants living in other communities. Heterogeneous analyses show that the migrants living in the rental units in affordable housing program communities exhibit a much higher level of social integration than do similar migrants living in other rental units. However, owner-occupied affordable housing communities do not show a significant effect in improving social integration, compared to other owner-occupied housing communities. Further analysis suggests that the inclusiveness of the living environment and neighborhood helps explain the main difference. • We study the impacts of affordable housing program on migrants' social integration. • We use "China Migrants' Dynamic Survey" data for our empirical research. • Migrants living in affordable housing communities are more social integrated. • Tenants exhibit higher level of social integration than home owners. • The inclusiveness of the living environment and neighborhood are main factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]