Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia [1st ed.] 978-1-137-51750-0;978-1-137-55015-6

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Centering Housing Questions in Asian Cities (Yi-Ling Chen, Hyun Bang Shin)....Pages 1-19
‘Re-occupying the State’: Social Housing Movement and the Transformation of Housing Policies in Taiwan (Yi-Ling Chen)....Pages 21-45
Displacement by Neoliberalism: Addressing the Housing Crisis of Hong Kong in the Restructuring of Pearl River Delta Region (Shu-Mei Huang)....Pages 47-70
When Neoliberalization Meets Clientelism: Housing Policies for Low- and Middle-Income Housing in Bangkok (Thammarat Marohabutr)....Pages 71-91
Neoliberal Urbanism Meets Socialist Modernism: Vietnam’s Post-Reform Housing Policies and the New Urban Zones of Hanoi (Hoai Anh Tran, Ngai-Ming Yip)....Pages 93-120
Beyond Property Rights and Displacement: China’s Neoliberal Transformation and Housing Inequalities (Zhao Zhang)....Pages 121-146
Development and Inequality in Urban China: The Privatization of Homeownership and the Transformation of Everyday Practice (Sarah Tynen)....Pages 147-170
Weaving the Common in the Financialized City: A Case of Urban Cohousing Experience in South Korea (Didi K. Han)....Pages 171-192
Contesting Property Hegemony in Asian Cities (Hyun Bang Shin)....Pages 193-209
Back Matter ....Pages 211-216

Citation preview

THE CONTEMPORARY CITY

Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia Edited by Yi-Ling Chen · Hyun Bang Shin

The Contemporary City Series Editors Ray Forrest Lingnan University Hong Kong Richard Ronald University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Noord-Holland The Netherlands

In recent decades cities have been variously impacted by neoliberalism, economic crises, climate change, industrialization and post-­industrialization and widening inequalities. So what is it like to live in these contemporary cities? What are the key drivers shaping cities and neighborhoods? To what extent are people being bound together or driven apart? How do these factors vary cross-culturally and cross nationally? This book series aims to explore the various aspects of the contemporary urban experience from a firmly interdisciplinary and international perspective. With editors based in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, the series is drawn on an axis between old and new cities in the West and East. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14446

Yi-Ling Chen  •  Hyun Bang Shin Editors

Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia

Editors Yi-Ling Chen University of Wyoming Laramie, WY, USA

Hyun Bang Shin London School of Economics and Political Science London, UK Kyung Hee University Seoul, South Korea

The Contemporary City ISBN 978-1-137-51750-0    ISBN 978-1-137-55015-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Contributor: Sean Pavone / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature America, Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.

Acknowledgements

This book is a product of an enduring process, involving negotiations with academic and family responsibilities that have spanned across three continents. The project was conceived and developed at the annual conferences of the American Association of Geographers in 2013, 2014 and 2015, boosted by the insights and inspirations kindly provided by the members of audience at subsequent conferences and seminars. Among them, we would like to thank, in particular, Hyunjeong Lee, June Wang, Asato Saito, Sarah Tyren, Shu-Mei Huang, Dallas Rogers, Bae-Gyoon Park, Mi Shih, Ying Zho, I-Chih Lan, Aveline Natacha and Si Ming Li. The book went through several rounds of metamorphosis as it evolved over the years, and we are glad to see its completion to help contribute to the thinking about a progressive future of Asian cities. We would like to thank all the contributors to the project, including those who had to withdraw for personal reasons. Below are our individual acknowledgements: Yi-Ling Chen. I would like to thank Hyunjeong Lee and June Wang for working together on the first book proposal. Asato Saito, Bae-Gyoon Park, Henry Yeung, Sarah Tyren and Dallas Rogers provided helpful suggestions in the beginning. The encouragement from Richard Ronald, Ray Forrest and Ngai-Ming Yip helped the book to move forward. The University of Wyoming funded the conference travels and the graduate assistance from Michael Patrick Turner. I thank Hyun Bang profusely for sticking to the project, revising and editing the rough drafts. Without his effort, this book would not have been real. I appreciate the love and tremendous support of my family, especially my father, Chi-Yuan Chen, who passed away in the summer of 2018. My chapter on Taiwan housing owes v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

thanks to the friends in Taiwan’s Social Housing Consortium who have made the impossible possible. The efforts they have put in the social housing movement should be recorded and remembered. Hyun Bang Shin. I would like to thank all the colleagues whose kind invitations to speak on various occasions provided the key inspiration for the preparation of this book. The National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2017S1A3A2066514) is acknowledged for its support for this book project. I also thank Kyung Hee University, South Korea, for providing time and space to work on writing up and editorial of this volume during the final stage of the project. Special thanks are to my co-editor, Yi-Ling, whose patience and friendship provided the much-needed push for this book. Most of all, I express my deepest love and gratitude to my partner, Soojeong, for her love, encouragement and patience while the book was being prepared.

Contents

1 Centering Housing Questions in Asian Cities  1 Yi-Ling Chen and Hyun Bang Shin 2 ‘Re-occupying the State’: Social Housing Movement and the Transformation of Housing Policies in Taiwan 21 Yi-Ling Chen 3 Displacement by Neoliberalism: Addressing the Housing Crisis of Hong Kong in the Restructuring of Pearl River Delta Region 47 Shu-Mei Huang 4 When Neoliberalization Meets Clientelism: Housing Policies for Low- and Middle-­Income Housing in Bangkok 71 Thammarat Marohabutr 5 Neoliberal Urbanism Meets Socialist Modernism: Vietnam’s Post-Reform Housing Policies and the New Urban Zones of Hanoi 93 Hoai Anh Tran and Ngai-Ming Yip 6 Beyond Property Rights and Displacement: China’s Neoliberal Transformation and Housing Inequalities121 Zhao Zhang vii

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CONTENTS

7 Development and Inequality in Urban China: The Privatization of Homeownership and the Transformation of Everyday Practice147 Sarah Tynen 8 Weaving the Common in the Financialized City: A Case of Urban Cohousing Experience in South Korea171 Didi K. Han 9 Contesting Property Hegemony in Asian Cities193 Hyun Bang Shin Index211

Notes on Contributors

Yi-Ling  Chen is Associate Professor in International Studies and Geography at University of Wyoming. Her research interest is about the interaction of urban planning and social change, focusing on urban social movements, particularly those concerning housing access. Her published works are on housing, gender, financialization, urban movements, identity politics and regional development in Taiwan. She recently expanded her research to compare East Asian cities, Amsterdam and Denver in their implementations of social housing. Didi K. Han  is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on dynamics of space, body and subjectivities in relation to urban commune-ing movements by the precariat, particularly in the East Asian context. Her recent work has appeared in the journal InterAsia Cultural Studies. Shu-Mei Huang  is Assistant Professor at Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University. Her research interests include postcolonial urbanism, trans-nationalization of care and space, and dark heritage. She is author of Urbanizing Carescapes of Hong Kong: Two Systems, One City (2015). She has carried out research into defunct prisons built by the colonial regimes in several East Asian cities, including Taipei, Seoul, Singapore and Lushun. In collaboration with her Korean colleague Hyun Kyung Lee, she is preparing for a monograph on the remembering of punishment in postcolonial Asian cities (Routledge). ix

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Thammarat  Marohabutr is Assistant Professor at the Department of Society and Health, Mahidol University. His research interests include social policy and political economy, including housing and health policy, civil movement and welfare administration. He contributed an article, ‘Bangkok’s Housing Market and its Trends: A Slowdown from Recovery since 1997 Economic Crisis’, to Housing Express (Hong Kong: Chartered Institute of Housing, 2008). He has also recently published a book chapter in an edited volume titled Housing Policy, Wellbeing and Social Development in Asia (2018). Hyun Bang Shin  is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and the Director of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Between 2017 and 2019, he is also Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. His research focuses on the critical analysis of the political economic dynamics of speculative urbanization, the politics of displacement, gentrification, megaevents and the right to the city, with particular attention to Asian cities. He is co-editor of Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (2015) and co-author of Planetary Gentrification (2016). His other forthcoming books include a monograph entitled Making China Urban (Routledge) and a co-edited volume The Political Economy of Mega-Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (Routledge). Hoai  Anh  Tran is Associate Professor of Built Environment and Programme Manager of the Urban Planning Programme at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. She researches on urban development and housing policies, urban planning and architecture, and urban space production and state-society relationship, with a focus on Vietnam. Her works on these issues have been published in various academic journals and edited books. Her most recent project deals with the privatization of public space and the politics of property in Sweden. Sarah  Tynen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at University of Colorado Boulder. Her specialization within the sub-field of human geography is political and cultural geography, focusing on demolition and displacement, economic development and borderland regions in China. Her master’s thesis examined the role of socio-spatial segregation in its material and discursive formations through participant observation and interviews on class construction and urban citizenship and is titled

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‘(In)Visible Boundaries: Uneven Housing Development and the Spatialization of Class in Nanjing, China’ (2014). Her work has previously appeared in the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics and the journal Space and Culture, as well as many online newspapers and magazines. Ngai-Ming  Yip is Professor in Housing and Urban Studies at the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. He researches on urban and housing issues in East and Southeast Asia, with special emphasis on Hong Kong, Mainland China and Vietnam. He is the editor of Neighbourhood Governance in Urban China (2014), and a co-editor of Young People and Housing: Transitions, Trajectories and Generational Fractures (2013) and Contested Cities and Urban Activism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He is also the editor of the journal Housing Studies. Zhao  Zhang  is a lecturer based in Zhejiang University of Technology, China. His research interests lie in scrutinizing housing inequalities, urban redevelopment and grassroots resistance in Mainland China and beyond from the perspective of cultural and political economy. His previous work has appeared in the journals Housing Policy Debate, The China Review and Irish Geography as well as in the edited book Handbook of Gentrification Studies. He is serving as the principal investigator for a project funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (18CSH012), which examines housing difficulties of the urban youth. He is the former recipient of a doctoral study grant from the China Scholarship Council (2010–2014) and a fellowship for the 4th RC21-IJURR-FURS School in Comparative Urban Studies (2015).

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7

Housing demonstration in Taipei City in October 2014. Photographed by Pingyi Lu 34 Farmlands at the NENT, 2014. Photographed by Shu-Mei Huang56 A private low-cost condominium built before 1997 in Bang Ka So subdistrict. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr 77 A Baan Eua Arthorn low-cost public housing estate in Salaya subdistrict. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr 81 A Baan Mankong slum upgrading project at Bon Kai community. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr 82 A poster from the early 1990s: Enforce industrialization, modernization in the capital city. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran99 Private housing development by individual households. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran 100 New urban areas in Hanoi 101 Raised ground floor to create demarcation between the buildings and the street in THNC. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran103 Public artworks in Ciputra. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran 107 Self-organized space-making in Linh Dam. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran 110 Appropriation of the reception hall in Ciputra by nannies. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran 111

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 8.1

An advertisement promoting real estate assets by referencing the concept ‘naked marriage’. Photographed by the author Danwei-subsidized housing. Photographed by the author (Note: Built in the 1980s, this is a lower-income building without gates or a private management company to manage trash and security. Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in this building in Nanjing cost around 1000 RMB or US$160 per month in 2012) Housing managed by independent wuye guanli. Photographed by author (Note: A high-security and upscale, gated community in the suburbs of Nanjing equipped with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, and a private management company responsible for security, mail, and trash services. A typical apartment in this community cost around 5000 RMB or US$824 per month in 2013, about five times more than a typical apartment in the city) Residents at Bin-Zib. Photographed by Bin-Zib residents in 2015 and edited by the author

132

157

158 182

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Five-Year Public Housing Plan, 2011–2016 Table 4.1 Financial institution and outstanding home loans, 1981–1993 Table 6.1 Housing cost comparison between different tenure types in Nanjing across different years Table 8.1 The main conflicts and issues in Bin-Zib

62 76 128 184

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CHAPTER 1

Centering Housing Questions in Asian Cities Yi-Ling Chen and Hyun Bang Shin

Introduction Housing has increasingly become one of the key areas of urban contestations in recent years. Globally, it was a key contributor to the global economic recession, precipitated by the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis (Larsen et al. 2016). Placed under the mounting pressure of commodification, privatization, and financialization, housing as a commodity is a major contributor to the exacerbation of urban crises that encompass intensifying inequality, economic and racial segregation, spatial inequality, and entrenched poverty (Forrest et al. 2017; Sayer 2016). Severe affordability Hyun Bang Shin acknowledges the support from the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF2017S1A3A2066514) for the writing of this Introduction. Y.-L. Chen (*) University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. B. Shin London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_1

