Introduction

Since 2008, the topic of affordable housing has been prominent on China’s construction agenda. Its importance relates to the discussion on the population’s unease with the rising housing prices in all of China’s cities. Today, it can be said that the notion of a “hot property market”, next to infrastructural development, is one of the main characteristics of the Chinese city. The role of affordable housing in this urban reality is to bridge the gap: between the poor and the rich, between government and real-estate developers, between the city and the countryside. By putting people before profit, the targets of the affordable housing agenda are immediate implementation and the strive for a hybridized form. Next to that, when low-income populations buy into property there is a better chance to avoid the middle-class real-estate boom-bust cycle. If China will face a housing crisis in the future, it will be an affordable one. After decades of focusing on industrialization and urbanization, it may be well expected that in the coming decade the notion of “hybrid habitation” will become a new driver for China’s social-economical development. Interestingly, the debate on housing brings together different stakeholders – the Party, the people and real-estate developers – into a new situation: one in which the pursuit of the politics and architecture of affordable housing makes a new Chinese urban reality possible.

In January 2008, Qi Ji, China’s vice minister of Construction, stated his opinion on this subject as following: “Housing is not a common commodity, but a necessity bearing the basic interests of the public. Developers shall not ignore the people’s expectation while pursuing profits.” [1] By the end of 2008 Chinese media reported that “stimulating self-use housing demand and strengthening low-cost housing construction will continue to be the government’s major focus in stabilizing the property market next year.”[2] Despite these efforts and stimulus plans, the reality of the Chinese housing market and the development of low-cost housing looks rather grim. A Blue Paper by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), released in December 2009, revealed that 85 percent of Chinese families cannot afford housing expenditure, and home prices are much higher than their incomes. [3] Despite high costs, home ownership is key in the pursuit of happiness, as China Youth Daily revealed in 2010: “Last fall 80 percent of respondents to a China Youth Daily online poll said that home ownership was a prerequisite for happiness.” [4]

The period of 2008 to 2010 saw this issue gaining more prominence in the Chinese media – especially when brought in relation with the soaring real estate prices – and provoked discussion amongst policy makers, developers and urban planners. In March 2010, the Ministry of Land and Resources ordered a temporary ban on the sale of land for housing in a renewed measure to ease soaring real estate prices. Consequently, the Chinese government, as represented by Yun Xiaosu, China’s vice-minister of land and resources, stressed the need for low-income housing: “Residential land supply will increase and low-income housing projects will top local governments’ agendas.” [5] The same article quoted Premier Wen Jiabao saying that China would build 3 million housing units for low-income families and renovate 2.8 million shanty units in 2010.

The new Chinese urban reality is one where immediate architectural action and urban intervention has the objective to respond as quickly as possible to pressing public problems. The past decade has witnessed a similar demand for attention, with decreasing levels of success, when it came to the construction of Central Business Districts, Creative Clusters and Eco-Villages in Chinese cities. The consequent planning solutions mixed rough and large-scale master planning with detailed mathematical calculations. The new reality is one where balance sheets and targets are the tools to contain the ongoing building boom. As a result, the city becomes a calculator and chronometer of construction activities. Add, subtract and multiply are the key concepts replacing the 00’s urban mantra of scale, speed and size.

Housing in China: Construction and Destruction go hand-in-hand

During the call of action to discuss and understand the intentions of low-income housing, the Chinese media explored this agenda by reporting from some Chinese cities that were already experimenting with alternative forms of housing so to meet the demand and create new urban environments. One case is the city of Wuhan, where “development projects from now on, whatever their nature, will be required to dedicate a specified proportion of their total development area to affordable and low-rent housing. The government explained this policy as a way of encouraging rich and poor to live together and benefit equally from public services, including transportation.”[6] The new Chinese urban reality is one where political vision is forced upon the future. It’s up to architects to fill up the future, not necessarily to change it. As much as China’s future is about construction, it is about destruction. China’s housing agenda not only needs to deal with building large developments to existing cities, it also needs to deal with the replacement, demolishment and redesign of existing residential areas. In August 2010 it was reported that: “More than half of China’s existing residential structures will be demolished and rebuilt in the coming 20 years, according to a senior researcher from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, a claim that has sparked fresh questions about the short lifespan of Chinese buildings.”[7]

10 million units as the driver for nation-wide housing developments

The opening gambit of the 2011 discussion on affordable housing was an almost month-long coverage of housing issues. It started with article called “More affordable houses needed”, on January 7, 2011, in China Daily, the country’s national English-language newspaper. In it, the outline for a future debate and plan of action: “Practically no city has reached affordable housing construction targets in the past seven years. [...] The central government must step up its financial support of local governments and more private funds should be sought.” [8] As much as China’s central government has a role of criticizing, its main ideology is one of construction. In January 2011, during the talks on the 12^th Five-Year Program, news was released about the “ambition of building more government-subsidized apartments nationwide this year [this will truly test local governments' finances]. The country plans to build 10 million subsidized apartments in 2011, almost twice as many as last year’s target of 5.8 million.” [9] Over the period of the coming five years, China’s target is to build 36 million units of subsidized apartments.

