Democratizing The Neighbourhood New Private Housing And Home Owner Self Organization

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With this particular description explicate democratizing the neighbourhood new private housing and home owner self organization.

DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
NEW PRIVATE HOUSING AND HOME-OWNER
SELF-ORGANIZATION IN URBAN CHINA*
Benjamin
L. Read
On 21 November
1998,
some 860
people
cast votes in a local election in the heart
of
Guangzhou.
This was not an election for
government posts; rather,
it
determined the
make-up
of the home-owners' committee of Liwan
Square,
an
up-
scale
apartment complex
built in the mid-1990s.' The
polling
took
place
over the
course of a
day
at a restaurant and was
organized
and
videotaped by
the residents
An earlier version of this article was
presented
at the 2001 annual
meeting
of the American
Political Science Association in San Francisco. Field research for the article was
sponsored
by
a
Fulbright-Hays
Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad
Fellowship
and a
grant
from the
Committee on
Scholarly
Communication with China of the American Council of Learned
Societies,
for which I would like to
express my
thanks. I am also
grateful
for useful
comments on earlier drafts
by
Christian
Brunelli, Benjamin Deufel,
Devesh
Kapur,
Bonnie
Meguid,
Susan
Pharr,
Robert
Putnam,
Kim
Reimann, Shang Ying,
and Kristin Smith at the
Sawyer
Seminar on the Performance of Democracies at Harvard
University,
and
by
Anita
Chan,
Ken
Foster, Huang Jinxin,
Ethan
Michelson,
Kevin
O'Brien,
Elizabeth
Perry,
Elliot
Posner,
Charles
Read,
Elizabeth
Remick, Luigi Tomba,
Kellee
Tsai, Lily Tsai,
Jonathan
Unger,
and two
anonymous
The China Journal reviewers.
In this article I
employ
the terms "home-owners'
committees",
"home-owners' associations"
and "home-owners'
groups"
to refer to the Chinese terms
wuye guanli weiyuanhui,
zhuzhai
xiaoqu guanli weiyuanhui (both
of which have the shortened forms
guanli weiyuanhui
or
guanweihui)
and
yezhu weiyuanhui,
which is often shortened as
yeweihui.
Which of these
terms is used in official documents varies from
place
to
place.
In
principle,
there could be a
distinction between
yezhu weiyuanhui
and
guanli weiyuanhui:
the former could refer to
organizations
of home-owners
only,
while the latter could also
include,
or
explicitly
represent,
non-owners such as tenants. In
practice,
I have found that the terms are often used
interchangeably.
It should also be
pointed
out that the owners are not
always
individuals.
Sometimes
enterprises
or state
agencies purchase
blocks of
apartments
for
employees'
use.
THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO.
49,
JANUARY 2003
32 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
themselves,
with three
lawyers,
three local
government
officials and the head of
the local
police
station
attending
at their invitation.2 It resulted in the
appointment
of fifteen residents to
represent
the interests of the home-owners in
dealings
with
the
state,
the courts and the
companies
that
developed
and
manage
Liwan
Square.
Though
at first
glance
this
might appear entirely commonplace
from a
Western
perspective,
this democratic
procedure
was remarkable in a number of
respects
within the Chinese context.
First,
Liwan
Square
is itself distinctive-a
pink-coloured
fortress
comprising eight apartment
towers that enclose a
shopping
mall and rise more than
twenty-five storeys
above the rather
dilapidated
older
buildings
that surround it. The
project
was created in a collaborative effort
between a
development company
affiliated with the
municipal government
and a
Hong Kong
concern. Its
1,600
units sold for
12,000 yuan (roughly US$1,500)
or
more
per square metre, placing
it at the
upper
end of China's
rapidly growing
market for
newly
built
private
homes. As will be
seen,
the recent advent of this
type
of residential
housing
has
brought
with it intense conflicts of interests
between the
home-owners,
the
developers
and
property managers,
and
multiple
levels and branches of the state.
Second,
far from a staid exercise in routine matters of condominium
administration,
the election was rooted in a
protracted
conflict and
fraught
with
hostility.
It was the culmination of two
years
of efforts
by
activist home-owners
who,
during
this
time,
had
arranged meeting
after
meeting
in their
apartments
and
in rented
rooms,
distributed newsletters to other
residents,
educated themselves
on the relevant laws and clashed with their
adversaries,
the
companies
that had
built Liwan
Square
and
manage
it. Part of the
taped
video taken
by
the home-
owners'
group
shows residents
shouting
at
security guards
hired
by
the
property
managers,
who
attempted
to interfere with the election. It also shows them
venting
their frustrations on
government
officials,
who
they
believed were
siding
with the
management company.
Third,
and most
significantly,
the
seemingly
innocuous idea of home-owners
banding together
to assert collective control of their
property
is a radical and
sensitive act within a China still ruled
by
a Communist
Party.
Home-owners'
committees were
officially
authorized
only
seven
years ago
and have
only
in the
past
three to five
years begun
to
emerge
on a
widespread
basis.
They represent
a
major departure
from the
way neighbourhood
administration has been handled in
the
People's Republic. During
both the Maoist and
post-Mao periods,
this has
been in the hands of branches of the state and their
deputies.
The formation of the
new home-owners' committees is in
many respects challenging
these established
institutions.
2
I did not observe the election itself but watched the video
recording
and interviewed
participants.
On the Liwan
Square case,
see also Zhen
Qian,
"Yeweihui zhuren cizhi
(A
Home-owners' Committee Director
Resigns)", Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern Weekend),
31
March, 2000, p.
7. As the footnotes below
attest,
this
widely
read
pro-reform weekly
newspaper
has
given
sustained attention to the home-owners' committees.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
This article looks at the
political
effects of
housing
reform as one
aspect
of
the
following
more
general questions.
Do economic reforms and the rise of
private ownership
within authoritarian
systems help
to
promote political
freedom
and democratization? Does the
disempowering
of the state-if that is indeed what
such reforms entail-lead to an
empowering
of the
people,
or at least of those
who
reap
the rewards of economic
change?3
Housing
reforms have been
underway
for two
decades,
but some of their
potentially far-reaching political consequences
have
only recently begun
to be
played
out with the
emergence
of home-owners' committees. These
groups
are
still
relatively
few in number and their future status is unclear.4 The associations
vary
in the
degree
to which
they genuinely represent
home-owners and elicit
broad and democratic
participation. Nonetheless,
their actions show that owners
of
costly
new homes are often not content to
accept
the
management
arrangements
that are
imposed upon
them
by developers
and the state. In
many
new
housing complexes
in cities around the
country, particularly though
not
exclusively
in what is called "commercial
housing" (shangpinfang), they
are
banding together
to insist on their
right
to have a
say
in the
management
of these
new
neighbourhoods.
This illustrates one
way
in which China's
relatively
wealthy
strata are
beginning
to assert
themselves,
defending
their material
interests in
ways
that have
important political implications
at the micro level. As
scholars in China have
already begun
to
point out,
at least those of the new home-
owners'
organizations
that are
self-organized
constitute a novel
type
of
autonomous forum within which individual interests are discussed and
collectively
addressed5-and
may
even lead to a form of
neighbourhood-level
democratization.6
3
Works on this
general topic
include Janos
Komai,
The Socialist
System.
The Political
Economy of
Communism
(Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1992), especially
Part
Three, "Shifting
from the Classical
System";
David Stark and Victor
Nee, Remaking
the
Economic Institutions
of
Socialism
(Stanford:
Stanford
University Press, 1989);
Ivan
Szelenyi,
Socialist
Entrepreneurs. Embourgeoisement
in Rural
Hungary (Madison:
University
of Wisconsin
Press, 1988); Larry
Diamond and Marc F. Plattner
(eds),
Economic
Reform
and
Democracy (Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995);
and Andrew G.
Walder
(ed.),
The
Waning of
the Communist State. Economic
Origins of
Political Decline in
China and
Hungary (Berkeley: University
of California
Press, 1995).
4 National
figures
on how
many
home-owners' committees exist are not available
but,
at the
time of
my
research in 1999 and
2000, major
cities like
Beijing
and
Guangzhou
had at least
15 to 30
particularly
active home-owners'
groups (not
all of which had received
government
approval).
An even
larger
number of
groups
were dormant or dominated
by property
management companies,
as will be discussed below.
5
Zhang Jing, "Gonggong kongjian
de shehui
jichu" (Social
Foundations of the Public
Sphere), Working Papers 2001.004,
Institute of
Sociology
and
Anthropology, Peking
University,
2001.
6 Gui
Yong,
"Liie lun
chengshi jiceng
minzhu fazhan de
keneng ji qi
shixian
tujing-yi
Shanghaishi
wei li"
(A
Brief Discussion of the
Possibility
of the
Development
of Urban
33
34 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
This article draws on interviews conducted between October 1999 and
November 2000 with
twenty-two organizers
from fourteen different
housing
developments
in three
large
cities:
Beijing, Chongqing
and
Guangzhou.7
I made
contact with these individuals first either
through personal relationships
or
by
following up
on
published reports
in Chinese
newspapers.
These
newspaper
accounts
provide
further source
material,
as do
government publications.
I also
conducted interviews on this
topic
with a small number of state
officials, lawyers
and
people working
in the
property-management industry. My
research
strategy
was not to
sample
these
groups
in a random
fashion,
but rather to focus
special
attention on the most
active, potentially trend-setting
home-owner associations.
While flawed for the
purpose
of cross-sectional
analysis
of a static
phenomenon,
this
approach
is suitable for
attempting
to understand the
possible implications
of
an
emerging type
of
organization
within a
rapidly changing setting.
This article first
lays
out in more detail the theoretical
questions
at issue and
the
ways
that
housing
reform in China is relevant to them. It then
presents
the
government's
new
policies concerning
home-owners'
groups
and shows the
complicated
local
struggles
that have
emerged among competing
interests and
claims.
Finally,
it elaborates on the home-owner-activists
themselves,
the
groups
they organize,
and the
political implications.
Economic
Reform, Housing
and Politics
The economic reforms
pursued
in China since the late 1970s have been
striking
in
many respects,
and social scientists have
given
substantial attention to their
possible political consequences.
A
particularly prominent topic
of debate has
been the role of the members of the
relatively
well-off social
strata,8
those who
have
gained
the most from the economic
reforms,
as a force
promoting
autonomy,
freedoms and democratization within an illiberal
system.
This
is,
of
course,
a manifestation in one
country
of a
general controversy
within
comparative politics,
in which
writings
about the
political
orientations of
the
wealthy
are often more
complex
and
hedged
than is
acknowledged
to be the
case.