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problems resulting from a winner-take-all process of neoliberal urbanization create unequal cities, begging for an answer to the question of whose city we produce and inhabit. Housing often tops policy agendas, as it is considered to be one of the key government measures to resurrect crisis-ridden economy. Brick-and-­ mortar subsidies are offered to builders to increase their supply in the market when the economy is sluggish. Deregulation is sought to facilitate housing supply in the name of curbing soaring housing prices, even if supplied new units are snatched by non-resident absentee landlords. As Rolnik (2013, p. 1059) succinctly puts, ‘[h]ousing represented one of the most dynamic new frontiers of late neoliberalism during the decades of economic boom, and at the outset of the crisis was converted into one of the main Keynesian strategies to recover from it.’ Although UN-Habitat (2016, pp. 11–14), in its World Cities Report,1 places housing as a key policy instrument of the new urban agenda to bring about social inclusion and environmentally sustainable human settlements, the intrinsic conflict between housing’s use and exchange value would continue to place housing at the forefront of political contestations. Such deeply entrenched problems of urban crisis have compelled someone like Florida (2017), a long-term protagonist of urban creative economy that has been exploited by neoliberal interests, to critically question the concentration of wealth and to admit that ‘the very same clustering force that generates economic and social progresses also divided us’ (ibid., p. 186). In Asia,2 housing has also been a major field of urban contestations. Asian economies have experienced rapid and condensed economic growth, having substantially reduced absolute poverty. However, worsening inequality is also a widespread trend in the region (Kanbur et al. 2014). Many of the urban housing projects are targeting the upper- and middle-­ class populations. In those economies such as mainland China where public housing provision used to be the norm under the socialist Party State, housing is increasingly commodified and privatized (Wang and Murie 1998). Housing affordability has become a serious problem in Asian cities. Based on price-to-income ratios around the globe, Forbes (Sheng 2017) reports that among the top five most expensive cities in the world, four are in Asia, namely, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Beijing, and Shanghai. Housing in Asia has also become a heavily contested field, but in a political-­ economic context that somewhat differs from that of the Western Europe or North America where post-Keynesian welfare statism and neoliberalization

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prevailed. Asia, especially the industrialized economies of the East and Southeast Asia, is a fast-paced society, having experienced a highly condensed nature of urbanization and industrialization in the late twentieth century. According to a study by Dunford and Yeung (2011), late-­industrialized Asian economies such as South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China have all taken around 25 years or less to experience a fivefold increase in their real gross domestic product per capita from the moment of their economic take-off. This was in stark contrast with the experiences of other developed economies such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, which spent about 100–160 years to achieve the same degree of economic development. Such a rapid pace of development entails accelerated societal transformation and changes to the fortunes of individuals and families whose average wealth over time has also increased relatively swiftly. Housing in Asia, placed in such contexts, comes to take on multiple meanings and significance, especially when Asia’s economic growth came with a highly unequal redistribution of societal wealth. Contrary to the belief of development experts who praised the rapid economic development without widening inequalities (for example, The World Bank 1994), Asia’s economic prosperity has not been without deepening wealth inequalities. Housing has been not only a major source of wealth generation for the super-rich and middle classes in Asia but also a source of deeply embedded inequalities (see, for example, Chua 2017; Forrest et al. 2017; Park and Hwang 2017; Yang 2018). Non-property (real estate) assets occupy a prominent position in individuals’ asset portfolio. According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2016, many Asian economies exhibit heavy dependence on non-financial assets in the individual asset portfolio. Such a situation also makes housing a heated area of urban aspirations but also of contestations. For making enquiries into housing in Asia, the state question becomes prominent. The condensed experience of Asian development has been led by what critics refer to as the developmental state (Doucette and Park 2019; Park et al. 2012; Woo-Cumings 1999). This is a particular version of the state that is understood to have prioritized national resources for investment in nurturing targeted industries through bureaucratic systems while maintaining state-led development of the market. Asia’s condensed development was accompanied by severe challenges for ‘collective consumption’ such as urban housing, which was addressed in a variegated way by the Asian developmental states (Castells et al. 1990; Doling and Ronald 2014). For some such as the Singaporean and Hong Kong city-states, public housing

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provision with heavy state intervention was taken as a mantra for its own public policy, while the South Korean state depended on the private sector with the heavy subsidy of the public sector (Chua 2017; Park 1998). Taiwan’s state has utilized mortgage subsidies as a major policy tool since 2000 (Chen and Li 2012). This edited volume includes contributions that discuss how a range of Asian cities under the influence of developmental statism (Park et al. 2012; Shin and Kim 2016) have responded to economic crises by employing neoliberal urban policies that fused with the persistent traits of developmental statism. The experience of each city, as discussed in this volume, takes into consideration the variegated relations between the state, the market, and the society, which cannot do away without asking how the global pressure of neoliberalization has manifested in Asia and has influenced the shaping of housing questions in the region. We provide further introduction to these questions.

Neoliberalization and Asian Cities Following the global-scale revelation of its internal contradictions of accumulation, neoliberal capitalism was thought to have entered a ‘zombie phase’ that is seen to have died but still dominant (Peck 2010). However, neoliberal urban politics have continued to remain strong and persistent, questioning if Peck’s (2010) prescription was rather premature and too optimistic. The tenets of neoliberalism include a strong penchant for the market and the rule of law, the free flow of capital without barriers, ­self-­regulation by free-market entities, deregulation, the supremacy of private property rights (and, if state ownership is dominant, privatization), state intervention only to remove barriers to the free flow of capital, and reduced public expenditure/tax cuts. David Harvey in his book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, calls for our attention to neoliberalism as a ‘global hegemonic project,’ emanating from the dominant global forces that include various transnational organizations, companies, and nation-states of significant influence, such as the United States of America (Harvey 2005). Brenner and Theodore (2002) emphasize that the hegemony of neoliberalism has been closely associated with the core strategies such as deregulation, liberalization, and state retrenchment, which were consolidated from the early 1980s. Neoliberalization, like globalization, may be localized in a number of ways. It is important to note that this is a two-way process. Neoliberal doctrine as a global hegemony may exert its pressure

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on nation-states to conform their governance practices to the neoliberal standards. This may work at various scales and through diverse channels (for example, individual foreign investors practicing neoliberal tactics of worker discipline, selective protection of immigrants and migrants by local governments, and so on). It may also be facilitated by local actors trying to ‘jump up the scale’ (Park 2005), suggesting that local actors for their own interests may attempt to build a nexus with the global forces despite the inherently protectionist approaches of the nation-states. Neoliberalization, therefore, does not suggest that neoliberalism is an external force or an extra-local project imposed upon a territorial space of various geographical scales, erasing existing local conditions to create ‘neoliberal colonization.’ Neoliberalism as an ideology aims at the imposition of free-market principles and state retrenchment, private property rights institutions, and self-interested rational individuals, but neoliberalization in practice is a path-dependent project, built on an existing inherited institutional landscape and regulatory frameworks (Brenner and Theodore 2002). The neoliberal processes have been implemented ‘always in context-, territory-, and/or place-specific forms’ (ibid., p. vi). It is therefore important to acknowledge that state retrenchment under neoliberalism does not suggest ‘the rolling back of state intervention, but rather its political, institutional, and geographical reorganization’ (ibid., p. ix). Neoliberal urbanization involves many destructive and creative mechanisms, including the reconstruction of intergovernmental relations, public finance, welfare state, institutional infrastructure of the local state, urban housing markets, urban form, and urban civil society (Theodore et al. 2011, pp. 22–26). Understanding neoliberalization requires a process-oriented thinking, as neoliberalization is essentially context-specific. In other words, the study of neoliberalism is to contemplate how ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ plays out in  local contexts (ibid.), acknowledging ‘the contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring projects’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002, p. 2). These interactions take the form of creative destruction, leading to the selective destruction of inherited regulatory landscapes and their recreation to conform to the neoliberal agenda. In this regard, the analytical rigor required in the study of neoliberalism is to avoid ‘overgeneralized accounts of a monolithic and omnipresent neoliberalism’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 381), and ‘excessively concrete and contingent analyses of (local) neoliberal strategies’ (ibid., p. 382). Neoliberalization is never coherent; instead, it is rather open-ended and hybrid, negotiating with locally embedded sociopolitical contradictions and geopolitical relations.

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Cities are central to the neoliberal policies that aim at ‘market-oriented economic growth, commodification, and capital-centric rule’ (Theodore et al. 2011, p. 20). The city space and urban governance under neoliberal agenda become the generative nodes to reproduce neoliberalism. With the emergence of cities as the main units of urban studies for both academic and practical reasons, Peck et al. (2009) conclude that cities have become strategic sites of unfolding neoliberal urbanism. This, however, does not necessarily suggest that all cities on the globe experience neoliberalization, which would be an overgeneralization, in the same manner as saying all cities are globalizing. While the global integration of exploitative transnational capitalism makes it difficult for any individual city to stay out of its influence, it needs care not to treat the process of local neoliberalization as a homogenizing, universal process. Neoliberal urbanization in Peck et al.’s (2009) framework occurs in the context of the post-Keynesian and post-Fordist transition of the West. Hence, the ‘scalar politics of neoliberalization’ (ibid., p. 57) often presupposes a particular type of governance structure, regulatory frameworks, and institutional configuration, which may differ substantially from those experienced by cities in the global South (see, for instance, Yeung 2000, for the case of Singapore’s response to Asian financial crisis). From the works of insightful critics, we have come to understand that urbanization and urbanism in the global South play out in a way that differs from the urbanism dominated by post-industrial cities of the West (see Gandy 2006; Robinson 2006; Simone 2004). Dependency theorists and Wallerstein’s world economy thesis all suggest that it needs caution not to treat cities equally and that the globalization of production and financial capital produces uneven impact and places cities at different ranks in the world of urban hierarchy. A neoliberal urbanization thesis also takes the post-­ industrial transformation of Western cities at the center of its discussion of scalar politics and changes in accumulation regime, but it is also evident that not all cities in the global South and the global North have been positioned in the same manner. They are essentially exposed to differentiated challenges and uneven global development. It is, therefore, essential to discuss the extent to which cities in the global South are going through a similar process and if they have become indeed neoliberal. Neoliberalism ascended to political prominence in the United States and Britain during the 1970s, though its full-scale experimentation during the early years took place in South America through the free-market policies of the World Bank programs and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans.

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When neoliberalism gained force in the East Asian economies, especially from the early 1990s, these Asian economies have already experienced condensed industrialization and export-oriented economic development under the developmental states, and many countries in the region experienced the decentralization of state power, economic restructuring, and increased inequality. These regional contexts that differ from the post-industrial West compel researchers to contextualize the ways in which Asia has encountered neoliberal pressures. As the Asian economies matured and integrated deeply in the global production network, they were inevitably facing challenges of neoliberalism. The neoliberalization processes in Asia, however, do not have an identical pattern across the region, and it would be misleading to assume that all the economies have transformed into neoliberal ones. As discussed in Park et al. (2012), the trajectory of interaction between developmental statism and neoliberalism can have multiple pathways, including post-­ developmentalism, developmental neoliberalism, or a hybridity that emphasizes the resistance of developmentalist interests, that is, neoliberal developmentalism (for this persistence of developmentalism, see also Shin 2017; Shin and Kim 2016). The differences among them are primarily about if the developmental states would have started a fundamental structural change or they would still maintain dominant power but use neoliberal policies as strategies to solve urban crises. To deal with the transformation of housing policies in Asia, it is important to clarify if the changes are under the old policy logics or a new neoliberal idea. They may often very well be the result of an amalgamation of both old and new, with difficulty in drawing a clear-cut line between them. The changing relationship between the state and the housing market also needs a detailed investigation, which requires a contextual and historical approach.

Urban Contestations and Housing in Asia The commodification and financialization of land and housing play an important role in the contemporary rise of urban crisis and contestation (Brenner et al. 2012; Madden and Marcuse 2016; Marcuse 2012). Urban spaces experiencing expanding rent gaps face an increasing degree of pressures of being converted into a ‘higher and better use,’ and hence are prone to becoming sites of confrontation between those who benefit from such

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conversion of use and those who lose out (Smith 1996). Urban redevelopment, regeneration, renewal, or renaissance emerges as the new policy buzzword, as existing uses, buildings, and populations become subject to new urban policy-making that relies heavily on property development as a key contributor to economic policy-making. This is what Fainstein observed in the 1980s and the 1990s London and New York (Fainstein 2001), and what Merrifield (2014) referred to as the ‘neo-­ Haussmannization.’ As Merrifield argues (ibid., p. xii): capital now actively dispossesses collective consumption budgets and upscales land by valorizing urban space as a commodity, as a pure financial asset, exploiting it as well as displacing people. This is precisely where neo-­ Haussmannization raises its ugly political-economic head.

Indeed, contemporary inner-city redevelopments taking on the meanings akin to what can be deducted from the mid-nineteenth-century Paris are reaching around the globe (Lees et  al. 2015; Wyly 2015). Lees et  al. (2016) argue that the influx of the capital to reinvest in the urban built environment, especially real estate, places urbanizing space under planetary pressure to experience gentrification as ‘class remaking of urban space,’ involving direct or indirect displacement of existing land users (see also Slater 2017). In this process, the state no longer plays a major role to provide collective consumption such as housing to help with the social reproduction of labor forces, as was assumed under the Keynesian welfare system. According to Rolnik (2013, p.  1058), the new paradigm of housing and neoliberalism was ‘mainly based on the withdrawal of states from the housing sector and market-based housing finance models,’ which involves three steps. The first step is to encourage homeownership and the privatization of public/social housing. The second step is financialization of homeownership, involving the expansion of market-based housing finance that has increasingly contributed to the global-scale bubble in real estate. The third step is ‘unlocking land values’ and to create the new geographies of the cities to enhance the competitiveness to attract the wealthy and tourists (ibid., pp. 1061–1064). Indeed, the financialization of housing is becoming the core of housing questions around the globe, calling for more attention to the ways in which de-financialization would serve to address housing problems (see Aalbers 2016).