Territorial expansion and two types of housing

Immediately after the announcement of this news, several local authorities started releasing their ambitious low-cost housing plans: China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region (400,000 units of affordable housing this year) Shanxi Province (280,000 units)[10] While others resorted to self-critique such as Guangdong province that completed less than 30 percent of the affordable housing they aimed to build last year.[11]But it is not only cities and local government that state their ambitions and efforts, but also local developers that have suddenly found, or are working on, solutions meant to engage with this topic, while keeping an eye on a potential profit: “Chinese developers including China Vanke Co. Ltd. and Poly Real Estate Group Co. Ltd. have decided to establish a presence in China’s gigantic low-cost housing projects this year. (…) China Vanke, based also in Shenzhen, on the other hand has long been engaged in low-cost housing projects. (…) ‘China’s housing scheme will include mainly two types of housing: commercial residential apartments and policy-support housing such as low-cost housing, whose proportion is likely to keep rising in the years to come, therefore it’s natural that developers would volunteer to participate in this part’, an industry analyst who refused to be named told the paper.” [12]

In a reality of rising housing prices, the development of low-income, social and affordable housing is expected to solve some of China’s housing problems. With a clear mission behind this ambition, but with few methods available to implement this on a massive scale, the first half-year of 2011 can be identified as a period of consultation on this issue. In July 2011 the following main points in the discussion of China’s ambition to build 36 million over the next five-year period can be identified:

“The 36 million units of government-subsidized housing in the next few years will take half of the country’s real estate market, posing a great challenge to developers,” Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China, one of the largest developers in Beijing, said. [13]

“The construction of affordable housing projects will indirectly influence the commercial housing market, because the home buyers will buy affordable homes instead,” Yan Jinming, a land management professor at the Renmin University of China, said.[14]

The housing market is increasingly viewed as a political issue that influence social stability because skyrocketing prices were blamed to widen the rich-poor gap in China and triggered widespread complaints from the public who can’t afford a house in cities.[15]

Conclusion

In order to stabilize its housing market, and make it more accessible to lower-income groups, China has set a high territorial target of providing affordable housing for its population in the coming five years. This brief outline of the housing reality, evolution and planning, shows that a new spatial re-arrangement between market-driven residential development and mass-oriented housing development is in the making. The new Chinese urban reality is one where planning is based on combining political with profit-driven visions; the struggle to implement China’s new affordable housing scheme will be shaped by defining the proportions between the two. As it is clear that China’s housing ambition for the coming years is already set, and with its immediate call for action, there is little time left for speculation about its outcomes: there is only time to build it. With millions of square meters said to be under construction, the future of China’s habitation is poised to be defined by its own speed and scale of implementation and by nation-wide re-alignment of public and private interests. But regardless the outcome, the future, bubble or not, will be bought by low-income capital.

[2] “China eyes more property prop up”, People’s Daily, December 9, 2008

[3] “85% of Chinese families can’t afford houses”, People’s Daily, December 8, 2009

[4] “Bubble, Bubble, China’s in Trouble”, Foreign Policy, May 13, 2010

[5] “Sale of residential land temporarily halted”, China Daily, March 24, 2010

[6] “Throwing the rich in with the poor”, CMP, June 16, 2010

[7] “’Most homes’ to be demolished in 20 years”, People’s Daily, August 7, 2010

[8] “More affordable houses needed”, China Daily, January 7, 2011

[9] “Affordable housing strains local govts’ coffers”, China Daily, January 14, 2011

[10] “Affordable housing for low-income earners”, China Daily, January 26, 2011

[11] “Guangdong low-cost housing falls short”, China Daily, January 22, 2011

[12] “Major Developers to Participate in Low-cost Housing Projects, Looking for Growth”, Business China, January 26, 2011

[13] “Govt to build 10m homes” – InfoGraphic, China Daily, March 10, 2010

[14] “More land opened up for affordable housing”, People’s Daily, May 13, 2010

[15] “Chinese developers shun construction of affordable housing”, People’s Daily, June 27, 2011

MovingCities is a Shanghai-based think-thank investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. MovingCities specializes in bridging China and the world, in the field of architecture and design, in the public and cultural institutional sector. Established in Beijing, 2007, by Bert de Muynck (BE) and Mónica Carriço (PT), MovingCities publishes, collaborates, research, interacts, talks and walks, and operate as embedded architects.