Barrington
Moore's "no
bourgeois,
no
democracy"
is
quoted perennially,
though
in his Social
Origins of Dictatorship
and
Democracy
an
emergent
bourgeoisie
was
only
one of several factors
contributing
to democratic
outcomes,
Grassroots
Democracy
and the Path Toward Its
Realization,
Based on the Case of
Shanghai), Huazhong keji
daxue xuebao shehui kexue ban
(Journal
of the
Huazhong
University
of Science and
Technology,
Social Science
Edition),
Vol.
15,
No. 1
(February
2001),
pp.
24-7.
7
To
protect my
interview
subjects
I will not
identify
the
organizers,
the
housing complexes,
nor even the cities where
they
live. I have referred to Liwan
Square by
name because it was
featured in the
published report
cited above.
8
The
scope
of the well-off strata in
question
varies from
study
to
study.
Some refer
generally
to the "middle
class",
others to
significantly
narrower
segments.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
and could be
coopted by
the state under certain circumstances.9 A seminal
paper
by Seymour
Martin
Lipset put
forward several causal mechanisms to
explain
the
connection between economic
development
and
democracy, placing
most
emphasis
on the effect that
rising
incomes would have on the "lower strata"
by
mitigating
class conflict and
fostering
norms of tolerance.
Agency by
the
wealthy
is
distinctly secondary
in his
account, operating through
their
participation
in
voluntary organizations
that serve as "sources of
countervailing power"
and
training grounds
for
political
skills.? In a more recent
study,
Samuel
Huntington
highlights
"the
expansion
of the middle class" as one of
many
factors
underlying
the democratization of authoritarian
regimes
in the 1970s and
1980s, though
he
adds the caveat that middle classes can be anti-democratic when
they
are
threatened
by
rural or
working-class
movements."
If these
widely
read accounts
give
at least
partial
credence to the notion that
the affluent advance the diffusion of
political power,
others see this idea as
holding only
in
special cases,
if at all. A
study
of three world
regions by
Rueschemeyer, Stephens
and
Stephens
finds the
bourgeoisie
to be anti-
democratic and the middle classes to be ambivalent.'2 "The attitudes of the
bourgeoisie
toward authoritarian
regimes
belie facile
generalizations",
writes
Adam
Przeworski, arguing
that this class has
multiple ways
to influence the state
under most forms of
government.'3
Eva Bellin finds holders of
capital
in late-
developing
countries to
be,
at
best, only "contingent
democrats".'4
The
jury
is still out on the
impact
of the PRC's economic reforms on the
prospects
for
political change
and overall
regime stability.
But researchers have
already
made extensive efforts to examine the
political leanings
of the
newly
wealthy, particularly
in
private business,
from small-scale
peddlers
to the leaders
of
larger
firms. The
key questions
have been whether
they try
to
change
the
system
or
merely
work for their own advancement within
it,
and whether
they
9
Barrington Moore, Jr.,
Social
Origins of Dictatorship
and
Democracy.
Lord and Peasant in
the
Making of
the Modern World
(Boston:
Beacon
Press,
1993
[1966]), p.
418.
10
Seymour
Martin
Lipset,
"Some Social
Requisites
of
Democracy:
Economic
Development
and Political
Legitimacy",
American Political Science
Review,
Vol. 53
(1959), pp. 69-105,
especially
83-5.
" Samuel P.
Huntington,
The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth
Century
(Norman: University
of Oklahoma
Press, 1991), p.
66.
12
The authors define
bourgeoisie
to mean
"capitalist
class" or
"big
business". Dietrich
Rueschemeyer, Evelyne
Huber
Stephens
and John D.
Stephens, Capitalist Development
and
Democracy (Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 1-11,
309.
3 Adam
Przeworski, Democracy
and the Market. Political and Economic
Reforms
in Eastern
Europe
and Latin America
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 68,
fn. 23.
4
Eva
Bellin, "Contingent
Democrats:
Industrialists, Labor,
and Democratization in Late-
Developing Countries",
World
Politics,
Vol. 52
(January 2000), pp.
175-205.
35
36 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
strive to
generate
the kind of
independent
associational life that would constitute
an
emergent
civil
society.
Thomas Gold and others have articulated the basic
logic
behind the idea that
"autonomous economic
activity"
should create "fertile soil" for civil
society
in
China,
as elsewhere.15 Wealth accumulated
through
market
activity
affords a
degree
of self-determination that was
impossible
in the
pre-reform past
when the
government
was the sole source of
many opportunities
and resources. Endowed
with
personal
control over
assets, independent
economic actors
acquire
new
interests and
may
strive to act
collectively
on their own behalf. This is further
facilitated
by
other elements of reform-era
policy
that have led to a much
greater
degree
of
openness
and
pluralism
in the realms of social
organization,
media and
culture.'6 Gold cautions that "even were
incipient
civil
society
to take
root,
it
might
not lead to
democracy". Still, by
its
very nature,
it
represents
an
important
departure
from the
existing
order,
as "in a
system
where the
political authority
attempted
to eliminate
literally
all
non-party-led associations, any
autonomous
organization
takes on
political significance".17
In
contrast,
a considerable number of other researchers have
sharply
questioned
the idea that the
relatively
affluent will
emerge
as a force for
political
liberalization.
They point
out that business
people
can be
highly dependent
on the
state in numerous
ways
for their economic
success;
for
instance,
for access to
capital
and relief from extractive
predation.
Democratization could well
harm,
rather than
promote,
their business interests.
Moreover,
to achieve their aims
they
often
rely
on individual clientelistic
strategies
rather than
engaging
in collective
action,
which the state
powerfully discourages.
It is also
argued
that
they
tend to
participate
in state-mediated associational
forms,
which are sometimes described
as
corporatist,
as
opposed
to
generating
the
type
of autonomous
groups
that could
wield real clout.'8 Still other scholars have found mixed
evidence, pointing
to a
15
Thomas B.
Gold,
"The
Resurgence
of Civil
Society
in
China",
Journal
of Democracy,
Vol.
1,
No. 1
(Winter 1990), p.
31. See also Elizabeth J.
Perry
and Ellen V.
Fuller,
"China's
Long
March to
Democracy",
World
Policy Journal,
Vol.
8,
No. 4
(Fall 1991), pp. 663-85; Yanqi
Tong, "State, Society,
and Political
Change
in China and
Hungary", Comparative Politics,
Vol.
26,
No. 3
(April 1994), pp.
333-53.
16
Thomas
Gold,
"Bases for Civil
Society
in Reform
China",
in
Kjeld
Erik
Brodsgaard
and
David Strand
(eds), Reconstructing Twentieth-Century China.
State
Control,
Civil
Society,
and National
Identity (Oxford:
Clarendon
Press, 1998), pp.
163-88.
17
Gold,
"Bases for Civil
Society", pp. 182,
165.
18
Work in this vein includes Ole
Bruun,
"Political
Hierarchy
and Private
Entrepreneurship
in a
Chinese
Neighbourhood",
in
Walder,
The
Waning of
the Communist State;
David S. G.
Goodman,
"The
People's Republic
of China: The
Party-State, Capitalist
Revolution and
New
Entrepreneurs",
in Richard Robison and David S. G. Goodman
(eds),
The New Rich in
Asia.
Mobile
Phones,
McDonalds and Middle-Class Revolution
(London: Routledge, 1996);
Margaret Pearson,
China's New Business Elite. The Political
Consequences of
Economic
Reform (Berkeley: University
of
Califoria Press, 1997); Margaret Pearson,
"China's
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
heightened
sense of the common beliefs and interests of
private
business
people'9
and in some
quarters hypothetical support
for
political competition
and an end to
the
Party's monopoly
on
power,20
but with little concrete
political
action.
Most of this research has examined
activity
in the domain of business and
production,
with
special emphasis
on the
political
and bureaucratic contacts that
individuals need in order to earn their wealth. Yet
politics
takes
place
in
many
different
spheres:
the
way
wealth is
spent
or invested can create new
needs,
interests and
imperatives, just
as much as the
way
it is earned.21 It was for this
reason that
my
research focused not on commerce and the
workplace
but on new
residential
neighbourhoods
in which homes are
purchased.
Neighbourhood
Politics in China
Post-1949 China's urban residential
neighbourhoods
have been marked
by
an
elaborate and
well-organized
institution
designed
to
incorporate, assist,
mobilize
and monitor the
population. Building
on a historical tradition of
state-sponsored
community security
known as the
bao-jia system,
but
adding
its own distinct
brand of mass
mobilization,
the Communist
Party
established what it called
Residents' Committees
(RCs; jumin weiyuanhui)
in most of the
neighbourhoods
of
major
cities
shortly
after
taking power.22
Once run
by
volunteer
activists,
now
by
three to seven
paid
staff members in each
committee,
these bodies
provide
Emerging
Business Class:
Democracy's Harbinger?"
Current
History,
Vol.
97,
No. 620
(September 1998), pp. 268-72; Dorothy
J.
Solinger,
China's Transition
from
Socialism.
Statist
Legacies
and
Marketing Reforms (Armonk:
M.E.
Sharpe, 1993);
Kellee
Tsai,
"Capitalists
Without a Class: The Political Orientation of Private
Entrepreneurs
in
China",
unpublished paper,
2
July 2002;
Jonathan
Unger, "'Bridges':
Private
Business,
the Chinese
Government and the Rise of New
Associations",
The China
Quarterly,
No. 147
(September
1996), pp. 795-819;
and David L.
Wank, Commodifying
Communism.
Business, Trust,
and
Politics in a Chinese
City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
19
Bruce
Dickson,
"Private
Entrepreneurs
and the
Party
in China:
Agents
or Obstacles to
Political
Change?" paper presented
at the annual
meeting
of the Association for Asian
Studies, Chicago,
March 2001.
20
Andrea
Lynne Roberts,
"The Political
Impact
of China's New Private
Entrepreneurs",
1997
doctoral dissertation in
political science, University
of California at
Berkeley, pp.
265-71.
21
In this
connection,
see
Yanqi Tong's
comments on consumer activism as the basis for a
state-affiliated
"managerial public sphere" ("State, Society,
and Political
Change", pp.
341-
2);
and
reports
on
popular consumer-rights
advocates such as
Wang
Hai. On
this,
see Shai
Oster,
"For Chinese
Consumers,
a
Superhero",
Christian Science
Monitor,
25
January, 2000,
and Elisabeth
Rosenthal, "Finding
Fakes in
China,
and Fame and Fortune
Too",
New York
Times,
7
June,
1998.
22
For a discussion of the Residents' Committees and a
bibliography
of
previous
work about
them,
see
Benjamin
L.
Read, "Revitalizing
the State's Urban 'Nerve
Tips"',
The China
Quarterly,
No. 163
(September 2000), pp.
806-20. In
2000,
the
Ministry
of Civil Affairs
began referring
to these
organizations
as
Community
Residents' Committees
(shequ jumin
weiyuanhui).