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Housing, therefore, comes to the fore of urban crises in the contestations for the right to the city (Madden and Marcuse 2016; Marcuse 2012). Neoliberal forces facilitate the restructuring of the existing welfare institutions including public housing, and promote privatization, commodification, and deregulation, as governments strive to attract transnational capital and convert their cities into engines of economic growth and investor-­friendly environments. In this process, housing is transformed at the destructive and creative moments. The destructive phase would ‘raze public housing and other low-rent accommodation, and eliminate rent controls and project-based construction subsidies,’ while creative moments would produce ‘[n]ew opportunities for speculative investment in central-­ city real estate markets,’ accompanying the introduction of ‘[m]arket rents and tenant-based vouchers in low-rent niches of urban housing markets’ (Theodore et al. 2011, p. 22). The impact of neoliberalism on housing is nevertheless path-­dependent, as the established institutional arrangements and embedded sociopolitical relations in each economy would have significant impacts on the ways in which neoliberal market reform takes place (Theodore et al. 2011, p. 19). For this volume on Asian cities, it is therefore important to understand the specific national and urban contexts of each Asian economy within which housing questions unfold. In what can be broadly defined as the global East (Shin et al. 2016), housing policies of Asian developmental states have gone through several transformations, leading to a variety of social consequences in Asian cities. For instance, the public housing sector in Singapore and Hong Kong still occupies a sizable share; homeownership has been commonly envisaged as a social project due to the logic of developmentalism, having legitimized the states that historically exhibited (and in many aspects, continue to exhibit) authoritarian characteristics with orientation toward macroeconomic growth and social stability. However, more recently, as an increasing number of urbanites are becoming vulnerable in the midst of economic recession and exacerbating inequalities, housing questions have come to occupy one of the central positions in the geography of social discontents that cause protests as part of new political movements in the region. For some economies such as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, statesubsidized social rental housing has emerged as a policy option to mitigate social discontents, although its effectiveness is yet to be confirmed. China’s Party State has also been actively developing social rental housing in recent years after having gone through extensive privatization of urban housing, but its effect on ameliorating housing inequalities, especially in major cities of the eastern region, is yet to be determined.

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Housing questions in Asian cities are further compounded by their unique set of challenges, because of the ways in which housing has become a major means to achieve upward social mobility, wealth accumulation, and social security in the context of what can be referred to as ‘asset-based welfarism’ (see Doling and Ronald 2010). While the asset-based welfare in the West has risen to emphasize individual responsibility, sharing of welfare provision, and reliance on the market in the context of the diminishing role of the Keynesian welfare states, the global East has made use of real estate as a means to achieve social security of families and their wealth accumulation by ensuring a long-term stability and housing boom. Keeping housing markets buoyant is considered a major social and political issue in present-day mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, producing what critics refer to as the ‘culture of property’ (Ley and Teo 2014) or the ‘politics of property’ (Hsu and Hsu 2013). The middle-class aspiration to accumulate (property) asset by tapping into the housing market is met by the despair of those (for example, displacees from redeveloped neighborhoods or young people) who lack the means to become homeowners, and thus become increasingly frustrated. Furthermore, housing issues are further complicated as the Asian economies tread the path of ‘developmental neoliberalism’ (Park et al. 2012), entailing neoliberal policies that are entangled with various social and demographic changes that have taken place in Asian cities (for example, growing elderly populations, low birth rates, and an increasing number of single-person households) (Doling and Ronald 2014). Neoliberalism not only affects institutional relations between the state and the market, but also directly influences individuals and their decisions by spreading the ideology of ‘freedom of choice.’ Housing is a social entity as well as an economic one, and neoliberal philosophy has shaken Asian society by reinforcing more individualistic and market-oriented ideas, such as ‘consumer choice.’

The Structure of This Book This book is a collective work on key Asian cities, discussing the sociopolitical processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. We have taken housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic

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policies as well as the political legitimacy of the Asian states. Urban policies related to housing in Asian economies are examined to explore their continuing alterations and mutations, as they come into conflict and coalesce with neoliberal policies. Depending on which discipline one comes from and what perspective one holds, neoliberalism may refer to an ideological project; it may also mean an economic orthodoxy that underlies market transformation; and it may also represent a structural moment in the transition of some economies, which rise above others to be set as an economic model (Springer et al. 2016). Each chapter contributor is given the freedom to work with their own understanding of neoliberalism and its mutation, making use of this to address the housing question that they have identified as being the most pertinent in their study. This book includes seven empirical chapters that examine six cities in Asia, namely, Taipei, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Nanjing, Hanoi, and Seoul. All chapters explore the experiences of their case study city, while contextualizing such urban experiences in their respective national context. Each chapter employs a critical stance toward the notion of ‘all-encompassing’ neoliberalization of urban processes. It considers the extent to which urban processes have been influenced by the endogenous and historical processes of (developmental) urbanization, and how such endogenous processes have interacted with neoliberal forces, if any. In other words, it is of importance to identify historically embedded conjunctural relations that have shaped the housing sector in each locality, and discuss how these conjunctural relations have interacted with the force of neoliberalization. In this regard, each contributor to this volume structures their arguments by identifying a key contested field in the housing sector (for example, nature and transition of public housing provision, changing meaning of the ‘public’ in the public housing sector, financialization of housing markets) in each economy, and engages contextually with the key challenges each city faces for producing a more inclusive and socially just city. Chapter 2 by Yi-Ling Chen examines the recent experiences of urban contestations involving social housing movements in Taipei. The chapter situates the social housing movement in the context of Taiwan’s democratization since the late 1980s, which has encouraged the rise of grassroots movements in the country and called for the reorientation of Taiwan’s social policies. For Taiwan, neoliberalization has coincided with democratization, affecting the method of state intervention in housing and rendering the housing system to rely heavily on the private market and marginalize low-income citizens. The Taiwanese state encouraged homeownership

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and arguably showed little appetite in controlling speculation. Recent housing prices in Taiwan turned out to have nearly doubled when compared with those at the time of the housing boom in 2005. Public rental housing accounted for only 0.08 percent of the country’s housing stocks. The strong social housing movement in Taiwan since 2010 was to resist the deepening market dependence for housing provision and to address exacerbating social inequalities, bringing the housing question to the foreground of sociopolitical struggles. Through a political-economic analysis of the formation of housing problems and the rise of such housing movements, Yi-Ling Chen argues that the movement has pushed the Taiwanese state to play a bigger role in the housing system and to begin social housing projects. Shu-Mei Huang in Chap. 3 deals with the political-economic context of housing and land policies that triggered Hong Kong’s housing crisis, and how the politics of cross-border integration with mainland China involving a project to develop the New Territories in the name of increasing public housing was contested by the Hong Kong people. Even though the contestation was not successful, it led to more young people’s involvement in politics and later on in the Umbrella Movement. The chapter argues that the geography of housing in Hong Kong is ‘reshaping the boundary of the city, which demands a normalization of displacement,’ while the displacement in the New Territories is justified in order to supply ‘more affordable housing towards/across the border.’ The urban crisis in Hong Kong is intense due to the city’s serious housing affordability problems, exacerbated by the long waits to access public housing. In Hong Kong, neoliberalism emerges as a state project that is strongly guided by the developmental state in Hong Kong, hence the hybrid neoliberal developmentalism. Neoliberalization is further intertwined with the cross-­ border politics, with conflicting interests among the governments (both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong governments), transnational businesses, Hong Kong’s gigantic real estate developers (the land and the ruling class), Hong Kong citizens, and new immigrants. Chapter 4 by Thammarat Marohabutr discusses the development of housing policies in Bangkok, focusing on the changing housing institutions under different political regimes. The establishment of the National Housing Authority in 1972 encouraged private corporations to participate in the national housing projects, allowing them to enjoy huge profits but setting the scene for the 1997 financial crisis with which Thailand was hit. Housing speculation was triggered by an influx of foreign direct

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investment as well as the increase of housing funds from the Government Housing Bank and other commercial banks in the 1980s. While Thailand demonstrates the influences of the international agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF, which have encouraged economic liberalization and a stronger role of the private sector, Thailand’s housing development does not fit neatly into the conventional neoliberalism. Thammarat Marohabutr reveals how the housing system has been under the influence of both developmentalism and clientelism, with the national state still manipulating the redistribution of resources and the state/market relations based on clientelism. Hoai Anh Tran and Ngai-Ming Yip in Chap. 5 research on four large-­ scale housing projects carried out by large private developers in Hanoi since the 1990s after the implementation of economic reform Doi Moi. The chapter provides a useful contrast with the situations in mainland China with regard to the changing state/market relations under transition from a socialist planned economy to a market economy. The major difference is the larger proportion of foreign capital and agencies operating in Vietnam. The similarity is the heavy involvement of the national and local states in conditioning market operations. Tran and Yip especially focus on the relations between the state and private developers and how these developers create ‘modern’ gated luxury apartments. The contestation is over how the people in neighborhoods create people-centered space to change their orderly and alienated communities. While Vietnam is not a typical case of neoliberalism because of its combination with socialist modernism, Vietnam’s case is not without traces of neoliberalism, exhibiting housing privatization through fostering homeownership and commodification and prioritizing the exchange value over the use value of housing. As a result, social inequality deepens, manifested in particular by the mass production of gated communities for the rich. Zhao Zhang’s Chap. 6 is about the displacement of residents who lived in public housing in Nanjing’s historic neighborhoods. In mainland China, under the guidance of the strong Party State, housing has been subject to the multiple processes of homeownership promotion, privatization, and marketization. Zhao Zhang’s arguments indicate that the displacement of inner-city public rental housing residents is the result of forced housing privatization, because they are compensated with ownership of indemnification housing that is usually located in the remote area of Nanjing. For this reason, housing consumption through homeownership legitimizes displacement. The housing development in mainland China is hard to be

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defined as developmental capitalism or state-sponsored neoliberalism. Nevertheless, the economic crises in 1997 and 2008 hastened privatization, and spatial segregation replaced egalitarian ways of living. The Party State used the ‘spatial fix’ to improve the sluggish economy in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis that also negatively affected the Chinese economy, but the state intervention further encouraged private and financial capitals to be involved in housing development. In Chap. 7, Sarah Tynen works on the rise of gated community and homeownership, also based in Nanjing in China. The chapter connects spatial production with social formation, understanding the production of housing as the formation of class. Homeownership thus becomes a social status. The gated community represents the privatization of space and public services. However, the rise of the individuality and self-­responsibility does not mean a retreat of the state power; rather, it is a rearticulation of the state power and the state/market relations. Sarah Tynen cautions that the use of the ‘neoliberalism’ in the analysis of China’s urban space may conceal ‘the highly complex forms of governance and state-market-society relationship in China today.’ Her study of Nanjing’s gated community shows that the apartment buildings with private management form the identity of middle class (in contrast to the rural migrants), but the new sense of privacy and freedom reduces their social life and increases i­ solation, while the burden of mortgage and high housing prices create the social pressure and increasing inequality. The urban contestation over housing exhibits the contradictory feelings of middle-class citizens vis-à-­vis the transformation of their daily lives and the narrative of homeownership. Didi K.  Han in Chap. 8 examines cohousing experiences in Seoul, South Korea, where real estate speculation has been persistent throughout the era of developmental urbanism and much earlier than the intensification of neoliberalization since the 1998 Asian financial crisis. The chapter evaluates the grassroots’ efforts in creating the commons and resisting capitalism and financialization. This is a housing solution moving beyond the state and the market (Muller et al. 2015). The case study explores how the participants of the cohousing known as Bin-Zib deal with many problems of cohabitation, such as money, shared activities, and space. They insist on a communitarian principle, seeking ways in which they can sustain themselves financially while seriously attempting to make this community open to newcomers. This bottom-up model of sharing housing constantly faces the challenges generated by neoliberal urbanization. In recent years, the idea of cohousing in the name of shared economy has

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also influenced politicians and private businesses, leading to the rise of new policies, policy models, and business initiatives to experiment with commercial and social models of cohousing. However, the efforts by the state and the market lack the spirits of communitarianism. The chapter shows how the Bin-Zib community continues to seek strategies to sustain their growth and to provide alternatives to the neoliberalization of housing. In Chap. 9, Hyun Bang Shin concludes this volume by revisiting the housing question in the Asian context. The chapter discusses how the ‘economic success’ of the Asian states would have been possible by the construction of ‘property hegemony’ that renders individual’s investment in housing as a virtue, and how such ‘property hegemony’ is further supported by the state use of violence to ensure social stability. The chapter further ascertains that despite the domination of the state through the use of violence and the construction of property hegemony for its own legitimation, Asian cities are rich with histories of contestations and resistance, which help us imagine and work toward progressive urban futures that consider cities as commons or ‘commonwealth.’