37
38 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
liaison between the
grass
roots and the
municipal
authorities and
police.
But
they
are
directly managed by
the Street Offices (jiedao
banshichu),
which are the
city
government's
ward-level branches.
They
facilitate a substantial list of
government programs, including
those oriented toward
providing
services. For
example,
the RCs
help
the
city government identify
which households are most in
need of welfare relief and also
distribute,
or sell at a
discount,
small items
ranging
from
water-conserving spigots
to
dish-washing detergent.
At the same
time,
their detailed
knowledge
of local affairs allows them to
help
the
government
and
police target
unwanted
migrants,
violators of the strict
family
planning policy, criminals,
dissidents and other deviants.
They
also serve as
sounding-boards
for
residents,
who can come to them with all
types
of
problems
and
grievances; they
often
attempt
to mediate small-scale
disputes,
such as
squabbles
over excessive noise or
cheating
on shared
electricity
bills.
The
type
of intimate link between state and
society
that the RCs
embody
is
rather
foreign
to
contemporary
Western
democracies,
but it also does not
fully
fit
with the totalitarian
images
that still hold considerable
sway
in
many popular
conceptions
of China. The RCs do not work
by intimidating
their
constituents,
but rather
by cultivating positive
relations with those residents who are
receptive
to their work.
People
who are uninterested in the RC are free not to volunteer to
participate
in its activities and can
ignore
it unless
they
are
doing something
that
is considered
wrong.
Still,
it must be
emphasized
that-like so
many
other institutions in
Communist
systems-the
RCs
represent
a
distinctly
statist and
paternalistic type
of
neighbourhood organization. Despite
much talk of democratic
balloting
and
scattered
experimentation
with
reform,
elections to date
generally
remain a thin
facade
covering appointments
that are controlled
by
the Street Offices. While
officially
defined as a
body through
which residents
engage
in "self-
administration, self-education,
and
self-service",
their task is not self-
administration but rather the
fusing
of
government
administration with local
social networks. One of their
principal
duties is to use
persuasion
and social
pressure
to defuse
any group
demands
by
residents before these are taken out of
the
neighbourhood
and into the streets or onto the
doorsteps
of
government
agencies.
Residents, nevertheless,
do at times
engage
in
political
action on their
own initiative:
protests
over urban
redevelopment projects
are one
example.
But
the RCs exert a tremendous influence on citizens'
participation, by channeling
demands into
requests
for the RC's
help,
or
by shunting voluntary energies
into
state-fostered
community
service such as the
security patrols
that the RCs
organize.
The consolidation of this form of
neighbourhood
administration took
place
in
the 1950s afd
1960s, roughly
at the same time that
housing
itself was
undergoing
socialist transformation.23 The Communist
Party
did not
expropriate privately
23
In this
summary
of
housing change
in urban China I draw
upon
Ya
Ping Wang
and Alan
Murie, Housing Policy
and Practice in China
(New
York: St. Martin's
Press, 1999);
Ya
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
owned residences as
quickly
as it nationalized
large productive
assets like
factories,
but the
system
of
municipal housing
offices that it established
gradually
took control of the
disposition
of homes. In the Cultural
Revolution,
local
authorities acted
decisively
to re-allocate
housing
so that those who owned
large
homes, particularly
if
they
were considered class
enemies,
had to share them with
others or
give
them
up entirely. By
the late
1970s, only
about ten
per
cent of
housing
remained
privately
owned in the
larger
cities.24 In the
meantime,
state
bodies and
enterprises
became the main
agencies
for the construction of new
housing
and for
deciding
who had the
right
to live in it.
Starting
in the
1980s, however,
cities have
implemented sweeping housing-
reform
policies,
which have affected the lives of most urban residents one
way
or
another. These reforms have involved several
types
of
change.
One is the return
to the
original
owners,
or their
families,
of some of the
older,
once
private
homes
that had been
appropriated by housing
bureaus. Another is the sale to
occupants
of
apartments
in
buildings
that were built and owned
by
the
city
or the
public
workplace.25
These
programs,
under which
existing housing
has been
privatized,
have been
very widespread,
and the sale of
publicly
owned
housing
has
provided
city governments
with
large
sums of
money
to invest in urban
development
and
infrastructure.26
Another fundamental
aspect
of the reform
program
has been the creation of
new
commercially
built
housing complexes.
Since the
1980s,
a
rapidly increasing
number of commercial
development companies
have
played
a
leading
role in the
construction of homes. Some of these
companies
are
private
and some are owned
by
branches of the state. The
apartments they
erect are sometimes sold to families
at market
prices
or are made available at subsidized rates to families forced out of
their homes
by redevelopment projects.27 Many apartments, however,
are
Ping Wang
and Alan
Murie,
"Commercial
Housing Development
in Urban
China",
Urban
Studies,
Vol.
36,
No. 9
(1999), pp. 1475-94;
and Min Zhou and John R.
Logan,
"Market
Transition and the Commodification of
Housing
in Urban
China",
International Journal
of
Urban and
Regional Research,
Vol.
20,
No. 3
(September 1996), pp.
400-21.
24
This estimate
appears
in Martin
King Whyte
and William L.
Parish,
Urban
Life
in
Contemporary
China
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1984), p. 82; Wang
and
Murie,
in
Housing Policy, p. 88,
cite data that affirm it.
25
Often called the "work unit"
(gongzuo danwei).
26
Wang
and
Murie,
"Commercial
Housing Development", p.
1478.
27
Yanjie
Bian and John R.
Logan
in
particular
have called attention to the
prominent
role that
the state and the work unit continue to
play
in
providing housing
for the
many
urban Chinese
who cannot afford to
purchase
homes at market
prices.
See John R.
Logan
and
Yanjie Bian,
"Inequalities
in Access to
Community
Resources in a Chinese
City",
Social
Forces,
Vol.
72,
No. 2
(December 1993), pp. 555-76;
and
Yanjie Bian,
John R.
Logan, Hanlong Lu,
Yunkang
Pan and
Ying Guan,
"Work Units and
Housing
Reform in Two Chinese
Cities",
in
Xiaobo
Lii
and Elizabeth J.
Perry (eds),
Danwei. The
Changing
Chinese
Workplace
in
39
40 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
purchased
not
by
individuals but rather
by
state
enterprises
and
government
agencies
for subsidized resale or rent to their
employees.
In either
case,
such
housing complexes
are not administered
by
these
enterprises
and
agencies,
and
the residents often have
many
different
employers. Many
are much
cheaper
than
premium developments
like Liwan
Square. "Ordinary
residences"
(putong
zhuzhai)
can be less than a
quarter
the
price
of those
occupied by
the most
affluent Chinese or
by foreigners.
As even casual observers in
any major city
will
attest,
the scale and
pace
of this new construction is
impressive.
In
Beijing,
an
average
of
nearly
five million
square
metres of commercial
housing
was
completed
each
year
from 1995 to 1997. The
figure
for
Shanghai
was
nearly
nine
million
square
metres.28
The
planned neighbourhoods
created
by
these new
housing projects
are
accorded
special
treatment
by
the
government; they
are
officially
and
popularly
described as "new
neighbourhoods".29
Urban
housing
bureaus have established
special organs
at the
city
and district levels to
regulate them,
which I will call
"new-neighbourhood
offices".30
Quite
a few of these
housing projects
are built far
away
from
city centres,
on what was
previously village land,3' though
others arise
as
redevelopment
within the cities. A
principal
characteristic of these
complexes
is that
they
feature
integrated (peitao)
or
comprehensive (zonghe) designs,
with
the
provision
of
sanitation, security, maintenance, grounds-keeping,
and so forth
handled
by
a
professional property-management company.32
The
question
of the
home-owners'
rights
relative to these
management companies
and to the
project
developers directly underpins
the events and controversies that will be
analysed
here.33
Historical and
Comparative Perspective (Armonk:
M. E.
Sharpe, 1997), pp. 223-50;
as well
as the article
by
Zhou and
Logan
cited above.
28
Zhongguo fangdichan tongii nianjian
1999
(China
Real Estate Statistical Yearbook
1999)
(Beijing: Zhongguo chengshi chubanshe, 1999), p. 118; Shanghai tongji nianjian
2000
(Shanghai
Statistical Yearbook
2000) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000), p.
88.
29
This is a loose
rendering
of terms like
xinjian
zhuzhai
xiaoqu.
The term
xiaoqu
is itself a
neologism
and
thus,
even without
qualifiers
like
xinjian,
it is
generally
used to refer
only
to
new
housing developments,
not older
neighbourhoods.
30
In Chinese this is
xiaoquban
for
short;
the full name for this institution at the
city
level in
Beijing
is the
Beijingshijuzhu xiaoqu guanli bangongshi.
31
This results from new
policies,
first introduced in
1988,
under which cities can
acquire
rural
land and then sell
long-term
use
rights
to
property developers.
32
Note that not all
xiaoqu
are
composed
of commercial
housing;
some contain
jingjifang
or
partially
subsidized
"economy housing",
and some
slightly
older
neighbourhoods
built
by
the state with
integrated design
features are also considered
xiaoqu. Moreover,
it is not
only
in commercial
housing
areas that one finds
property management companies, partly
because
many
state
housing
offices are
being repackaged
as such
companies.
33
For discussions of other social effects of the
way
cities are
evolving,
see
Piper
Rae
Gaubatz,
"Urban Transformation in Post-Mao China:
Impacts
of the Reform Era on China's Urban
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
The Political
Implications of Housing Reform
From Friedrich
Engels
to
present-day
social
scientists, many
authors have
considered the
political
effects of different
housing arrangements. Particularly
controversial has been the
question
of whether an individual's
political
orientation and
participation
tend to
change
with the
acquisition
of the substantial
fixed asset that a home
represents.34
One consistent
finding
has been that home-
owners tend to be more
politically
active than non-owners.
They
are more
likely
to
participate
both in local
politics, through community
activism and
neighbourhood organizations,
and in
larger-scale politics through voting.
Various
reasons are
given
for this: owners
generally
have lived in their homes
longer
and
are less inclined to
move; moving
is more
costly
for them so
they
would rather
address
problems
head-on than leave the
neighbourhood; they
have better
established social ties with
neighbours
who mobilize their
participation;
and
they
have a vested interest in
protecting
the
quality
of life in the
neighbourhood
and
the value of their homes.35
Form",
in Deborah S.
Davis,
Richard
Kraus, Barry Naughton
and Elizabeth J.
Perry (eds),
Urban
Spaces
in
Contemporary
China: The Potential
for Autonomy
and
Community
in
Post-Mao China
(Washington,
D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center
Press, 1995), pp. 28-60;
and
Ya
Ping Wang
and Alan
Murie,
"Social and
Spatial Implications
of
Housing
Reform in
China",
International Journal
of
Urban and
Regional Research,
Vol.