Conclusion To overcome the detrimental impact of neoliberalization of urban land and housing, Slater (2009, p.  189) argues that a critical urban analysis should focus on ‘a sturdier analytical, political and moral framework which is rooted in housing as a question of social justice, and in particular, adequate and affordable housing as a human right and a basic housing need’ (original emphasis). Contributors to this volume retain such critical perspectives to explore the political economy of housing, its impact on changing urban landscapes, and the political contestation over socially inclusive redistribution of national wealth by focusing on housing questions. It takes urban housing in rapidly developed Asian economies as a means to explore the social and political processes of how locally embedded ruling regimes have responded to the mounting global pressure of neoliberalization, and how endogenous social groups have contested resulting changes in the housing sector. Conceptually and empirically, it is hoped that the book contributes to furthering the discussions about the extent to which the national states, be they Asian developmental states or Party States, guide economic transition, responding to the pressure of neoliberalization and the rising struggles to reverse the tide. The comparative studies on changing housing systems of Asia would help enhance our understandings

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of the political, institutional, economic, and ideological contexts of housing solutions in each country, and to revisit what would constitute ‘the basic principle of socially determined needs’ (Achtenberg and Marcuse 1986, p. 476, cited in Slater 2009, p. 307) in each Asian economy.

Notes 1. UN-Habitat (2016, pp. 11–14) in their World Cities Report summarizes its key findings on housing as follows: (1) an enabling approach for some, but disabling for many, (2) the decline of housing as a political priority despite increasing demand, (3) excessive focus on homeownership speculation, (4) housing as a speculative investment, (5) neglect of rental housing, and (6) increasing reliance on the private sector. 2. We are mindful of the difficulties in conceptualizing ‘Asia’ as a homogeneous geographic entity, and how it is imagined politically and intellectually by various critics (see, for instance, Chen 2010, 2012; Emmerson 1984; Spivak 2007). In this book, Asia largely refers to the late-industrialized East Asian economies (the so-called ‘tiger economies’) including mainland China, which have experienced a distinctive trajectory of condensed industrialization and urbanization during the post-colonial era of the late twentieth century. It also includes the Southeast Asian economies that have attempted to emulate the experience of the ‘tiger economies.’ Asia in this volume is also equated with the label global East that was mobilized by Shin et al. (2016, p. 456).

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CHAPTER 2

‘Re-occupying the State’: Social Housing Movement and the Transformation of Housing Policies in Taiwan Yi-Ling Chen

Introduction Housing prices in Taiwan have nearly doubled since the most recent housing boom in 2005 and have been a contributing factor to social housing movements. Homeownership, formerly regarded as the primary housing solution, has increasingly become an unattainable dream. The pervasive decline of affordable housing triggered collective actions, questioning the causal relationship between the market-led housing development and the role of the state. The establishment of an activist group, Social Housing Advocacy Consortium (hereafter SHAC), in 2010, was an important turning point for housing policies in Taiwan. In its funding statement, the SHAC advocated that the state should put social housing into its agenda and increase the share of social housing from 0.08 to 5 percent of all housing stock (SHAC 2010a). The broader task is not merely to increase this percentage but also to develop a strong leading role of the state in housing Y.-L. Chen (*) University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_2

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provision to reverse the pro-capitalist development. Following SHAC’s advocacy work, social housing, a concept formerly unfamiliar to most, became a buzzword and quickly gained popularity. Social housing has been an important campaign issue and gradually transformed Taiwanese housing policies since 2010. The meaning of social housing in Taiwan had been elaborated as the movement progressed. The SHAC defines it as rental housing provided by either the government or the private sector and directed toward poor and disadvantaged people who seek lower rents (SHAC 2010b). In the original context of social housing, the message was that the government should play a strong role in regulating the housing market and providing housing for the people who could not afford to buy. Therefore, social housing should be centered on the rental market, with an emphasis on affordable rents. Before this new term began to gain its popularity, public housing was the common term for the housing supplied by the government. However, public housing was primarily for sale at lower-than-market prices. The government stopped the construction of public housing in 1999, after having supplied 174,891 units since 1976. Public housing accounted for about 3.5 percent of the total housing stock by 2010 (SHAC 2010b). On the contrary, the share of social housing, that is, government-provided rental housing, was tiny, occupying only 0.08 percent of the total housing stock by 2010 (SHAC 2010c). Under public pressure, the central and local governments announced several future housing projects and enacted housing policy reforms. In 2016, the share of social housing rose slightly to 0.095 percent (SHAC 2016). In the process of policy implementations, the concept of social housing was constantly under contestation and in need of clarification. The complex process of policy reform has exposed many structural problems of the housing system in Taiwan. This chapter examines the role of the state in housing provision in Taiwan and the impact of the rise of the social housing movement on Taiwan’s housing policies. It highlights the absent role of the state in Taiwan’s housing system and discusses Taiwan’s post-1949 political and economic characteristics that framed the ways in which housing had been understood, regulated, and subsidized. The discussion will focus on Taipei City, because the city has been the political and economic center of Taiwan, exhibiting the most expensive housing prices and the most acute affordability problems. I conclude by identifying the obstacles that housing movements face in the country.

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Taiwanese State and Housing The Taiwanese state,1 even under the impact of neoliberalization, plays a major role in enacting regulations to facilitate the housing market (Chen and Li 2012). However, the housing system has been persistently based on the pro-market principle, the limited control on speculation, and the negligence of social equity. Since the late 1980s in particular, the neoliberal ideology has affected the methods of housing intervention, with the state letting the market take the front stage. Market principles gradually became evident in the rhetoric and logics of state intervention. The state’s role was not to contradict the logics of capital accumulation by the private sector. On the contrary, the state was to create an attractive milieu and provide incentives for the private sector. The meaning of ‘re-occupying the state’, as argued in this chapter, is to change the mode of housing intervention by the state, reversing the process of privatization and capitalization of housing assets. The driving force is the people who have not benefited from the free-market housing system, challenging the way housing resources have been distributed. In other words, re-occupying the state means changing how the state regulates housing. Compared to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, housing in Taiwan has the strongest tendency of commodification and the freest market principle (see Chiu 2008; La Grange et al. 2006). Before the social housing movement, the housing system in Taiwan was based on privatization, commodification, marketization, and minimum direct intervention from the state. In general, the Taiwanese government considered housing as an internal matter of private property and assets; therefore, increasing homeownership has been the primary goal of its housing policies during the developmental state era. The homeownership rate increased to 83.9 percent in 2010, from 66.3  percent in 1966 (DGBAS 1980 [2010]). The public housing constructed by the state is largely for sales, resulting in private ownership (Chen and Li 2012). The government did not intend to maintain and manage public housing nor provide affordable rent housing for low-income tenants. The minimum role of the state is also shown in the housing tax system. Property tax and housing transaction tax have been very low, allowing real estate profits to be accrued to investors and minimizing the function of social redistribution (393citizen 2015). Ronald and Doling (2012) argue that East Asian governments promote homeownership and delineate housing to be the foundation of asset- or property-based welfare; families are encouraged to own a housing unit,

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which offers opportunities to save, replace state pensions, and become less dependent on state welfare. In other words, people become more responsible for their own welfare and housing needs (Ronald 2008). However, the development of housing policies in Taiwan does not seem to be exactly like what Ronald and Doling (2012) argue, because it is questionable whether the Taiwanese government designed homeownership to be assetor property-based welfare. Housing in Taiwan is more laissez-faire in status: people had no choice but to solve their housing problems themselves due to the lack of government assistance. Taiwan’s housing policies can be roughly divided into three periods, according to the methods of state intervention in housing provision (Chen and Bih 2014): (1) from 1949 to the mid-1970s, (2) from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, and (3) from the mid-1980s until the present.2 Their key characteristics are explained further in the following sections.

Housing Under the Authoritarian State The first period of public housing development from 1949 to the mid-­ 1970s was a laissez-faire situation in which the primary housing solution came from the informal sector. Many aspects of housing production such as finance, construction, and management were in the informal sectors, meaning that they were not monitored or taxed by the state and that illegal settlements were tolerated. In 1949, the Nationalist government migrated to Taiwan with a large number of refugees after losing the civil war in mainland China. The population of Taipei suddenly increased from 270,000 to 500,000 (TCG 1988, p. 174). This resulted in a housing shortage, causing many people to build shelters independently on public lands. By 1964, nearly one-third of the population lived in squatter settlements (TCG 1964). The estates owned by the Japanese government and people during the colonial era became either national assets or the property of the Nationalist Party (KMT). Much of these lands and many houses in Taipei were used to accommodate government and military personnel. In the beginning of the KMT government period, the conflicts between the Taiwanese residents who lived through the Japanese colonial era and the post-civil war Chinese migrants led to a brutal repression of the former by the latter. In 1949, the KMT government imposed a martial law, which was abolished in 1987. More than 14,000 political dissidents were arrested, tortured, imprisoned, or executed. The victims were not limited to the

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Taiwanese residences but also included Chinese migrants. Most of them were intellectuals or elites (Chang et  al. 2006). This ethnic conflict between the Taiwanese residents and the mainland Chinese migrants was intensified by the political system prioritizing the Chinese ethnic population (Lin 2006). Government and military personnel were made up of a higher proportion of mainland Chinese migrants, especially for the high-­ ranking governmental positions. The government and military personnel benefited the most from a range of welfare programs. According to studies from the 1990s, the welfare arrangements for the public servants, including housing, pension, low-interest loans, and so on, were the best in the world (Chou et al. 2006, p. 55; Lin 1995; Lu 1995). Only a few housing alternatives were provided for the victims of natural disasters and the families that were displaced by the construction of public infrastructure. The KMT government used a political philosophy, ‘Three Principles of the People’, to claim its political legitimacy over mainland China and uphold the possibility of recovering the mainland. Based on this philosophy, around 2000 units of low-cost housing were offered free of charge to welfare recipients in the 1960s. However, the application of this philosophy was merely a political gesture rather than a sincere intention to solve the housing problems for the poor (Chen 1992). Even though the demand for such housing had been increasing, the amount of tangible estates remained the same until the commencement of the social housing movement in 2010. Since the 1960s, rapid economic growth has changed the nature of the KMT government from a militaristic bureaucracy to a development-­ oriented state (Amsden 1985). This change was due to the domestic economic transformation and the expansion of American capital overseas. After ten years of KMT presence in Taiwan and their dimming goal to recover the mainland, it became necessary to seek a new approach to legitimize the KMT regime (Tseng 1994, p. 56). These changes to the political and economic circumstances brought about the birth of technocrats whose crucial role was to promote the economy. This had a far-reaching influence on urban development. The technocrats established a top-down planning system based on the plan left by the Japanese colonial government (ibid., p. 59). In pursuit of attaining the dominant goal of stimulating capital accumulation, the technocrats had implemented urban construction projects such as building roads to connect harbors and airports while re-organizing urban land (ibid., pp.  55–85). Nevertheless, Taipei still lacked long-term or comprehensive urban planning because it

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was defined as the temporary capital of the Republic of China. Taipei only enacted minor corrections in response to urgent urban problems. The government spending on, or intervention in, urban affairs was kept at a minimum level (Chen 2005). The second period from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s was influenced by the Keynesian statism, resulting in the government’s implementation of mass public housing projects. Following President Chiang Kai-Shek’s death in 1975, his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, succeeded him as the president in 1978. Between 1972 and 1978, Chiang Ching-kuo implemented several important mass projects to transform the economy from labor-­ intensive to capital- and technology-intensive industries. The ‘Six-year Housing Construction Program’ (1976–1981) was put into the national economic plan because of the challenges from the two oil crises and diplomatic isolation (Mi 1988, pp.  113, 141–142). The oil shock in 1973 caused rapid inflation and an upsurge of housing prices. Taiwan lost its seat to mainland China in the United Nations in 1971. Further, the demand for democracy gradually formed a political underground camp and had an increasing impact on Taiwanese society. The KMT government needed a mass project to assure the people of its political legitimacy. The original goal was to build 106,931 houses in the period 1976–1981. The difficulty of acquiring land, however, caused serious delays. Only 43,996 houses were finished by 1981 (Chen 1991, p. 40). In 1982, the increase of unsalable public housing due to their relatively high prices made the government reconsider income criteria, so that middle- and upper-middle-income people could buy public housing. This was far from the original goal of providing housing for low-income groups (Mi 1988). The public housing was mainly for sale, and not for rent. These public estates could be resold after two years to other families who fulfilled the criteria and did not own any real estate. As the stock of unsalable public housing increased, the government began to rent out a small portion of units (HDTCG 1987, p. 83). The rise of housing prices in the 1970s led to a construction boom by private companies. However, the private housing market was not subject to many public interventions, so the informality of market sectors was pervasive. Another reason for the inadequate amount of intervention was the motivation to maintain and foster the legitimacy of the KMT government. To bribe the local elites, the KMT government authorized the utilization of land use for local governments that had close ties with private developers (Chen 1995). The gains from land speculation by maneuvering

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land development provided a major income source to local politicians. Hence, urban planning became a tool for local politicians to appraise values of land and then privately appropriate the increased value to gain profits for themselves and their constituents (Chen 2005). Even if the local politicians were not corrupt, the taxes from the increase of land value were important revenue sources and indicators of local economic growth. This is the political context that has driven the formation of pro-growth coalitions in Taiwan’s local politics. The supply of public housing provided by the government was intended to reduce housing prices. Although the prices were too high for low-­ income people to buy, public housing remained for sale to reduce the government’s expenditure and other long-term duties to manage public housing. The government maintained a minimum role and had no intention of attending to the housing problems of the poor. Since the mid-­ 1970s, this has been a pattern of state intervention. Whenever housing prices skyrocketed, the government increased the supply of for-sale public housing. This public housing was converted into private assets. The attainment of public housing provided a way of gaining heavy government subsidies, similar to winning a lottery. For this reason, the public housing was called ‘lottery housing’. Ultimately, its purpose of taking care of people who needed it the most was lost. Military personnel especially benefited from the public housing policies because they could own apartments at extremely low costs if the project was constructed on their previous publicly owned shelters (Chen 2006).

Housing Under Post-1987 Neoliberalization and Democratization The period between the mid-1980s and the present constitutes the third period of the public housing development in Taiwan. The central government established more institutions to assist the markets and incorporate the private sector into housing provisions. More market-friendly regulations were enacted to stimulate the housing market. The government adopted market principles into public housing provisions as a means of intervention. Since 2000, low-interest mortgage programs replaced the direct public housing programs, and subsidies for mortgages were used instead of promoting new housing construction.

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In 1987, one year before President Chiang Ching-kuo passed away, the abolishment of martial law marked an important landmark for democratization. Lee Teng-hui succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo as president in 1988 and was elected as the first president by direct voting in 1996. Democratization in the late 1980s affected state-capital relations (Wang 1993). The capitalists and the KMT state faced a challenge from popular movements, especially those involving labor and the environment. Meanwhile, low production costs in Southeast Asia and mainland China offered other alternatives of manufacturing and caused a major outflow of capital from Taiwan. In order to keep capitalists in Taiwan and gain their support, the developmental state began incorporating capitalists into policy implementation. Later on, the capitalists gradually gained power independently of the state and developed a stronger influence over policy-making when they built global production networks and became more internationalized (Yeung 2014). Democratization also provided opportunities for the rise of local factions and business groups in  local and national elections. Subsequent housing policies made the stimulation of the housing market the priority, introducing more low-interest loans to homebuyers and offering broader financing options for private developers. Nevertheless, if the state developed an alliance with developers, the political party in power could not totally ignore those who did not benefit from this pro-market system. This led to a pattern of policy implementation during the democratization era, which gave a large proportion of the pie to developers first (Chen 2005). President Chen Shui-bian from the Democratic Progressive Party (hereafter DPP) was elected in 2000 and served as Taiwan’s president from 2000 to 2008. Reacting to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, President Chen’s first priority was to stimulate the housing market by offering more low-interest housing mortgages. The DPP government completely stopped the direct construction of public housing, reduced housing transaction taxes, closed housing bureaus in major metropolitan cities, and implemented the Real Estate Securitization Act. Enacting regulations to fund and facilitate the function of the housing market was the main focus of the DPP government’s housing policies. On the other hand, the DPP was responsive to the request of some social groups as well (Chou et al. 2006). Housing voucher programs were established in 2007 for low-­ income and disadvantaged groups such as the elderly, single-parent households, and the disabled.

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The KMT regained its political power with President Ma Ying-Jeou in office from 2008 to 2016. One of the reasons for his victory was the perception that the KMT could create another economic miracle like the one in the 1970s. Ma’s pro-China attitude was also believed to be able to enhance the economic tie between Taiwan and China. The problem was that Taiwan was a democratic country already, and it could no longer be led by authoritarian technocrats and pro-capitalist logic alone. In terms of housing policies, the reduction of inheritance tax in 2009 from 50 percent to 10 percent attracted overseas capital to flow back into Taiwan markets, but unfortunately most of the capital went into the real estate market and exacerbated the housing affordability crisis. In order to win his second term, President Ma passed the Housing Act in 2012 with the aim of supplying 13,000 units of ‘social housing’, acting as another yet less attractive form of lottery-style public housing (Coolloud 2014). The government began offering free land close to the new rapid transit stations for private developers to build for-sale housing. These housing units were only allowed for resale after 5–10 years, and they were for households whose income was below 50 percent of the average household income in Taipei and New Taipei cities. The construction quality of the housing received criticism because developers used cheap methods that caused crowded and cramped conditions. The Housing Act had no practical methods of providing affordable or social housing, offered no punishment for housing discrimination, and could not substantially increase the number of social housing. Merely ten percent of new public housing units provided or subsidized by the state were made available primarily as public rental housing. Later, under the request of social housing movement, this proportion increased to 30 percent in the revision of the Housing Act in 2017. Li-Yeh Fu (2010) argues that Taiwanese welfare is not a complete liberal model that minimizes state intervention and only provides welfare to the people at lower ends of socioeconomic levels. Taiwan’s welfare system has served the political purpose of maintaining political legitimacy. For this reason, government employees and military personnel have been given the majority of welfare. Fu (2010, p. 207) further argues that the state welfare in Taiwan after 1990 has become a ‘market-oriented model’, because cash subsidies are given to most families in order for them to seek services from the market. In Taiwan, families have always been taking on the major responsibility of looking after the welfare needs of their members. While there is a need of social welfare to help people take care of their elderly loved ones, young kids, or disabled family members, the policy of

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cash subsidies is problematic because the amount of cash subsidies is far from covering the expenses. On the other hand, there is a serious shortage of good-quality welfare institutions. It is hard to rely on the market to solve the welfare needs of every family. Encouraging homeownership has the same market-oriented logic. It encourages everyone to become consumers seeking housing from the market. Monetary assistance to the general public for homeownership, such as low-interest mortgages, allows for the privatization of the housing matter, enhancing each individual family’s responsibility and increasing their reliance on the market.

The Neoliberal Influence on Taiwan’s Housing Policies After the Mid-1980s Holliday (2000) characterizes Taiwan as practicing a kind of ‘productivist welfare capitalism’ in which social policies were subordinated to economic growth. When neoliberalism gradually transformed the public policies in East Asian developmental states, critics debated if the developmental states were becoming neoliberal states, resembling their Western counterparts. Neoliberalism has impacted the East Asian developmental states later than many countries in the Americas and Western Europe, because the East Asian economies still underwent rapid economic growth in the late 1970s and 1980s under state-led policies. Neoliberalism altered the strong role of the developmental states in various ways, and it had unevenly influenced housing policies across countries in East Asia. Decentralization, economic competitiveness, and public and private partnerships have become the common tendency, but the driving forces behind this trend cannot all be attributed to neoliberalization. Democratization also plays a part in demanding decentralized decision-making and resource distribution (Park et al. 2012). In Taiwan, during the third period since the mid-1980s, housing policies were under these two major forces of neoliberalization and democratization. While democratization has pressurized the government to enact policies to benefit the majority of the people, it has also created opportunities for politicians, especially ones that work to their advantage, to represent certain interests due to the design of elections in Taiwan, which necessitates the need for garnering substantial financial supports that are more likely to come from the well-off electorate.

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On the other hand, neoliberalization gives precedence to market mechanisms. As a result, different low-interest mortgage programs are being invented with the subsidies of public funding. The rationale is to expand consumption and hence stimulate the housing market (Chen and Li 2012). The increasing mortgage programs and the reliance on the housing market in Taiwan display a similar pattern to ‘the financialization of homeownership and housing rights’, as discussed by Rolnik (2013), although following a different path-dependent trajectory. Over the years, the degree of financialization of Taiwan’s housing sector has increased. The easier access to housing finance and subsidies for buyers has greatly increased the total amount of borrowed mortgages, from around 415 to 6132  billion New Taiwanese dollars (about 13.5 and 204.4  billion US dollars, respectively), between 1988 and 2015 (Central Bank 2016). The total amount of mortgage has grown to reach 38.2  percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014 (Central Bank 2014). The financialization and commodification of housing has resulted in three distinctive characteristics of Taiwan’s housing markets: high homeownership, high vacancy rates, and high housing prices. Housing is used as an effective mechanism for storing wealth and has become a speculative tool (Chen and Bih 2014). Harvey (2005) argues that neoliberalism is the restoration of class power, although the class composition can be different between societies and the upper-class may not be homogeneous. He argues that those withholding power under neoliberalism include ‘individuals embedded in the corporate, financial, trading, and developer worlds’, who benefit from neoliberalization and exercise a strong influence over global affairs (ibid., pp. 35–36). The process of neoliberalization in Taiwan did enhance the speculative value of housing and hastened the unequal concentration of wealth. Housing is a crucial factor contributing to the increasing social and generational inequality (Chen 2015; Yeh 2016). The beneficiaries are those who are wealthier and have more than two houses. Many corporations, unfortunately, participate in housing speculation because of high returns on investment and low transaction taxes. These tendencies leading to the neoliberalization of the developmental state of Taiwan have made housing welfare conditions worse than those under the neoliberal states of Western Europe and North America. In Taiwan, promoting homeownership and privatized housing welfare have been the goal of housing policies for every political regime, whether be it developmental or neoliberal. People have to seek individual solutions

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involving a heavy reliance on family support. The tiny share of public rental housing (0.08 percent) nearly caused the state’s presence to be non-­ existent in the provision of housing welfare. The major change brought about by neoliberalization in Taiwan changed the state’s regulatory scope of the laissez-faire market and provided more incentives to stimulate private involvements. It is like what Tickell and Peck (2003) argue: it is an illusion that state action is diminished under neoliberalization. Instead, it is qualitatively different in seeking to construct markets. In Taiwan’s experience, the developmental state continues to play a crucial role for reconstructing and assisting the market. Speculation becomes more unstoppable because of the omnipresence of market principles. The struggles are more severe for people whose housing conditions cannot be protected by homeownership, because housing has become more unaffordable and they do not have the protection that could be expected from a welfare state. These non-homeowners have not been the target of housing policies, and the housing resources available to them have been considerably limited irrespective of neoliberalization. The private rental housing market is mostly underground and informal, causing tax evasion and a lack of regulations that would ensure the protection of tenants and landlords. In this sense, the developmental state of Taiwan under neoliberalization is worse than other neoliberal states because the state hardly attends responsibly to this domain of social reproduction. For these reasons, calling for strong state intervention becomes the main goal of the social housing movement.

The Rise of Social Housing Movement in 2010 The SHAC was established in 2010. The subsequent analysis used the official statements of the SHAC posted on its website to study its changing strategies, successes, and challenges. Since 2011, I have also participated in SHAC through internet discussions, Facebook, an internal mailing list, workshops, meetings, and public hearings. My experiences through these mediums have helped me interpret the information from the SHAC’s website. A lot of talks and TV programs related to housing in Taiwan by scholars, activists, and policy-makers are filmed and uploaded on YouTube; these videos are also important sources of information. As an advocacy group, SHAC has used several strategies, such as policy advocacy, promotion of legislation, oversight of housing projects, social education and campaigning, and international learning (SHAC 2013). These actions target the people in policy-making circles as well as the

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­ eneral public. SHAC was formed by 13 organizations that work with g various disadvantaged people, who have suffered the most from the unaffordability and discrimination in the housing market.3 Most of these groups were established after democratization in the late 1980s. These groups are experienced in policy advocacy, fund-raising, social service provision, policy research, and networking. Their connections with policymakers, legislators, representatives of city councils, and the media help them advance social housing issues. In terms of policy advocacy, SHAC targets politicians and policy-­makers to incorporate social housing into the policy agenda. During elections, SHAC visits candidates and proposes their policy recommendations. Since the 2010 mayors’ elections for five major cities in Taiwan, social housing has become one of the key campaign issues, especially in the Taipei metropolitan area. Most of the SHAC’s protests are located in the Taipei metropolitan areas, particularly Taipei City, because housing prices in these areas are about twice as high as average housing prices in Taiwan. The ownership rate in Taipei City is the lowest in Taiwan. In 2014, mayors elected to the six major cities (Taoyuan was added as the sixth in 2014) all stated their goals to increase the number of social housing units in their election pledge. For example, the then newly elected Mayor of Taipei, Ko Wen-je, promised to add 50,000 units. The newly elected President Tsai Ing-Wen planned to increase housing by 200,000 units nationally. Advocacy during elections has been a successful strategy for the SHAC. Changing the housing legislation has been another important focus of the movement. SHAC has cooperated with a few legislators and representatives of Taipei City who support housing reforms. Legislators Chen Chieh-Ju and Li Shin were crucial supporters of the housing movement (SHAC 2015a). Chen Chieh-Ju was a leader advocating for disability rights. Li Shin was a representative from where the Ang-Kang housing project in Taipei is located, the largest public rental housing for the low-­ income population (around 1000 units in total). Although Chen and Li were from different political parties, they were both very important speakers for social housing. SHAC is the main but not the sole actor in the social housing movement. Strong public support is crucial for sustaining the movement. According to the internet survey carried out by the Executive Yuan of Taiwan in 2009, the top public complaint was the high housing prices (CPAMI 2015). The ratio of median housing prices to median annual household income in Taipei City rose from 8.9 to 15.7 between 2005 and

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2014. While this ratio is lower than Hong Kong’s 17, it is higher than most North American, Japanese, and European cities. This ratio is 7.7 in Seoul and 5.0 in Singapore (Kim and Park 2016, p. 9). Taipei City is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world according to the Demographia International (2015). In October 2014, the housing movement organized a mass protest in front of one of the luxurious apartment complexes in Taipei. Thousands of people lay down in an expensive area in Taiwan (see Fig. 2.1). The signs they were using said things like, ‘Destroy cronyism, strive for fairness’ and ‘Give me housing rights, make housing affordable’ (Wen 2014). These slogans called for a strong role of the state to control housing speculation, aiming for fairness and ensuring housing rights. The five goals of the housing protest in 2014 were as follows: (1) the incorporation of housing rights into the constitution and the termination of forced displacement, (2) the reform of real estate taxes and the prohibition of speculation, (3) the construction of social housing to reach five percent target and the establishment of public housing corporations by

Fig. 2.1  Housing demonstration in Taipei City in October 2014. Photographed by Pingyi Lu

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either the public or private sectors, (4) the revision of the public land law and the termination of building for-sale public housing, and (5) the development of formal rental market and rental housing laws (SHAC 2015b). All these goals demanded a strong state to enact laws on public land, taxes, the rental housing market, social housing, displacement, and housing rights. Later, the goals were grouped together to produce three key directions: tax reform, rental housing market regulation, and expansion of social housing. Strengthening the role of the state is perceived as the key solution to transforming the long existing laissez-faire and speculative housing market. SHAC advocated that there should be more housing policies to limit the unruly gains from real estate businesses, and emphasis on the use value and fairness of housing. In addition to social housing movements, several urban movements have been ongoing in Taipei, especially regarding forced displacement. Squatters and disadvantaged people on public land, and the minority of landowners who disapproved redevelopment projects, questioned who has residence rights in the city and the fairness of urban redevelopment. ‘Ju Zhu Zheng Yi’, or housing justice, is another new term created by the social housing movement and has been widely used by various displacement movements.