24,
No. 2
(June 2000),
pp.
397-417.
3 There is not
enough space
here to
provide
a full review of this
work,
but
important
contributions include Frederick
[Friedrich] Engels,
The
Housing Question
(New
York:
International
Publishers, n.d.);
Manuel
Castells,
Lee E. Goh and
Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok,
The Shek
Kip
Mei
Syndrome.
Economic
Development
and Public
Housing
in
Hong Kong
and
Singapore (London:
Pion
Limited, 1990); Ray Forrest,
Alan Murie and Peter
Williams,
Home
Ownership. Differentiation
and
Fragmentation (London:
Unwin
Hyman, 1990);
Peter
Saunders,
A Nation
of
Home Owners
(London:
Unwin
Hyman, 1990);
John I. Gilderbloom
and John P.
Markham,
"The
Impact
of
Homeownership
on Political
Beliefs",
Social
Forces,
Vol.
73,
No.
4, (June 1995), pp. 1589-1607;
and Chua
Beng-Huat,
Political
Legitimacy
and
Housing. Stakeholding
in
Singapore (Routledge:
London and New
York, 1997).
Peter H. Rossi and Eleanor
Weber,
"The Social Benefits of
Homeownership: Empirical
Evidence from National
Surveys", Housing Policy Debate,
Vol.
7,
Issue 1
(1996), pp. 1-35;
Denise
DiPasquale
and Edward L.
Glaeser,
"Incentives and Social
Capital:
Are Home-
owners Better Citizens?" NBER
Working Papers,
No.
6363, January 1998,
National Bureau
of Economic
Research, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 13, 17, 35;
Steven J. Rosenstone and John M.
Hansen, Mobilization,
Participation,
and
Democracy
in America
(New
York:
Macmillan,
1993), p. 158;
Gilderbloom and
Markham,
"The
Impact
of
Homeownership", pp. 1597,
1600;
Robert D.
Putnam, Bowling
Alone: The
Collapse
and Revival
of
American
Community
(New
York: Simon &
Schuster, 2000), pp.
204, 477 fn.
2; Sidney Verba, Kay
Lehman
Schlozman and
Henry
E.
Brady,
Voice and
Equality.
Civic Voluntarism in American Politics
(Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1995), pp. 453-4;
Matthew A.
Crenson,
Neighborhood
Politics
(Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1983), pp. 174, 211;
Claude S.
Fischer,
To Dwell
Among
Friends. Personal Networks in Town and
Country
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1982), pp.
99, 164;
Kevin R. Cox and
Jeffery
J.
McCarthy, "Neighborhood
Activism in the American
City:
Behavioral
Relationships
and
41
42 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
Just like their
counterparts elsewhere,
Chinese home-owners
may
also be
inclined to take action over
problems
that affect their homes and
neighbourhoods.
But in a
political
environment like
China's, participation
is
sharply
conditioned
by
the nature of the
system
and the
ways
in which the state
permits
or
discourages
various kinds of
expression.36
For most residents of Chinese
cities,
housing
reform in the form of the
privatization of existing housing
stocks has so
far done little to
change
the
opportunities
for
participation
available to them.
Even when individual units in
existing
state-owned
housing
are sold to their
occupants,
the
housing
bureau
(fangguansuo)
or work unit that
originally
administered and
managed
this
housing
often continues to do
so,
directly
or
indirectly.
There are no
widespread, formally recognized
institutions
giving
representation
to home-owners in the
making
of collective decisions about such
neighbourhoods.
The
system
of Residents' Committees remains intact here and
municipal governments
work with the central authorities to buttress this
system.37
Things
are
very
different in the "new
neighbourhoods"
that are run
by
professional property-management companies.
For these
housing compounds,
the
state has
approved
an
exceptional
form of association: the home-owners'
committee,
of which the one at Liwan
Square
is an
example.
Unlike the
RCs,
these associations are
composed
of the home-owners
themselves,
not of staff who
are
paid by
the state.
They
are not
responsible
for
government
administrative
duties;
their main task is to
represent
the interests of the home-owners. And
despite
rules that call for a considerable
degree
of state
oversight
in the
forming
of these
groups, they
sometimes
organize
themselves in a
highly spontaneous
and
independent way.
Evaluation",
Urban
Geography,
Vol.
1,
No. 1
(1980), pp. 22-38;
Kevin R.
Cox, "Housing
Tenure and
Neighborhood Activism",
Urban
Affairs Quarterly,
Vol.
18,
No. 1
(September
1982), pp. 107-29; Roger
S.
Ahlbrandt, Jr.,
and James V.
Cunningham,
A New Public
Policy
for Neighborhood
Preservation
(New
York:
Praeger, 1979), p. 173;
William M. Rohe and
Victoria
Basolo, "Long-Term
Effects of
Homeownership
on the
Self-Perceptions
and Social
Interaction of Low-Income
Persons",
Environment and
Behavior,
Vol.
29,
No. 6
(November
1997), pp. 793-819, especially p. 814;
Orit
Ditkovsky
and Willem van
Vliet, "Housing
Tenure and
Community Participation", Ekistics,
Vol.
51,
No. 307
(July-August 1984), pp.
345-8;
Blum and
Kingston, "Homeownership
and Social
Attachment", especially pp.
171-
3; Saunders,
A
Nation, pp.
255-60.
36
For a
thorough
discussion of the effect of institutions on
political expression
in urban
China,
see
Tianjian Shi,
Political
Participation
in
Beijing (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard
University
Press, 1997).
37
Certainly,
to the extent that
people
no
longer
have a state
agency
as a landlord or
housing
provider,
their
dependence
on
government
is
arguably reduced-though,
as noted
above,
many
urbanites still need
help
from their state
employers
to obtain affordable
housing.
For
influential
arguments
on the
relationship
between state
dependence
and
political compliance,
see Andrew G.
Walder,
Communist Neo-Traditionalism. Work and
Authority
in Chinese
Industry (Berkeley: University
of California
Press, 1986);
and Andrew G.
Walder,
"The
Decline of Communist Power: Elements of a
Theory
of Institutional
Change", Theory
and
Society,
23
(1994), pp.
297-323.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
The
authorities,
of
course,
do not
regard
home-owners' committees as
embodying
elements of
political
reform. From an
analytic perspective, however,
we can see that the issues
they
raise have
deep political implications. Apart
from
the substantial amounts of
money
that are at stake in the
many
contested claims
over
property
and how it is
managed, important
matters of
principle
are at issue
as
well, including
the
right
to
organize
an
independent
association and to assert
collective control over local
decision-making. By interviewing
the
organizers
of
these
groups,
I
sought
to understand several
things:
the extent to which
they
constituted
independent, self-organized associations;
whether
they pressed
their
interests
quietly
or
through
contentious
tactics;
the
degree
to which
they
achieved
control over
property-management companies;
and whether
they
advanced
general
claims to
authority
over the
neighbourhood
and
perhaps
even had a sense
that
independent organizations ought
to take the
place
of
state-managed grass-
roots bodies like the RCs.
China's Nascent Home-Owners' Associations
In Order No. 33 of
1994,
"Methods for
Managing
New Urban Residential
Neighbourhoods",
the
Ministry
of Construction announced that residents should
form elected committees
composed
of
apartment-owners
and other
residents,
with the task of
protecting
their interests. In
interviews, government
officials said
this 1994
policy
had been
loosely
based on
Hong Kong's approach
to
property
development
and
management
in the
early
1990s.
Activists, however,
believe the
policy
was a
government response
to
spontaneous
home-owners'
organizations.
Under the
Order,
the home-owners committees were
given
the
right
to select
which
property-management company
to hire to take care of maintenance and
other functions in their
housing complex. But,
at the same
time,
the
independence
of the home-owners' committees was to be constrained. The
ministry spelled
out
that the new
groups
would be formed "under the direction of the
housing
administrative
agencies"
and that
they
would
subsequently
be
required
to
"accept
the
oversight
and direction of the
housing
administrative
agencies, every
relevant
administrative
agency,
and the
People's
Government of the area in which the
neighbourhood
is located".38
At the local
level,
several factors
converged
to make these
groups
difficult
and
complicated
for home-owners to
organize. First,
markets for real estate are a
very
recent and still
evolving phenomenon
in the
People's Republic,
and the
companies
that
develop
and
manage property
often
attempt
to take
advantage
of
home-buyers
in various
ways
that are unchecked
by
full market
competition,
effective
government regulation,
or
fully independent
and
impartial
courts. In all
of the cases on which I have
evidence,
the
companies initially
had no
plans
to
38
Zhonghua
renmin
gongheguo jianshebu ling
1994 nian 33
hao, "Chengshi xinjian
zhuzhai
xiaoqu guanli banfa", reprinted
in
Beijingshi juzhu xiaoqu guanli bangongshi, Beijingshi
wuye guanli
wenjian huibian
(Compilation
of Documents on Real Estate
Management
in the
City
of
Beijing),
Vol.
1, February, 1998, pp.
1-5.
43
44 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
consult home-owners as to who should
manage
the
housing projects. Rather, they
took for
granted
their
right
to leave in
place
a
property-management company
that would
operate indefinitely.
In the absence of
any competition,
these firms
would be well
positioned
to
reap
handsome
profits.
Developers
and
managers, therefore,
often
attempt
to
discourage
the
establishment of home-owners' associations. Moreover, the local
government
bodies that exercise the above-mentioned
"oversight
and direction" have reasons
not to be
sympathetic
toward the
home-owners, though they
sometimes do
support
them. For one
thing,
cities and
housing
bureaucracies
sponsor
their own
development companies
and also
cooperate closely
with
private developers.
Thus
their financial interests often
directly
conflict with those of home-owners. At the
same
time,
other branches of the
state,
such as the
Ministry
of Civil Affairs and
its local bureaus which have
responsibility
for
overseeing
all "base-level" or
grass-roots organizations,
are troubled
by
the idea of home-owners' associations
operating
outside their
supervision.
Accordingly, municipal-level policies concerning
the formation of home-
owners'
groups
have included
provisions
that make it
easy
for local authorities
and
developers
to obstruct them
entirely
or diminish their effectiveness.
Beijing's
regulations,
for
instance,
had the
following stipulations
as of the
year
2000:
* Home-owners' committees should not be
organized by
the home-owners
themselves; rather, they
should be created
by
a
"preparatory group".
This
preparatory group,
in
turn,
is to be formed
by
the
developer
and the
management company, together
with the local
government
and the
police.
In
other
words,
it is
largely up
to the
developer
and
management company
whether or not to create a
group
that is
likely
to be detrimental to their
earnings.
There is a
provision
that,
if these vested interests
drag
their
heels,
the district
new-neighbourhood
office
may
take the initiative in
forming
a
preparatory group,
but this is at the office's discretion.
*
There are two
ways
to form a home-owners' committee. One is to elect it at a
meeting
of the home-owners. But the candidates for the election are not to be
chosen
by
the home-owners themselves.
Rather, they
are to be selected in
advance
by
the
preparatory group,
albeit
through
"discussion" with the
home-owners,
as well as with the
state-appointed
Residents' Committee.
These
candidates, furthermore,
must conform to several
vague
criteria:
they
must have
"good
moral
character,
a
strong
sense of
responsibility,
and
enthusiasm for the cause of the
public good"; they
must also "have full
capabilities
for civic action"
(juyou wanquan
minshi
xingwei nengli).
*
Alternatively
the committee can be established in an even less
open
and
participatory way, by
what is called the
"public
notice"
(gonggao)
method.
Here the
preparatory
committee comes
up
with a slate of candidates on its
own. It
publicly
notifies the
home-owners,
and the candidates then
automatically
become the home-owners' committee unless veto ballots are
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
received within a certain
period
of time from a full 50
per
cent of the home-
owners.
A home-owners' committee cannot be established without the
approval
of
the district
new-neighbourhood
office.39
What often results is a home-owners' committee that is
relatively
docile. This is
particularly
the case with those constituted
through
the
"public
notice" method.
In
Beijing,
committees formed in this
way
were estimated to constitute 70
per
cent of the
roughly
180 home-owners'
groups
that had been
officially approved
as of November 2000.40 In such
cases,
the committee members are sometimes
granted special
treatment
by
the
property-management companies
that
participated
in their
selection, helping
to ensure that
they
do not rock the boat too
vigorously.
That is not to
say
that all
management-imposed
committees are
wholly
ineffective at
solving problems
on behalf of home-owners. Two
developments
of
this sort that I visited had a
permanent secretary, paid by
the
property-
management company,
who offered evidence of
having
taken action in
response
to various
complaints
from home-owners. In such
situations,
the committee
only
partially represents
the home-owners and
operates
in a
low-key
fashion that
maintains the
neighbourhood's
status
quo, addressing grievances
on a
case-by-
case basis.
In some other
neighbourhoods, however,
home-owners
organize
themselves
in a much more
spontaneous
and assertive
way
than that which the
regulations
dictate.
They
are
spurred
to do so
by aggravations
over
problems
with their
homes and conflicts with the
management companies. They
do not seem to start
out with
any particular
inclination toward collective action.
Indeed,
the new
residents
typically
do not even know each other at first. Just as in new
housing
developments anywhere, purchasers
of homes in China move in from all around
the
city
and other
parts
of the
country,
and
they may
work in different
companies
or work units.
But,
over
time,
shared
grievances concerning
their homes become
a natural
topic
of conversation
among neighbours.
Common
grievances
include:
*
Failure of the
developer
to
provide
the home-owners with deeds
(fangchan
zheng)
to the homes
they
have
paid
for.
Among
other
things,
this allows the
developer
to use the homes as collateral for loans and to avoid
paying
certain
government
fees. Without
deeds,
home-owners cannot rent out or resell the
homes and have no
legal
claim to them.
39
These
regulations by
the
Beijing Housing
Bureau are found in
"Guanyu
kaizhan
zujian
juzhu xiaoqu wuye guanli weiyuanhui
shidian
gongzuo
de
tongzhi", Jing fang
di wu zi
(1997)
di 485
hao, reprinted
in
Beijingshi wuye guanli wenjian huibian, pp. 104-6;
and
"Guanyu quanmian
kaizhan
zujian wuye guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo
de
tongzhi", Jing fang
di wu zi
(1998)
di 308
hao, photocopy
on file with the author.
40
Interview with Liu
Zhiyu,
director of
Beijing's new-neighbourhood office,
8 November
2000.
45
46 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
* Homes are smaller in
space
or inferior in construction
quality
or interior
decoration than
stipulated.
In other
cases,
the homes turn out to be
larger
than the
contractually agreed size,
and the
developers
demanded
payment
for
the extra
space.
*
Unreasonably high monthly
fees for
property management, security, parking
and the
like,
as well as for
utilities,
for which the
managers
collect
payments.
* Misuse of funds
paid by
home-owners for future
repairs
and maintenance.
* Failure to
provide contractually specified
amenities like
gardens
and health
clubs.
Home-buyers
often have no
warning
of the
problems lying
in store for them
because the units
they purchase
in commercial
housing developments
are
frequently
marketed and sold well before
any
of the homes are
actually
built. The
above list covers the most
widespread problems,
but each
development
has its
own
special
troubles. In one
case,
residents were
charged
fees for the installation
of
telephone
and
gas
lines that were far in excess of
municipal price regulations
and, moreover,
were
charged
for tens of thousands of kilowatt hours of
electricity
that was used in the construction of an
adjacent apartment building.41
One
developer
installed
low-quality domestically produced
elevators instead of the
imported Japanese
ones
specified
in the
contract, according
to an
organizer
there.
Residents in another
complex grew suspicious when, immediately
after
they
made
large payments
toward a
repair fund,
the director and vice-director of the
property-management company
went out and
purchased
new
Volkswagens
for
their
personal
use.42
Sometimes these
problems
are related to
corruption
within the
government.
A set of fifteen
developments
in the northern suburbs of
Beijing
were
begun
in
the
early
to mid-1990s
during
the administration of Chen
Xitong
as
mayor
and
Communist
Party secretary.
It was later found that the
developers
had never
paid
certain fees nor received
proper approval
for these
projects, meaning
that those
who
purchased
homes there had
great difficulty getting
their
property
deeds.43
Corruption
can also take the form of deals between
developers
and local officials.
41
Chen
Dihao,
"Yezhu chaodiao
wuye gongsi" (Home-owners
Fire Real Estate
Company),
Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern Weekend),
5 November 1999.
42
I had no
way
to confirm
independently
the
veracity
of most of these
reports
of
wrongdoing.
Their
significance
lies in the behaviour
they provoked
on the
part
of the home-owners.
43
These claims were made to me
independently by
well-informed
organizers
in two affected
housing developments.
The
general
outline of these cases is discussed in "'Yabei
xiangmu'
youwang yongyou
'hefa shenfen"'
(The
'Yabei
Projects'
Have
Hope
for
'Legal Status'),
Jingpin gouwu
zhinan
(Quality Shopper's Guide,
hereafter
JGZ),
30
September, 1997;
and
"Yabei shier
ge xiangmu
buban shouxu
gongzuo youwang" (The
Process of
Handling
Remedial Procedures for Twelve of the Yabei
Projects
Looks
Hopeful), JGZ,
1 December
1998. On the eventual conviction of Chen
Xitong
on
corruption charges,
see for instance
John
Pomfret, "Ex-Beijing Party
Chief
Convicted; Alleged
Graft
Kingpin
Sentenced In
Secret to 16-Year Prison
Term",
The
Washington Post,
1
August, 1998, p.
A17.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
In one
case,
a
developer
built a
nursery
and
kindergarten
for the use of the
housing complex's residents,
but these were never
opened
and
they
were instead
given
to the local Street Office. The Street Office could then lease out the
property
to
generate
income for itself.44
Sometimes home-owners
attempt
to solve their
problems individually
through complaints
or lawsuits. But these efforts often fail
and,
even if a court
decides in a home-owner's
favour,
it can be difficult to
get
the
ruling
enforced.
Frustrated,
the residents
may begin
to hold informal
meetings
in their homes and
then sometimes
organize general meetings
to which all home-owners in the
development
are invited. For those who are aware of the
policies
about home-
owners'
committees,
the next
step
is to
attempt
to form such a committee and
gain
the
approval
of the
new-neighbourhood
office. The most successful of the
associations have
gone
on either to fire the
original property-management
company
and hire a new
one,
or else to
negotiate
some
degree
of
compliance by
the
company
with their demands.
During
this
process
of
organization
and
registration they
almost
always
face
opposition
from the
companies
whose interests are at stake. This can be as
simple
as
refusing
to
provide
lists of residents' names or
removing
from residents'
mailboxes letters that have been distributed
by organizers.
Sometimes
developers
and
managers put up posters attacking
the
organizers
or criticize them in the local
media.
Newspaper reports
documented one case where a
developer
with close
links to the
government
had a home-owner-activist transferred out of his state
job,
and another where a
management company
closed down a senior citizens'
centre that the
organizers
had been
using
as a base of
operations.45
In
Shenzhen,
one
group
established a website to communicate with one another after the
management company
tore down announcements it had
put up
in the residential
complex.
After
strongly
worded
complaints by
residents were
posted
on this
site,
the
company
sued the
group's leader, seeking
the
equivalent
of over half a
million US dollars in
damages.46
Organizers allege
that the most
unscrupulous
of the
management companies
use violence to deter residents who
challenge
them.
My
interviewees described
44
For another such
case,
see
Yang
Haipeng,
"Yeweihui chao bu diao
wuye gongsi" (Home-
owners' Committee Is Unable to Fire Real Estate
Company), Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern
Weekend),
19
May,
2000.
45
Huang Guangming
and Cui
Yang,
"'Zhuren' weihe
gan
bu zou
'guanjia'" (Why
the
'Masters' Could Not Chase out the
'Housekeeper'), Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern Weekend),
2
November, 2000, p. 16;
and
Yang Haipeng,
"Minxuan
'yeweihui'
wu chu
qishen" (An
Elected 'Home-owners' Committee' Has No Place to
Stay), Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern
Weekend),
31
March, 2000, p.
1.
4 Du
Weidong,
"Yezhu
weiquan wangye
re
guansi; shangshi gongsi suopei
500 wan
yuan"
(Home-owners' Rights-Upholding
Web
Page
Provokes
Lawsuit; Publicly
Traded
Company
Seeks Five Million
yuan
in
Damages), Nanfang
zhoumo
(Southern Weekend),
28
June,
2001.
47
48 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
four cases in the
Beijing
area alone where other activists had suffered
beatings,
though
I was not able to
speak
with
any
of the victims
myself.
Several home-
owners said
they
had received
threatening phone calls,
harassment or visits from
their
housing project's security guards-whose
salaries come from the
management
fees the home-owners themselves
pay.
It is not difficult to see how
this leads to entrenched conflict. As one
organizer put
it:
"They bitterly
hate our
home-owners' association. And we
bitterly
hate
them,
so there is a
deep
antagonism
between us ... I'm a
very
adamant
person.
I'm not
polite.
I will
struggle
to the end
against
their fraudulent
ways."
In some cases residents have launched
protests against
and even
replaced
management-imposed
home-owners' committees that were formed without their
participation.