Challenges to the Social Housing Movement Since 2010, the social housing movement has made progress in several ways. The Taiwanese Legislative Yuan passed a luxury tax law in 2011. Before the previous presidential election in 2012, the housing act and laws regarding the transparency of housing prices were passed (Chen 2011). Legislative Yuan also approved a property tax plan proposed by the Ministry of Finance ahead of the presidential election in 2016. These legislative contents are not ideal, however, because they still reserve protections for real estate businesses (Chen 2011, 2015). The Rental Housing Bill was passed in Legislative Yuan in 2017. However, the bill’s primary purpose is to set ‘up a mechanism for the government to sublease and manage privately-owned apartments on behalf of owners’ (Executive Yuan 2017). It does not aim at establishing institutions to resolve rental disputes or regulate the quality of rental housing (Liang 2017). The goal was to increase the supply of rental housing by giving incentives for private landlords and more public assistance. Doreen Massey (2013, p. 4) argues in ‘Vocabularies of the Economy’ that ‘the vocabulary we use, to talk about the economy in particular, has

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been crucial to the establishment of neoliberal hegemony’. Transforming the housing system involves large-scale social engineering, because it needs to counter the hegemony of political, economic, and cultural realms. The free market or laissez-faire system has been established after the KMT’s governance of Taiwan in 1949, and was later reinforced by the global neoliberal ideology. Housing as a commodity has become deeply rooted into the rhetoric and common sense of the Taiwanese people, governance, and state-market relationship. There are many challenges to overcome for the state, housing market, and society. The first challenge is the limited institutional and financial capacity of the central and local governments to address housing problems. When the housing policies were switched to mortgage programs for the general public in 2000, financial subsidies became the major method for pubic intervention. Housing bureaus in every city government were eliminated. The financial capacity of the Taiwanese governments has been constrained by increasing deficits due to slow economic growth and low tax rates. Taiwan’s tax revenue was only 12.8  percent of its GDP in 2012, much lower than the average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (33.8  percent in 2010) (Academia Sinica 2014). For local governments, their financial capacity is further constrained by the centralizing administrative system. The central government controls taxes, policies, and budgets and allows little autonomy for local governments. Under these circumstances, local governments use their authority over land use planning to raise land taxes, which acts as their primary source of revenue and results in their promotion of booming housing markets. This process leads to the rise of the secondary circuit of real estate, which has become the new urban economy and the driving force of urbanization in the global North and the global South (Lees et al. 2016). The financial and institutional capacities of the governments, in accordance to scale, need to be improved due to the lack of housing bureaus and financial sources. These obstacles have been improved recently after the law on the establishment of public corporation on housing and urban renewal was passed in the Legislation Yuan in January 2018. It is expected that there would be an administrative institution funded by the government to handle the social housing and urban renewal. The second challenge is the relationship between the state and real estate businesses. The housing policy since the 1990s has been aiming to stimulate the housing market. The state has acted in favor of the housing market. Jou et al. (2012) argue that the urban development in Taipei is a process of

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accumulation by dispossession, because public land was privatized to assist mega projects. Private property ownership was prioritized, and claims on private property rights were established as the most dominant right to the city. Large-scale urban projects privatized the public land and common space of the city. The city government has provided incentives to the private sector to encourage private participation in urban development since the late 1990s, including offering public lands, transforming land use for higher value usage, acquiring land, and providing more floor space. Public and private partnerships as well as private-led property development have become a major method of urban development. The heavy subsidy of public resources to privatizing development neglects the issue of social justice. The various incentives to promote the role of the private sector in housing provision, to privatize pubic land, and to prioritize private property have caused unruly speculation. The processes of privatization and deregulation (Jou et al. 2012) lost sight of the meaning of ‘the commons’ and social justice. The exchange value of housing has valorized and repressed the use value. Urban development is helping richer people to improve living amenity and displacing the poorer population. The lack of policy concerns on housing affordability has worsened social inequality (Yeh 2016). The third challenge is the popular belief in the market mechanism. Around the year 2000, the majority of housing research units at academic institutions changed their titles from ‘housing’ to ‘real estate’ in Taiwan. In 2000, the Institute for Physical Planning and Information (hereafter IPPI) was founded; the direct translation of its Chinese name, the Institute for Information on Real Estate, is more accurate in describing its purpose. IPPI is a non-governmental research institute, with primary financial supports from central and local governments. Its primary business involves carrying out projects for central and local governments. This cooperation has shown a pattern of neoliberal governance, where the central and local governments subcontract many public tasks to the private sector or non-­ governmental organizations (NGOs) in order to reduce their governing jurisdiction since the late 1990s. The establishment of the IPPI enabled the release of real estate information such as the housing price index and the consumption behaviors of homebuyers. It argues that the role of the government is to ensure a perfect market, relying on detailed information provided by state intervention to avoid distorting the market, maintaining an indirect role, and letting the market unfold naturally. The problem is that a perfect market hardly exists, and the private market is looking for

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profits. In many cases, the indirect role of the central government does not help solve housing problems, especially for impoverished people. Neoliberal intervention has negatively impacted housing problems, because the contemporary government operates to provide incentives for private sectors so as to ensure their profit maximization. It is problematic to use market-driven resolutions to solve housing speculation. There should be a more direct government role in housing provision. The government has to balance the efficiency of markets while maintaining fairness. The fourth challenge is the developmental and productivist ideology. The developmental state in Taiwan has failed to ensure sufficient collective consumption and the use value of housing in cities. This deficiency contrasts the status of public housing in Hong Kong and Singapore, where public housing has made substantial contributions to economic development (Castells et al. 1990). Although the number of social (rental) housing units has increased slightly since 2000, from 7500 to 8036, financial sustainability is of major concern (SHAC 2016). The provision of new social housing also changes the ways these housing units have been regulated. To ensure that the rent can cover the costs of maintenance and other expenses, controvertibly, the provision of new social housing caused the rents in the social housing to increase to 70–80  percent of the market rents, disabling lower-income tenants from accessing social housing (Huang 2016). The Housing Act of 2012 guaranteed only ten percent of housing supplied under government projects to be for disadvantaged people (CPAMI 2016), and later the percentage was raised to 30 percent in 2016. The major beneficiaries of social (rental) housing are younger people, 45  years old and below, who have the necessary financial means to afford rent. Social (rental) housing is defined as transitional housing, meaning the residents cannot stay permanently. In contrast, the mega urban projects, such as financial, transit, or high-tech districts, are believed to stimulate economy and gain much more support from governments (Jou et al. 2012). The calculation of financial returns on the mega urban projects is less important than those on social housing. The final challenge is the inherent ideology that assumes housing is merely a commodity. A Chinese saying ‘there is soil; there is wealth’ is often quoted by media or housing researchers to explain the collective behavior of housing investors in Taiwan (Apple Daily 2015). This explanation— essentializing the culture of property—neglects the structural ­factors that contribute to the commodification of housing. Owning a home in Taiwan

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was a survival strategy under the authoritarian and developmental rule before democratization from the late 1980s. Homeownership was further enhanced by the neoliberal logic, transforming more citizens into consumers. The state consistently avoids assuming a direct role in housing its people. Housing is constantly subject to market provisions and is regarded as an individual responsibility. On the other hand, the gains from housing investments are treated as a personal success derived from wise decisionmaking rather than a collective social creation (Larsen et al. 2016). It is ironic that the construction of social housing, albeit being a popular idea, faces the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) problems for the sake of protecting property value, especially in gentrifying Taipei City neighborhoods (Chien 2016). The resistance from homeowners is related to how the society perceives the ‘poor others’ (Lawson and Elwood 2014). Due to the strict definition of the poverty line, only about 1.46  percent of people in Taiwan receive low-income welfare (MOHW 2015). The urban renewal policies in 1998 led to the ‘hyper-gentrification’, a process allowing centrally located public land to be used by super-rich people (Lees et al. 2016, p. 80; Jou et al. 2016). As a result, the segregation of the rich and poor has increased because of the high-rise luxury apartments and their vertical gated communities. The lack of class integration—exemplified by the act of ‘demonizing the poor’—has unfortunately been a politically hegemonic neoliberal project (Lawson and Elwood 2014, p. 210).

Conclusion Since the late 1980s, the process of democratization and increased public participation pressed for the expansion of social welfare in Taiwan. Meanwhile, neoliberalization has affected how the Taiwanese state governs the housing system and the methods of housing intervention, but the system still relies heavily on the private market and marginalizes its low-­ income citizens. Current housing policies enhance the tie to market mechanisms, aiding the state’s primarily facilitation of the housing market and homeownership and granting it little control over speculation. This chapter has shown that the emergence of the social housing movement is the consequence of the combination of developmentalist, neoliberal, and democratic developments in Taiwan. The method to transform housing policies relies on re-occupying the state, a complex process with multiple interpretations. The first is to change the dominant principle behind the market mechanism of housing policies. The second is to stop

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favoring the capitalists and middle-class homebuyers to reduce social inequality. The third is to reinstate the social characters and use value of housing. Social organizations arise to change the social system that was built by the strong authoritarian state. Civil society challenges the close state-businesses relations under neoliberalization. Bottom-up forces request the strengthening of welfare functions within the state to ensure the housing needs of all people. Thus far, the housing movements in Taiwan have made several achievements, including the enactment of housing institution and formal legislation, such as the Housing Act; changing the national property tax system; and promoting more construction of social housing. The legislation and tax reforms faced resistance from real estate businesses, causing reform results to be problematic. The strong sense of housing as commodity has been a long-established idea. To transform the housing system, there is a need to create a social change to do away with the language that characterizes commodification of housing. It is a pervasive task in its scope and discourse that demands constant political work.

Notes 1. This chapter uses ‘state’ and ‘government’ in an interchangeable way. When the concept is about the developmental state, the nation-state, or state-­ society relations, the term ‘state’ is used. The term ‘government’ is used to indicate the central or local (municipal or city) governments. When the local government is not specified, then the central government is in question. 2. The first two periods were under the authoritarian state. The only time the Taiwanese state played a strong role in directly constructing public housing was during the second period, but most of the public housing units constructed in this stage were privatized. Very few low-income families benefited from the privatization because they could not afford to buy the privatized units. 3. The 13 founding organizations of the SHAC and the years of their establishment (in brackets) are as follows: (1) Parents Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, Taiwan (1992), (2) The League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled (1990), (3) Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly (1994), (4) Taiwan Labor Front (1984), (5) Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare (2003), (6) Taiwan Social Welfare League (2007), (7) The Organization of Urban Re-s (1992), (8) The Alliance for the Mentally Ill of R.O.C., Taiwan (TAMI) (1997), (9)

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Homeless Taiwan (2011), (10) Taiwan Community Living Consortium (2007), (11) Eden Social Welfare Foundation (1982), (12) The Garden of Hope Foundation (sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, and domestic violence) (1988), and (13) Tsuei Ma Ma Foundation for Housing Community Service (1989).