In one commercial
housing complex,
a
property-management
company
linked to the
city government put
in
place
its own
hand-picked
home-
owners' committee,
which
readily
received
approval
from the district's new-
neighbourhood
office in
August
1998. Three months
later,
the head of the
committee was overthrown
by
home-owner-activists. These
insurgents
set the
stage
for their
neighbourhood coup by carrying
out a
survey
of the several
hundred households of
residents,
the results of which indicated that the
existing
committee had never obtained a mandate from the
home-owners, despite
its
claims to the
contrary.
Confronted with this evidence at a routine
meeting,
the
appointed
committee leader burst into tears and
agreed
to
step
down. Two weeks
later the new
leadership
convened an
open meeting
for all home-owners and
obtained a show of
support. Nearly
a dozen other home-owners' committees
around the
city
sent letters of
congratulations. And, although they
were
initially
shocked at what had
transpired,
the district officials
eventually acquiesced
and
did not withdraw their
approval.
The new committee chose to retain the current
property-management company
but
negotiated
with it to lower
fees, improve
the
parking
situation and address other
problems.
Getting
official
approval
for
self-organized
home-owners' associations can
be
difficult,
in
large part
because of the
city government's multiple
reasons for
looking
askance at the
groups,
as mentioned above. Activists in one
private
housing development
said
that, despite patiently holding meetings
and
obtaining
approval
from the other
home-owners, they
were not
given
official
recognition
until one
resident,
a
high-ranking
cadre in a
large
state-owned
enterprise,
threatened to
put pressure
on the
new-neighbourhood
office. If
granted,
state
approval gives
the
organization important legitimacy
and
legal standing
for
filing
lawsuits, negotiating
with the
developer
or
management company
and
trying
to
dismiss the
management company
and hire a new one.
But even without the
government's imprimatur,
home-owners often
attempt
to
pursue
those same
strategies,
as well as more contentious ones. Several of the
associations I contacted had
managed
to win
significant concessions,
even in the
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
absence of
government approval.47
One such
committee,
led
by
a
particularly
patient
and resourceful
lawyer,
was able to obtain
property
deeds for the home-
owners
through
extensive
negotiations
with the
management company
and
government
land offices. It also
got
the
managers
to
grant
them the use of office
space
and even obtained an
apology
and
35,000 yuan
in restitution for an incident
in which a
property manager
had broken a home-owner's wrist in a
fight
over a
housing problem.
Some unofficial committees have won concessions like the
reduction of
utility
rates or
management
fees
by withholding payments,
complaining
to the
media, staging protests
or
threatening
to do such
things.
In other cases home-owners'
groups
that have been denied
government
recognition
have fallen into
inactivity
for fear of
offending
the authorities and
making
a bad situation even worse. One
stymied
activist said that residents of his
building
had
planned
to
put up protest
banners after
failing
to
get
official
approval,
but the concurrent
government
crackdown on the
Falungong spiritual
sect made them fear
being
labeled as an
illegal organization,
and this
dampened
their enthusiasm.
Still, quite
a few continue undeterred. In the words of one
persistent group
leader: "It's like when a kid is born:
sure, you
can
deny
it a
household
registry card,
but the kid still exists." The
way
that such
organizers
continue with or without official
permission
to do what
they
do is one of the
remarkable
aspects
of this
phenomenon.
The Activists
As with
many
other
types
of collective
endeavour,
home-owners' associations
required
one or a few
exceptionally
dedicated
organizers
to
expend
much more
time, energy
and
money
than other members in order to
keep
the effort
moving
forward. Such
people organized meetings,
went door-to-door to mobilize
support,
distributed
leaflets, put up posters,
researched the relevant laws and
policies,
hired
lawyers,
initiated
lawsuits,
contacted the
government
and
pressured
their
adversaries. The substantial sums of
money
at stake
provided
a
major impetus
for
action,
but the activists I talked with often
appeared
to take their cause to heart in
such a
way
that
achieving victory
became a
goal
in itself. One
organizer,
who
also ran a
private
business out of his
home,
claimed that he had
spent
80
per
cent
of his time over the
previous
two
years
on the home-owners' association.
Another,
a
retiree,
said that
"demanding justice"
for himself and other residents
took all of his time and
energy.
A third noted: "It's not a commercial
activity,
but
a
voluntary activity.
So
you
need to have a
spirit
of
contribution,
the desire to
accomplish
a
big project (zuo
yijian
da
shiye)."
47
Conversely,
for the home-owners' committee to obtain official
approval
did not
guarantee
it
the
power
to win out over its adversaries. A
year
and a half after
holding
its
election,
the
Liwan
Square group
was still mired in court cases and
struggling against
the same state-
backed
property management company, striving
for the
right
even to oversee its
accounts,
let alone to fire it.
49
50 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
The
backgrounds
of the activists varied
considerably. Many
were business
people,
several were housewives. There was one former staff member of a
government ministry,
one former cadre in a state-owned
enterprise,
a
lawyer,
an
educator,
an
information-technology specialist
and a retired skilled blue-collar
worker. A few had
acquired
their homes not with their own
earnings
or their
spouse's
but from children whose incomes were sufficient to
purchase
commercial
housing
for them. There were several more women in
my sample
than men. All of the
organizers
had
purchased
their homes on the
market,
without
the benefit of subsidies.
During
the
interviews,
most of these activists exhibited traits that one would
expect
in local leaders
anywhere: confidence,
articulateness and determination. In
addition, previous experiences
seemed to have contributed to their
emergence
as
organizers.
Most
notably,
a number of them had lived outside of China-in
Japan,
Southeast
Asia, Europe,
the United States or
Hong Kong.48
Some
(but
not
all)
said that their
experiences
abroad had contributed to their decision to become
an
organizer.
One recalled how a resident from each floor of the
apartment
building
in which she had lived in
Japan
took
part
in the
management
of the
building;
she said that she had been
impressed by
this
participation
and
by
the
idea of residents
taking responsibility
for how the
management company spent
their fees. Another successful
organizer,
a
Shanghai native,
said that the decade
she had
spent living
in
Hong Kong
had made her
appreciate
the need to exercise
her initiative and rouse her fellow home-owners to action:
"People
in China have
a
negative, passive attitude-they
will
go
with the
crowd,
but
they
don't want to
take the lead.
They
want
good things,
but
they
don't think about how these
good
things
have to be created."
Other influences
figured prominently
in these leaders' minds as well. Like
other
participants
in reform-era collective
action,
home-owner-association leaders
sometimes
employed
Marxist rhetoric in
supporting
their actions.49
Expressing
his
disgust
with the
housing
bureau office that had
opposed recognition
of his
committee,
one man who owned his own business said: "Mao
Zedong
had a lot of
good insights.
One of them was 'no
ruling
class will ever withdraw
lightly
from
the historical
stage'."
He added
that,
"If the relations of
production
obstruct the
development
of the forces of
production, they
will
necessarily
be
removed";
and
that his committee's role was to "lead
everyone
to
struggle against
the
management company, just
like
peasants struggling against
landlords in the
past".
48
In some
cases,
one or more of the members of the home-owners' committee were ethnic
Chinese with
citizenship
or
permanent
resident status in other countries or in
Hong Kong.
Rone
Tempest,
"China's New Tenants Won't
Buy Excuses; Rights:
Overseas Investors are
Confronting Developers
over
Shoddy Luxury Apartments",
Los
Angeles
Times
(18 April,
1998), emphasizes
the role of ethnic Chinese with
foreign citizenship
in home-owners'
movements at several
Beijing apartment complexes.
49
See,
for
instance, Ching
Kwan
Lee,
"From the
Specter
of Mao to the
Spirit
of the Law:
Labor
Insurgency
in
China", Theory
and
Society,
Vol.
31,
No. 2
(April 2002), pp.
189-228.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
More
generally,
the
participants
drew on the
language
of
"justice"
and
"rights".
Posters in one
housing complex
condemned the
management company
for
"raping
the will of the
people". Organizers frequently expressed
what seemed to
them a commonsensical notion:
that, having purchased
these
homes, they
should
be entitled to control all collective
arrangements concerning
their own
property
and that
consequently
the
management companies
which take their fees should
take orders from them.
The more active association leaders are
typically
in touch with other leaders
within the same
city. They compare
notes on
tactics, give
each other advice and
encouragement
and have on at least a few occasions met
together.
One mini-
conference I attended drew
representatives
from a dozen or more different
housing developments.
Some
expressed
a desire to establish a federation of
home-owners' associations
covering
the entire
country.
While the
prospects
for
this are
unclear,
at least one web site has been established for the
purpose
of
diffusing
information and
facilitating
discussion
among
activists from different
communities.5? In
any event,
these kinds of connections across
neighbourhoods
are
quite
notable because of the
way
the
Party-state
in China has in the
past
strongly discouraged
such unofficial links
among potentially organized
constituencies. The activists'
relatively high
level of wealth and
education,
their
sense of
personal efficacy stemming
from their
careers,
their access to
communication
technology
such as cell
phones
and
e-mail,
their international
experiences
and their sense of themselves as
pursuing
an
important
cause
against
a
pernicious adversary,
all facilitate the
forming
of contacts with others who are
engaged
in similar
undertakings.
Organization
and General
Membership
Research on home-owners' associations in American
housing complexes-close
analogues
to the Chinese home-owners'
committees-gives
us reason to be
cautious about
concluding
that these
organizations
are incubators for an
engaged,
participatory citizenry. According
to some
studies,
the US associations tend to be
dominated
by
a small
"oligarchy"
of enthusiasts who do little to
encourage
political activity
on the
part
of
ordinary
residents.
They
have also been found to
tyrannize
over fellow home-owners
by rigidly enforcing
restrictions on the use of
the
property, creating
conflict and
enmity.51
Do the home-owners' committees in
50
As of 21
October, 2002,
the
Beijing
Home-owners' Alliance web
page
claimed more than
500,000
visitors and featured animated discussion
(http://house.focus.com.cn/yzlm/).
51
Carol J. Silverman and
Stephen
E.
Barton,
"Common Interest Communities and the
American
Dream",
and
"Obligation
Versus
Friendship:
The Effects of
Neighboring Style
on
Neighborhood Organization", Working Papers,
No. 463
(September 1987)
and No. 478
(May 1988),
Institute of Urban and
Regional Development, University
of California at
Berkeley;
Robert
Jay Dilger, Neighborhood
Politics. Residential
Community
Associations in
American Governance
(New
York: New York
University Press, 1992);
Evan
McKenzie,
Privatopia.
Homeowner Associations and the Rise
of
Residential Private Government
(New
51
52 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
China elicit the
participation
of
many ordinary
residents or are
they
closed and
cliquish?
How broad is
participation
in the
committees,
how
frequently
do
they
meet,
and what are their aims?