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Chen, Y.-L. (2006). Housing and Single Mothers in the KMT Regime of Taiwan, 1949–2000. Geography Research Forum, 26, 93–114. Chen, Y.-L. (2011). New Prospects for Social Rental Housing in Taiwan: The Role of Housing Affordability Crises and the Housing Movement. International Journal of Housing Policy, 11(3), 325–338. Chen, Y.-L. (2015, July 15). The Factors and Implications of Rising Housing Prices in Taiwan. Taiwan-U.S. Quarterly Analysis, Brookings Institute. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/07/15taiwan-rising-housing-prices-chen. Chen, Y.-L., & Bih, H.-D. (2014). The Pro-Market Housing System in Taiwan. In J.  Doling & R.  Ronald (Eds.), Housing East Asia: Socioeconomic and Demographic Challenges (pp.  205–229). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Chen, Y.-L., & Li, W. (2012). Neo-Liberalism, the Developmental State and Housing Policy in Taiwan. In B.-G. Park, A. Saito, & R. C. Hill (Eds.), Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States (pp. 196–224). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Chien, S.-F. (2016, August 8–10). The Processes of Housing Policies in Taipei City and the Challenges. In Proceedings of the Sixth East Asia Inclusive CITYNetwork Workshop. Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Government. Chiu, R. L. H. (2008). Government Intervention in Housing: Convergence and Divergence of the Asian Dragons. Urban Policy and Research, 26(3), 249–269. Chou, Y.-C., Wang, Y.-Y., Fu, L.-Y., & Palley, H. A. (2006). Taiwanese Housing Policy Shifting the Focus of Housing Policy Under a Democratic Regime. Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development, 16(2), 53–66. Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of Interior (CPAMI). (2015, October 22). Housing Policies in Taiwan. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.cpami.gov.tw/chinese/index.php?option=com_content&view=a rticle&id=19281&Itemid=53 (in Chinese). Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of Interior (CPAMI). (2016). The Housing Act. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.moi.gov.tw/ english/english_law/law_detail.aspx?sn=176 (in Chinese). Coolloud. (2014, June 4). The Direction of Ho-Yi Housing (Affordable Housing) Is Totally Wrong: Central and Local Governments Should Stop Constructing More Ho-Yi Housing. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.coolloud. org.tw/node/78944 (in Chinese). Demographia International. (2015). 11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2015. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.demographia.com/dhi2015.pdf. Directorate-General Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS). (1980 [2010]). Population and Housing Census. Taiwan: Executive Yuan (in Chinese).

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Executive Yuan. (2017, April 13). Executive Yuan Passes Bill to Develop Home Rental Market. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://english.ey.gov. tw/News_Content2.aspx?n=8262ED7A25916ABF&s=268336031DA7383F. Fu, L.-Y. (2010). The Model of the State Welfare: Analysis from a Gender Perspective. Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, 80, 207–236 (in Chinese). Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holliday, I. (2000). Productivist Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy in East Asia. Political Studies, 48(4), 706–723. Housing Department of Taipei City Government (HDTCG). (1987). Housing in Taipei: 1976–1985. Taipei: Taipei City Government (in Chinese). Huang, J.-X. (2016, April 8). Social Housing Under the New Government Is Available But Not Affordable. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https:// buzzorange.com/2016/04/08/social-house-issue/ (in Chinese). Jou, S.-C., Clark, E., & Chen, H.-W. (2016). Gentrification and Revanchist Urbanism in Taipei? Urban Studies, 53(3), 560–576. Jou, S.-C., Hanson, A. L., & Wu, H. L. (2012). Accumulation by Dispossession and Neoliberal Urban Planning: “Landing” the Mega-Projects in Taipei. In B.  Gyu & T.  Tasan-Kon (Eds.), Contradictions of Neoliberalizing Planning: Cities, Policies and Politics (pp. 151–171). Berlin: Springer. Kim, K.-H., & Park, M. (2016). Housing Policy in the Republic of Korea. ADBI Working Paper Series, No. 570. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. La Grange, A., Chang, C.-O., & Yip, N.-M. (2006). Commodification and Urban Development: A Case Study of Taiwan. Housing Studies, 21(1), 53–76. Larsen, H. G., Hansen, A. L., MacLeod, G., & Slater, T. (2016). Introduction: The Housing Question Revisited. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 15(3), 580–589. Lawson, V., & Elwood, S. (2014). Encountering Poverty: Space, Class and Poverty Politics. Antipode, 46(1), 209–228. Lees, L., Shin, H.  B., & López-Morales, E. (2016). Planetary Gentrification. Cambridge: Polity Press. Liang, Z.-W. (2017, November 28). Leasing Housing Market Development and Management Regulations Complete the Third Read: Will They Prevent the Bad Landlords? Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.businesstoday. com.tw/article/category/80392/post/201711280018/ (in Chinese). Lin, C.-H. (2006). The Provincial Discriminating System in Economic Side and Ethnicity Construction by the KMT Regime (Master’s thesis), National Sun Yat-­ Sen University, Taiwan. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.taiwanus.net/feiyang/etd-0915106-035839%5B1%5D.pdf (in Chinese). Lin, W. I. (1995). Criticizing the Chinese Kuomintang’s (KMT, the Ruling Party in Taiwan) Perspectives on Social Welfare. In National Association of Modern

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SHAC (Social Housing Advocacy Consortium). (2015b, October 19). Review of the First Anniversary of 2014 Housing Movement. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://socialhousingtw.blogspot.tw/2015/10/blog-post_19. html (in Chinese). SHAC (Social Housing Advocacy Consortium). (2016). Statistics of Social Housing in Taiwan. Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://socialhousingtw. blogspot.kr/2010/08/blog-post_3164.html#more (in Chinese). Taipei City Government (TCG). (1964). Report of Taipei’s Squatter. Taipei: Taipei City Government (in Chinese). Taipei City Government (TCG). (1988). History of Taipei City: Social History. Taipei: Taipei City Government (in Chinese). Tickell, A., & Peck, J.  (2003). Making Global Rules: Globalization or Neoliberalization. In J. Peck & H. W.-C. Yeung (Eds.), Remaking the Global Economy: Economic-Geographical Perspectives (pp.  163–182). London; Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Tseng, S.-C. (1994). The Study of Urban Process and Urban Consciousness in Postwar Taipei (PhD dissertation), National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Wang, J.-H. (1993). The State, Capital, and Taiwan’s Political Transition. Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, 14, 123–163 (in Chinese). Wen, L. (2014, October 5). Thousands Protest for Housing Rights. Taipei Times. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ front/archives/2014/10/05/2003601311. Yeh, Y. C. (2016, June 8). The Reality of the Inequality Between Rich and Poor. The Reporter. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.twreporter. org/a/taiwan-wealth-inequality (in Chinese). Yeung, H.  W.-C. (2014). Governing the Market in a Globalizing Era: Developmental States, Global Production Networks and Inter-Firm Dynamics in East Asia. Review of International Political Economy, 21(1), 70–101.

CHAPTER 3

Displacement by Neoliberalism: Addressing the Housing Crisis of Hong Kong in the Restructuring of Pearl River Delta Region Shu-Mei Huang

Introduction: Housing as a Geopolitical Issue in Hong Kong Housing can be a geopolitical issue, which cannot be fully understood without paying attention to how displacement is employed and, arguably, exploited in neoliberal projects. Some recent housing policy changes in Hong Kong serve as important cases to start with. In 2013, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereafter HKSAR) proposed building a ‘mini Hong Kong’ in Guangzhou by renting 100 hectares of land in Nansha, Guangzhou, where Hong Kong law would have applied. The project aimed to build more public housing and elderly housing to ease Hong Kong’s housing crisis. The aggressive proposal echoes the cooperation between Singapore and Malaysia in developing Johor into a retirement haven for Singaporeans. The proposal was soon rejected, yet it signaled a

S.-M. Huang (*) National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_3

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transforming geography of housing that naturalizes d ­isplacement—an emerging issue in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Another case can be found in the recent announcement of the Action Plan for the Bay Area of the Pearl River Estuary (the ‘Livable Bay Area Study’; Planning Department 2014), upon which Hong Kong would turn many agricultural lands in the New Territories into new towns—allegedly an effective measure to boost housing supply in the lands bordering Shenzhen. With the construction of a cross-border high-speed rail, the project of building new towns promises a closer economic integration. At the same time, the ever-increasing large-scale development toward the borderlands brings about geopolitics of housing planning, which finds its justification in promoting housing mobility as an individualized option in a renewed geography along with the cross-border economic integration. Focusing on housing or geographies of housing, this chapter argues that neoliberalism has evolved in Hong Kong as an ongoing process of reshaping the boundary of the city, which demands a normalization of displacement. Displacement has been covered and naturalized in a particular mode of economic growth, which requires continuously renewed geopolitics. Displacement, I argue, has been naturalized in a set of policy changes, resulting from a hybrid of developmentalism and neoliberalism investigated in this chapter. Displacement occurs in three senses in the context of the Hong Kong–based research. First, as policies increasingly serve an extended geography that integrates Hong Kong and mainland China, the extended geography employs many development projects at the borderlands and would directly displace existing farmers and farming activities. Second, these projects will create a particular effect, which is the indirect displacement through new town planning by/across the border. Displacement is normalized by the government, driving people to seek more affordable housing toward/across the border. Lastly, displacement takes shape conceptually in post-handover policy changes. Public housing, a policy that the colonial state used to employ in developing Hong Kong into an industrial city in the postwar years, is displaced from the conceptualization of ‘New State Spaces’ (Brenner 2004) when supply of affordable housing is not economically important to its industrial growth, as it was in the 1960s–1970s. While HKSAR has employed a neoliberal rhetoric to justify its role in facilitating displacement in the guise of mobility, it has strategically used public housing as a tool to respond to contestation over the worsening housing crisis and to justify its large-scale development project. In this process, ‘public housing’ becomes only a minor ­component

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and a useful vehicle to displace housing problems from the scrutiny of urban politics. The research adopted a mixed-methods approach that includes participatory observation of activism of housing and Anti-Northeast New Territory (NENT) project, unstructured interviews with key actors, and policy review of housing programs with a focus on postcolonial Hong Kong. It was carried out in Hong Kong, with multiple visits made between September 2010 and July 2016, with each visit varying from five days to three months. The remaining part of this chapter consists of six sections. It begins by identifying neoliberalism and its urban impacts in Hong Kong. The second section gives a historical review of Hong Kong’s planning of housing and the emergent housing crisis in the making. The third section illustrates the extended geography of Hong Kong toward the boundary bordering Guangdong, which is essentially a neoliberal practice, with a closer inspection of the recently debated plan to develop the Northeast New Territories. The fourth section presents how HKSAR has engaged public housing in legitimizing the new town project, and thus naturalizing indirect displacement. It presents the often-ignored political geographies of housing. Then the fifth section explores the contestation over neoliberalizing housing in Hong Kong, which has generated an effect of displacing housing problems from urban politics. The concluding section reflects on how public housing has become instrumental in naturalizing displacement in urban planning in Hong Kong, while the city-state has seemingly stumbled in articulating a contextually feasible project to accommodate its people and (developmental) neoliberal economic experiments.

Neoliberalism and Its Urban Impact in Hong Kong Neoliberalism can be considered as a contextually specific hybrid (Brenner and Theodore 2012). It does not comprise a particular agenda or specific policies. It is reactive to socioeconomic and political crises and at the same time constrained by the ‘stickiness’ of existing practices and institutional arrangements (Chiu et  al. 2012, p.  225). Therefore, neoliberalization has not resulted in simple deregulation, marketization, and privatization, but it varies depending upon the geographical and institutional setting. In addition, there are competing forms of capitalisms associated with neoliberalism, which are deeply embedded in the societies and political practices (Beeson 2007). Accordingly, adopting neoliberal practices is not a total replacement but a revision, in which the state does not necessarily ­withdraw its control

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over the market (Park et  al. 2012; Vogel 2005). Existing d ­ evelopmental institutions both constrain the scope and provide particular channels for the neoliberal project to take shape. Some scholars argue that neoliberalism and existing developmentalism in East Asia are not mutually exclusive: Pragmatism and sensitivity to performance drive the developmental states to adopt a compartmentalized approach to neoliberal reform (Hill et al. 2012, p. 15). In this light, I trace the way in which the Hong Kong housing market and its crises have given rise to conditions for neoliberal practices. A combination of pressures, such as aging of societies, the declining capacity of family welfare support, and the pressure to maintain political legitimacy, drives the developmental states to adopt neoliberal practices to solve emergent problems (Doling and Ronald 2014; Park et  al. 2012). In Hong Kong, housing is an area wrought with these pressures. Housing, as ‘property-­based welfare’ (Doling and Ronald 2014; Yip 2014), is positioned as a central venue through which production and distribution based on family network could operate with the least welfare support from the state. Yet, rapid socioeconomic changes have destabilized the property-­ based welfare, when the neoliberalizing state was pushed to produce ‘a free market’ out of the existing institutional environment. The creation of the Home Ownership Scheme (hereafter HOS) in the late 1970s and its suspension in 2002 serve as good examples.1 Yet, the public call for resuming the HOS has been strong since 2005. As Hong Kong saw the housing market rebound in the following years, housing unaffordability became a political issue that attracted attention from both the central government and the HKSAR. In 2010, the HKSAR Government started a public consultation of resuming the HOS and officially announced its implementation in 2011. The episode-like policy transformation reflected a complex and dynamic interaction between neoliberal, political, and socioeconomic pressures, marking a reorientation of the nature of developmentalism (Doling and Ronald 2014; Park et al. 2012). Developmental neoliberalism as such suggests that the policy changes in the name of neoliberal reform in Hong Kong do not necessarily mean the total withdrawal of state intervention in planning the city, but quite the contrary. The dynamic interactions between neoliberalism, developmentalism, and political and socioeconomic pressures can also be found in urban redevelopment led by the Urban Renewal Authority from 2001 onward. It can be considered as a state-led gentrification (La Grange and Pretorius 2016), which occurs based on particular conditions that are not necessarily ­available elsewhere: the nature of government being semi-democratic, t­ echnocratic,

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and nevertheless constrained by its own legitimacy and ­sensitivity to social and political pressures, the institutions underlying government land management actions, and the city’s urban morphology (ibid.). Indeed, state-led gentrification is not simply a function of neoliberal states but of multifaceted urban processes that require researchers to acknowledge the complexities of land and housing tenure or property relations loomed by developmental statism (Shin et al. 2016). Nevertheless, shifts in housing discussion exemplify the way in which neoliberalism produces and demands ‘a politics of scale’ (Swyngedouw 2004, pp. 131–133). Importantly, Lan’s (2014) study demonstrates how Hong Kong has continuously rearticulated the scale of its politico-economy since the late 1970s to respond to neoliberal reforms of existing developmental institutions, which will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent section.