Almost all of the
spontaneously
formed
groups
I studied held at least two to
four
"big meetings" (dahui)
which all residents were
encouraged
to attend.
Organizers reported
turnouts of a substantial
proportion
of the home-owners in
most
cases, although
some had
difficulty eliciting
broad
participation.
These
meetings
discuss common
problems
and also
prepare
the
way
for
selecting
the
residents who will serve as members of the home-owners' committee.
Participants
nominate themselves or other
people,
and the nominees often
prepare
statements about
why they
are
qualified
and what
they
intend to do as a
committee member. These are
presented orally
at the
meeting, posted publicly
or
distributed to the residents. A vote at one of the
big meetings
then selects the
membership
of the committee from the
pool
of nominees.
It should be noted that
taking
the initiative to convene this kind of
open
meeting
is itself a
novelty
in
neighbourhood
administration in
contemporary
China. The Residents' Committees that are found in all of the old
neighbourhoods rarely
hold
meetings
where all residents are
encouraged
to
attend.
Rather, they
favour
meetings
of
just
their volunteers and
supporters,
as
well as
Party
members and other affiliates.52
After the election held
by
a home-owners'
association,
the elected committee
typically
holds committee
meetings
at a
frequency ranging
from
weekly
to
monthly
to a few times
per year.
Because
general meetings
are difficult to
arrange-as
in the United States-the committees often do not
try
to
get
all the
home-owners
together again except
in unusual
circumstances, although
some do
continue to hold
big meetings.53
In some
cases,
the boards do little to
keep
their
broader constituencies
engaged.
In
others,
the
organizers
said that
they
at least
maintained loose contact with the other home-owners
through irregular
newsletters, posters
or
telephone
networks.
The
degree
to which other residents
participate
in the work of
pursuing
the
committee's
goals depends
on the
specific problems they
face and the tactics that
the committees choose. In one
community
with a
particularly
active
group,
irresponsible planning by
the
developer
meant that residents had no
phone
service
and an
inadequate electricity supply.
In an
attempt
to
get
the local
government
to
Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994).
For a more
benign view,
see Donald R.
Stabile,
Community
Associations. The
Emergence
and
Acceptance of
a
Quiet
Innovation in
Housing
(Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 2000).
52
This is not to
say
that
spontaneous group
action never takes
place
in
ordinary
neighbourhoods
and other
settings
in Chinese cities. For
instance,
between five to
eight
hundred "collective
appeals
to the authorities"
(jiti shangfang)
were
lodged every year
in
Beijing
alone
during
the late 1990s
(unpublished figures
collected
by
the
Beijing city
government,
on file with the
author).
53
All of the committees I learned about were too new to have had elections for a second term.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
do
something
about
it,
the committee circulated
petitions,
and a
delegation
of
residents made
multiple trips
to the
government's complaints
office to
plead
their
case. Committees often consult with fellow residents on
legal
action and on
collective actions such as refusal to
pay monthly management
fees. Some of the
more
feisty organizers
have mobilized residents to
stage
demonstrations
against
developers, management companies
and
management-imposed
home-owners'
committees, aiming
to shame them into
compromises.54
The committees
vary
as to whether
they just
focus on such activities or
attempt
to
sponsor
a
community spirit
as well. A few of the home-owners'
committees
sponsored get-togethers
like a
potluck,
with
games
for children.
Others, however,
echoed the sentiments of one
organizer,
who insisted that it was
not the association's
job
to
promote
social contact:
This kind of
place
is
very
different from a
hutong [the cramped alleys
in the old
part
of the
city].
It's a choice
people
make to live
here,
where there's less
laiwang
[interaction]
with
neighbours.
In the
past you
had to
laiwang
even if
you
didn't
want to
laiwang
... The
pace
of life is faster now.
People just
close their doors and
don't want other
people
to come around.
Conflicts sometimes arose
among
the
home-owners,
often as a result of
management companies'
efforts to divide them
by buying
off selected activists.
In Liwan
Square,
the committee ousted its one-time leader when he
negotiated
a
compromise agreement
in a
dispute
over
fees,
without
getting
the
approval
of the
other committee members.55 In another
housing complex,
an activist had the door
of her home beaten down
by
a crowd of residents. A
power outage
had occurred
and
they thought (mistakenly,
she
claimed)
that her
apartment
still had
electricity,
indicating
to them that she was
being given privileges by
the
management
company.
Self-governance
and Relations with the State
Though
a number of
organizations
and
agencies
claim
authority
over new
commercial
housing developments,
on some matters there is no clear-cut answer
in
practice
to that classic
question
of
political inquiry:
"Who rules?" The official
status of the new home-owners'
groups,
relative to other
bodies,
is unresolved.
Referring
to new commercial
housing,
one Chinese
journalist aptly
commented
that "in
every neighbourhood
there is a kind of
intricate, complicated relationship
among
the
home-owners,
home-owners'
committee, Residents'
Committee,
the
54
One such
protest
is documented in "Landlords of the
World,
Unite!" The
Economist,
23
March
2002, p.
40. See also the
photograph
of a home-owner demonstration at the
Lijiang
Gardens
housing development
in suburban
Guangzhou
that
accompanies
Chen
Dihao,
"Yezhu chaodiao
wuye gongsi".
55 Zhen
Qian,
"Yeweihui zhuren cizhi".
53
54 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
developer,
and the
property management company".56
Older
neighbourhoods
have a clear structure of
authority,
with the Street
Offices, housing
bureaus and
police
stations
handling
all
significant
matters and
government programs,
often
by way
of the RCs. In the new commercial
housing,
the RC
system
is often either
entirely
absent or else
only
in the
early stages
of
development.
Officials of the
Ministry
of Civil Affairs insist that the network of RCs should continue to cover
every
residential area.
But,
in
practice,
it is unclear whether all
housing
developments
will have them. In
regard
to certain kinds of
housing,
such as
"villa"
housing (bieshu)
and
housing complexes
whose units have been
approved
for sale to
foreigners (waixiaofang),
there
appears
to be a tacit
policy
in some
cities of not
bothering
to establish RCs. Even when
they
do
exist,
the
architectural and social environment of
newly
built
housing,
much of it modem
high-rise apartments,
makes the
relationship
between RCs and their constituents
far more distant than in
many
older
neighbourhoods.
In these
settings
there is
much
greater privacy
and
anonymity, rendering
the networks
through
which the
state
acquires
information about residents less effective.
Meanwhile,
in some
housing complexes,
the
property-management
companies
have taken on certain of the
state-delegated
functions of the
Residents' Committees. For
instance,
some handle tasks related to the household
registry system
and the
family-planning system
and liaise with the
police.
Some
were involved in
conducting
the 2000 census. In certain cases the
management
company actually
runs an RC on behalf of the
government.
This was evident in
one
Guangzhou development
that I
visited,
where the RC staff were
paid
employees
of the
property-management company
and worked out of its
headquarters.
Civil Affairs Bureau officials with whom I
spoke
were critical of
these kinds of
arrangements, noting
that
companies
that are in business to make a
profit
cannot be relied on to
carry
out the work of the state.
Where
they
exist in these new
developments,
the
state-managed
Residents'
Committees sometimes side with the home-owners and sometimes with the
management company. They,
and those in the
government
who oversee
them,
are
often concerned that the
newfangled
home-owners'
groups
are
usurping
their
authority by claiming
to
represent
the residents. This is an understandable
worry,
because it
gets
to the heart of the contradiction within the RC
system,
which was
noted at the outset of this article-the conflict between its rhetoric of citizen self-
administration and its actual
practice
of
serving
state needs first and foremost. If
another
organization speaks
more
loudly
and
clearly
on behalf of the
residents,
where does that leave the RC? Such concerns about the new home-owners'
associations can be seen in the
complaint by
the director and
Party secretary
of an
RC in a
neighbourhood
of
Shanghai's Pudong
district: "When
they
undertake
56
Yang Haipeng,
"Yeweihui chao bu diao
wuye gongsi".
See
Zhang Jing, Gonggong kongjian,
for an extensive discussion of the
incomplete change
from bureaucratic to market-based
power relationships
in new
housing developments, drawing
on a case
study
of the same
Shanghai neighbourhood
that
Yang reports
on.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
something, they ordinarily
don't
report
to the
(Party) organization
beforehand."57
It was also the
topic
of a
position paper published
in the official
Ministry
of Civil
Affairs
journal
devoted to the Street Office and Residents' Committee
system.
The authors
argued
that RCs were
being relegated
to the sidelines in real-estate
administration and other vital matters within the new
neighbourhoods.
The
report
editorialized that the home-owners' committees had no
right
to take
primacy
over
the
RCs,
whose authoritative
position
was codified in national law.58
Government officials
suggest
that
they
would like to curb at least the more
impetuous
of the home-owners'
groups
and find
ways
to address
problems
in
property management
that do not involve such
unruly
associations. The head of
the Real Estate
Department
of the
Ministry
of Construction and leader of the
China
Property Management
Association59 told a
Beijing newspaper:
Under the traditional
(socialist) housing
administration
system,
the
housing
bureaus
were the
managers
and the residents were
generally
in a
relatively passive
status.
Since the
implementation
of the
property management system,
for a time we
emphasized
the home-owner above all else and saw the
relationship
between home-
owners and
property management enterprises
as
being
one of "master" and
"servant". We did not establish a civil
relationship
of
equality
between the home-
owners and the
property management enterprises
and did not restrain the behaviour
of the home-owners and home-owners' committees.60
In other
words,
far from
wanting
to boost home-owners'
capacity
to exercise
power
over their homes and
housing complexes,
this official felt
they
should be
tamped
down and
put
in their
place.
Another
Beijing
official
applied
an economic
logic
to the
problem.
Home-
owners' committees are a second-best solution to the
problem
of
irregularities
in
the
housing
market because
they require
too much effort on the home-owners'
part,
he said. It is natural for
people
not to
get
involved in the home-owners'
associations because their
optimal
individual
strategy
is to take a free ride on the
other home-owners' efforts.
Therefore,
the best solution is better
goverment
regulation
of the
property-management industry,
so that home-owners'
organizations
are not
necessary.
The fact that officials hold such views illustrates
57
Yang Haipeng,
"Yeweihui chao bu diao
wuye gongsi".
58
Shao
Hang
and
Peng Jianfen, "Ying yifa queli juweihui
zai xin
jian
zhuzhai
xiaoqu guanli
shang
de
zhongxin
diwei"
(The
Central Position of the Residents' Committee Should Be
Established in the
Management
of
Newly
Built Residential
Neighbourhoods
in Accordance
with the
Law), Chengshi jieju tongxun (Urban
Street Office and Residents' Committee
Report),
Vol.
8,
No. 7
(July 1998), pp.
2-4.
59
This is a state-backed
industry association,
established in October 2000.
60
"Wuye
guanli
ba da wenti
ji
dai
jiejue" (Eight
Problems of
Property Management Urgently
Needing Resolution), Beijing qingnian
bao
(Beijing
Youth
Daily),
24
October, 2000, p.
36.
55
56 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
that there is no inevitable trend toward
policies
that
encourage
these
groups,
and
in fact the
opposite
is
entirely possible.
How do the
organizers,
for their
part,
see their
relationship
to the state?
Many
of those I
spoke
to were
quite
critical of the
particular
officials who wield
personal authority
over their
ability
to
organize. They
"have a
haughty manner",
said one. Another commented:
The
guy
there
[in
the
new-neighbourhood
office that denied them its
imprimatur],
he's a
young guy.
We
go
to talk to
him,
and he
just
sits
there,
leans
back,
and
ignores
us. It
angers
us to death ...
They
don't have the attitude of servants of the
taxpayers.
Their attitude is that the
Party gave
me this
power
and I don't have to
listen to
you.
The home-owners are
generally prudent
when
dealing directly
with such
representatives
of the state. But
they
often
support
the idea that residents
everywhere
should have the
right
to
organize
in a democratic and
wholly
autonomous fashion. The
government,
most of them
felt,
should have
nothing
to
do with how the home-owners choose
representatives
from
among
themselves.
One said:
"Empowerment
is a trend. But most
people
still have the
mentality
of
living
in
public housing.
After
they
are cut off from
public housing, they
will
develop
a new consciousness.
Here,
we are a few
steps
ahead."
Some activists
suggested
that the home-owners' committee should
acquire
a
degree
of
general
administrative or
policy-setting authority
over their
housing
complex, determining guidelines
on
things
like what kinds of noise should be
permitted
at
night;
these
guidelines
would then be enforced
by
the
property-
management company.
In
many
cases the committees
already play
such a role.
The activists often seemed to have become
general-purpose
contact
people,
saying
that residents would call them
up
even on matters unrelated to the
committee's basic
goals.
One well-established home-owners'
group
took on
responsibility
for
things
like
allocating garden space
and on one occasion
authorized workers to break into a home when water was
leaking
and the
occupant
was
away.
Some committees have achieved control over the
maintenance funds for their
buildings,
which can run to hundreds of thousands or
millions of
yuan,
thus
giving
the
organizers
considerable
responsibility.
Nonetheless, many
activists
rejected
the idea that autonomous home-owners'
groups
should
entirely supplant
the
state-managed
Residents'
Committees,
despite
the
potential
for conflicts between the two.
Rather, they
seemed
willing
to
work in tandem with the
government's systems
of administration. One
commented that the RC's staff members were state
officials,6'
whereas
they
were
"a mass
organization
of the home-owners": "The home-owners' committee
cannot
replace
the Residents' Committee. The one here has done its work well.
61
This is
technically
not so. RC staff are
paid by
the state and thus are
very
like state
cadres,
but
they
are not
part
of the official
employment
rolls
(bianzhi)
and do not receive all the
benefits that state cadres do.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
We
cooperate
with
it,
and it
cooperates
with us." Another held the view that the
home-owners' association embodied no new
"way
of
thinking" (sixiang)
at
all,
just
a new "channel" or "medium of communication"
(qudao).
She said:
We need a Residents' Committee. We need it as a contact with the
government.
For
instance when we
go abroad,
we need the RC to
help
us
get
a
passport,
and we need
its
permission
when we have a child. Its functions are not the same as those of the
home-owners' committee ...
Why
is China so successful at
fighting
criminals? It's
because there is such an
organization
to
keep
its
finger
on what is
going
on in the
neighbourhood.
Home-owner
organizers
were
split
on whether it would be
appropriate
for
their associations to take on state
governance tasks,
like
helping
the
police
maintain the household
registry
records. Some
rejected
this
idea, saying
that the
home-owners' committees should
only
work on the home-owners' behalf. Others
said that
they
would
cooperate
in such tasks if the
government
asked them to.
One interviewee said that the
police
had contacted her
group
for
help
in
solving
major
crimes that had been committed within the
housing project.
She indicated
she was
glad
to
oblige
in those kinds of
cases,
but was not
willing
to take
part
in
just any
kind of enforcement
activity.
For
instance,
she baulked at
helping
to
carry
out the draconian and controversial
municipal policy restricting ownership
of
dogs:
The
police
station
says
that there are too
many dogs; many
of them are
unregistered;
some are too
big;
and in some cases there are too
many
in one home. But the owners
don't
agree.
The
police
station wanted to do a
dog-raid (da gou),
to come in and
find who has
dogs
and who has
big
ones. We didn't
agree.
Home-owners should
obey
the law in
raising dogs,
but the
police
shouldn't use
illegal
methods
either,
or
hurt the animals. We also feel that because this is the
suburbs, things
should be
more
lenient; they
can't
expect
this to be
just
like in the
city.
Conclusion
Home-owners' associations are still at an
early stage
of evolution and their status
within the
political system
is still controversial.
Though
the modem
housing
projects
in which
they appear
are
springing up rapidly
in and around cities all
over
China,
it remains to be seen whether the
many existing neighbourhoods
composed
of state-owned or
formerly
state-owned homes will become
eligible
to
form home-owners' committees as
they
too come under
property-management
companies.
As I have
shown,
there
currently
exist different
types
of home-owners'
groups.
Some are formed
according
to
procedures
that allow the
developers
and
managers
of
property (which
are often linked to the
state),
as well as
government
agencies,
to exert extensive influence over the
way
the
groups
are established and
operate.
In these cases we see the hallmarks of
precisely
the kind of
quasi-
corporatist arrangements
that the
Party-state
has been shown to favour in
many
reform-era contexts. These dilute the
expression
of home-owners' interests and
shift
participation
into
carefully managed
channels. Sometimes the residents
57
58 THE CHINA
JOURNAL,
NO. 49
seem to find these
arrangements acceptable;
at other times
they
resist or even
reject
them. In such
cases,
home-owners'
groups
have arisen that feature self-
organization
and various forms of
participatory decision-making.
This
spontaneous variety
sometimes has received official
approval
and sometimes has
not. The absence of such
approval
has in some instances thwarted further
activity
by
the
home-owners,
while in other cases
they
have continued to
organize
and
pressure
their adversaries
regardless.
It is
impossible
to
say
at this
point
how the
ambiguities
in the relevant
government policies
that
legitimate
the idea of
organizations
of and for home-
owners,
but also
provide
for curbs that can
effectively
defeat their
purpose,
will
be resolved.
As has been
suggested by
studies of
housing politics
in other
countries,
the
ownership
of a home seems to be a
powerful
motivator for
taking part
in local
organizations
aimed at
defending
residents' interests.
But,
in
China,
it is not
ownership
alone that
spurs
on this
participation. Rather,
it is a combination of
factors: the
purchase
of a home within a new and
ill-regulated market;
mistreatment or fraud
by
the
developer
or
property-management company;
and
the existence of
government policies
that
provide legitimacy,
albeit somewhat
reluctantly,
for a
specific organizational
form. The home-owners' committees
could be considered an
example
of a broader trend:
rights-based
collective action
on the
part
of citizens armed with an awareness of the
gulf
between what
they
are
legally
entitled to and what
they
are
getting
in
practice.62
Their cause is aided
by
the fact that their immediate
adversaries,
the
developers
and
management
companies,
are not state administrative institutions and that
policies concerning
many aspects
of how the "new
neighbourhoods"
are to be
governed
remain
unclear.
The Chinese home-owners'
groups
seem to share some characteristics with
their
counterparts
in other
countries;
for
instance,
a
gap
between the
active,
sometimes
tireless,
efforts of a few core
organizers
and the more muted and
passive participation
of the bulk of their
neighbours.
But the
ways they
come into
existence,
and the
legal
frameworks within which
they
are
situated,
are
widely
different. This
type
of
group,
which elsewhere
may
look like a rather
subdued,
pedestrian
form of local associational
activity,
has extra
significance
in China. As
we have
seen,
the
problems
faced are often more
challenging, bringing
out
special
vehemence and determination on the activists'
part.
Most
importantly,
the
practice
of
organizing
on one's own initiative as a
group, electing
leaders and
pursuing hotly
contested
goals
over an extended
period
of time without the
62
Kevin J.
O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance",
World
Politics,
Vol.
49,
No. 1
(October 1996), pp.
31-55;
see also Minxin
Pei,
"Citizens v. Mandarins: Administrative
Litigation
in
China",
The China
Quarterly,
No. 152
(December 1997), pp. 832-62;
and Minxin
Pei, "Rights
and
Resistance: The
Changing
Contexts of the Dissident
Movement",
in Elizabeth J.
Perry
and
Mark Selden
(eds),
Chinese
Society. Change,
Conflict
and Resistance
(London: Routledge,
2000), pp.
20-40.
DEMOCRATIZING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?
immediate
supervision
and
approval
of
representatives
of the
Party-state
is
highly
unorthodox in the Chinese
political
context. It contrasts
sharply
with the
often
friendly
but
basically paternalistic
modus
operandi
of the
government-
sponsored
Residents' Committees.
Looking
at the individuals who strive to create these local
representative
bodies
suggests
a reconciliation between those who see members of China's
emerging
affluent strata as uninterested in
political
reform and those who see
them as
potential agents
of
change.
For the most
part,
the
organizers
did not
regard
their actions as
part
of a
project
of
general
democratization.
They
are
usually
cautious about
offending
the
government
and
generally appear willing
to
cooperate
with local officials and
police
on
many everyday
administrative
matters,
whether to assure them of their
loyalty
or because
they
have no
quarrel
with the idea of
working closely
with the state.
Still,
within the realm of their own interests and
concerns,
in matters
pertaining
to their investment in a
home, they
evince an enthusiasm for
organizing
in a democratic and self-initiated fashion. Their associations do not
always
limit themselves to issues like
management fees,
but sometimes seek to
assert more
general authority
over how
housing-project
affairs should be handled.
They
take action in
ways
that can be
public
and contentious as well as
quiet
and
legalistic.
The activists establish links with like-minded
peers
to share advice and
ideas,
and
they
sometimes draw
upon experiences
in more
open
and law-bound
societies in the outside world.
They
fall into a
sphere
of enhanced
opportunity
for
autonomous
organization
and
represent
a
real,
if
tentative,
manifestation of civil
society.63 They
indicate that some of those who have achieved affluence under
China's economic reforms do indeed
pursue
new forms of
empowerment-as
property owners,
if not as citizens.
63
Tony
Saich discusses
examples
of the
"opening-up
of social
space"
in
"Negotiating
the
State: The
Development
of Social
Organizations
in
China",
The China
Quarterly,
No. 161
(March 2000), pp.
124-41.
59

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