Hong Kong’s Housing Planning and Housing Crises As the first attempt since the handover of Hong Kong to China, the Long Term Housing Strategy Steering Committee was established in 2012. This was an initiative responding to the promise by C.Y. Leung when he was running for the election of the Chief Executive (hereafter CE) of the HKSAR Government. Previously, there were two long-term strategies published in 1987 and 1998. Yet, the Asia financial crisis and ensuing economic stress led to the decision to suspend a former plan to construct no less than 85,000 HOS housing units per year during the Chee-hwa Tung administration (1997–2005). The reintroduction of a Long Term Housing Strategy Review set in motion a series of debates on housing demand and ways to house Hong Kongers. The consultation was concluded in February 2014 and was to guide housing planning for the next decade. The consultative document of the Long Term Housing Strategy Review estimated that about 470,000 units were needed for the next ten years, but local researchers criticized that the demand for public housing was seriously underestimated (see Chan et al. 2014). Countering criticism, the HKSAR Government emphasized that the promotion of higher homeownership rates and a more efficient circulation of rental public housing would largely cut down the waiting line for public housing. Social mobility through homeownership, as it is assumed, would solve Hong Kong’s housing crisis, and creating a constant stream of housing supply was regarded as the most important measure. I have elsewhere examined housing policy changes in Hong Kong and investigated how sympathy for the underprivileged and reliance on a

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­ elfarist regime have been gradually replaced by a belief in laissez-faire w capitalism in the second half of the twentieth century (Huang 2015). Despite this, the Hong Kong government itself has remained one of the biggest public housing landlords in the world (Yip 2014). Public housing in Hong Kong has never been solely about addressing housing; it was through slum clearance with relocating settlers in public housing that the government could obtain urban land to realize its economic agenda (Smart 2006). Furthermore, the colonial British government arguably changed its governance from the least possible intervention to a ‘productivist welfare regime’ (Holliday 2000), investing largely in public housing and education to improve political stability and to provide cheap labor for industrial development (Castells et al. 1990; Yung 2008). The dual role of constructing public housing—obtaining lands and serving the productivist welfare regime—confirms that public housing is not simply about meeting housing demands. Alongside the public housing provision, encouraging homeownership characterized the other side of Hong Kong’s housing policy during the colonial period. In Hong Kong, homeownership, beyond the tenure security it provides, could be read as a contract between society, tenure patterns, and governance that involved more institutional arrangements than personal aspiration, in which the state has exercised a strong hand (Huang 2015; Yung 2008). In the mid-1970s, the establishment of the HOS provided subsidized build-for-sale units, which were sold at a discount of 20–50 percent of the estimated market price of comparable private-sector housing units. Sitting tenants in public rental housing and the means-­tested households were eligible to buy these units. Although HOS started on a small scale, it grew to account for about 25 percent of Hong Kong’s total public housing (La Grange and Pretorius 2002) before it got suspended. Such subsidized homeownership housing enabled the release of the residual value embodied in land in circumstances extremely advantageous to the government. In combination with a resale mechanism at market prices, the subsidized homeownership scheme allowed the government to recover its investment in housing. Considering the leasehold system in Hong Kong, the HOS has successfully created a commodity from an otherwise partially commodified product (La Grange and Pretorius 2005, p. 2483). How to fully mobilize unutilized land value to create public revenue appeared to be arguably more important than improving housing supply. The promotion of homeownership through the HOS was targeting suburban, developing areas, while this brought population away from the old city centers. A back-to-the-city-center movement of private ­investments

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was promoted by the Metropolitan Plan and the Private Sector Priority Strategy in order to boost the urban economy from the late 1980s onward. These initiatives stipulated that redeveloping the city center into a financial center was necessary for creating new spaces of capitalization (Feng 2001, p. 208). Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s major developers have gradually become giant corporations whose businesses cover almost every aspect of a Hong Konger’s life, ranging from transportation and communication to retail. In effect, the housing market in Hong Kong has witnessed a never-ending competition dominated by a few major corporate developers. In the early 1990s, threequarters of new flats were developed by the biggest six developers (Poon 2011). They are the so-called land and the ruling class (ibid.), who have enjoyed the expansion of urbanization along with the extension of public housing to the New Territories. Their growing investment in extensive infrastructure and telecommunication also benefited from Hong Kong’s increasing integration with mainland China, economically and geographically. In the midst of an intensifying process of financialization that converts housing into real estate (Smart and Lee 2003), ‘tenants’ lost their social and political currency. Though poor tenants did not disappear, the representation of tenants, however, was just concealed by the increase of homeownership and economic growth that saw a surging housing market during the years leading up to the handover. The first administration led by Tung Chee-hwa after 1 July 1997 endeavored to expand housing provision, aiming to achieve a homeownership rate of 70 percent by 2007, and to reduce the waiting time for public rental housing from seven years to three years by 2005. However, Tung’s policy failed, as the negative equity crisis in 1998–2003 destroyed many middle-class people’s savings overnight when the property bubble burst. The crisis created the context for HKSAR to overhaul its housing policy. The so-called Suen Nine Measures by Michael Suen Ming Yeung, who at the time served as the head of Housing, Planning and Lands Bureau, were proposed to boost the property market in 2002. The measures included an end to the suspension of HOS, an end to the Tenants Purchase Scheme, an injunction to remove rent control and instead provide loans to encourage the purchase of private housing, and so on. It harkened to the majority middle class who own property, insisting that tenancy security is not an adequate policy when facing a strong recession in the housing market. Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, the then chair of the committee in charge of the bill, insisted that the revision was to bring the housing market back on track and that government intervention had to be reduced as much as possible.2 With the lift of rent

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c­ ontrol, 200,000 flats were to be released from rent control to the free market so that the dynamic circulation of capital could be allegedly restored. The housing market has gradually rebounded, following a rapid economic recovery since 2004, and in the process has reaffirmed the government’s nominal withdrawal from the market.

An Essentially Neoliberal Practice: Rearticulating an Extended Geography of Hong Kong In the post-handover years, as many scholars have argued, the HKSAR Government has developed its long-term development agenda, aiming to leverage its links with the Mainland and to reorient itself as an international business and financial center in the extending geographies of the Pearl River Delta (hereafter PRD) (Sung 2002; Yeh and Ng 2000). The agenda faces an emergent intercity competition in the PRD region. At the same time, its strategies have been adapted to an emerging cross-border region under Greater China. What are the most appropriate strategies for Hong Kong to survive has been at the center of debates for years (Jessop and Sum 2000). Over the past decade, the thriving PRD cities, resulting from their associations with Special Economic Zones (hereafter SEZs) such as Shenzhen, have gradually lost their relative advantages in the wake of emergent city development in the interior, such as Chengdu or Chongqing, or Shanghai becoming the most prominent shipping and financial hub. In this light, a series of negotiations took place and then finally brought about the Agreement on Hong Kong/Guangdong Co-operation in April 2011. The agreement attempted to capitalize on the manufacturing industry in Guangdong and the service industry in Hong Kong to build a world-class center of advanced-manufacturing and finance, which could be embodied in the ambitious planning of Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Service Industry Cooperation Zone as the future ‘Manhattan of the Pearl River Delta’. The plan was written into the 12th five-year plan (2011–2015). The Guangdong authorities, leveraging on Hong Kong’s liberty in governance and economic policy, aspired to develop a new special zone that will enjoy taxation, administrative autonomy, and transparent governance as a body ruled by law. Presumably, the new experiment would combine the better of the two systems to create a magnet for foreign investment. Besides, the announcement of the ‘Livable Bay Area Study’, upon which Hong Kong would turn the many agricultural lands in the New Territories (hereafter NT) into new towns, was to open up the countryside to connect

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the borderlands with Shenzhen. As the then leader C.Y. Leung stated in an interview with the Time magazine (Time 2012), the move was central to facilitating what the leader considered as nei jiao, which means internal diplomacy, a highly managed and ambiguous relationship. Nei jiao also manifested in an extensive cross-border infrastructural network, such as the construction of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High-­Speed Rail. It would integrate the three metropolitan areas into one powerful economic cluster, and allow people to leave Hong Kong and arrive in Guangzhou within 48 minutes. Seemingly, Hong Kong could not but see itself being woven into the making of the Manhattan of the PRD region, yet this imaginary Manhattan would not be located in Hong Kong. The aforementioned cross-border planning arrangements extend the geopolitical context of Hong Kong’s housing, which, however, does not necessarily base itself on where the needs are but where the needs can serve other purposes. While the redevelopment of old city centers driven by the Urban Renewal Authority is clearly marked for capitalization rather than housing demands (Adams and Hastings 2001; Huang 2015), HKSAR claims that it is the growing housing need, first and foremost, that legitimizes the development of new towns in the Northeast New Territory (NENT). In the following, the NENT project will be introduced to illuminate the often-ignored geography of housing, which epitomizes how a city/city-state is positioned in a reconfiguring regional-national economic framework. Once a borderland that the British purposefully maintained, the NT is the area the indigenous inhabitants occupied before the British arrived in Hong Kong in 1898. Before several new towns took shape during the 1970s, the NT had comprised less than a quarter of the total population despite its area being more than three times that of the metropolitan area (Hong Kong Island and Southern Kowloon Peninsula). Wetland, mountains, and farmlands dotted with villages comprised the NT landscape. Today, the plan to redevelop NENT into new towns goes in line with the ongoing construction of a high-speed rail to link major cities in the PRD region into a one-day living circle with the completion of the Hong Kong section. The seemingly promising plan has caused anxiety, as can be substantiated by the 2009 Anti-High-Speed Rail Movement (Lam 2015). Since then, a fast-growing number of activists, artists, students, and local residents together have built a Hong Kong farming community whose cross-scale practices articulate regional debates with community struggles (Cheng 2016).

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The Livable Bay Area Study is a regional vision collectively proposed in 2011 by the governments of the HKSAR, Macau, and five cities in the Guangdong Province (Dongguan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai). The imposed plan would develop the green belt between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to facilitate economic integration. It laid out green infrastructure and integrated developments in order to connect these cities into an economic network. The plan would affect 250 million people living in an area of 7000 square kilometers. Under the plan, three districts would be zoned as new towns, including the south of Yuen Long, the north of Fanling, and Kwu Tung North, and therefore Hong Kongers called the plan the ‘Three-In-One Project’. Fifteen villages would be dismantled. It has been estimated that these new towns and new zones would attract young talents who aspire to move northward, and at the same time diversify competition for jobs and housing in the overdeveloped urban Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the plan has been criticized as being overtly economy-­ driven, giving little attention to the productive landscape inhabited by farmers in the borderlands (see Fig. 3.1). Most of the would-be-displaced villages are non-indigenous villages—the villages composed in the postwar

Fig. 3.1  Farmlands at the NENT, 2014. Photographed by Shu-Mei Huang

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years mostly by mainlander migrants (Huang 2017), such as Ma Shi Po, Ping Che/Ta Kwu Ling, and Kwu Tung North, to be displaced to make room for the Fanling-Sheung Shui New Town. In response to mounting protests, the three-in-one project was eventually downsized in July 2013. The area of Ping Che/Ta Kwu Ling was excluded from the current plan. In addition, the proportion of public housing was raised from 49 percent to 60 percent (Planning Department 2014). Yet, the number was decreased later, because the Planning Department included the public-operated homeownership units into their calculation. According to the activists who the author talked to during site visits in July 2013 and again in July 2014, they were not satisfied with the revised plan. They pointed out some obvious issues that the environmental impact assessment did not cover, such as those concerning the endangered fish Rhodeus ocellatus inhabiting the North Wutong River in Fanling and the arsenic trioxide found in Kwu Tung North. The revised plan also failed to evaluate the ecological value of existing organic farming. Among the more than 50,000 opinion letters sent to the Town Planning Board, roughly 90 percent of them disapproved of the NENT plan (Sung 2015). It is necessary to note that the NENT has been widely criticized for its misleading presentation of its scope. The governmental plan noted that about 12 percent of the area would be developed into public housing. Yet, some civic groups carefully examined the plan and argued that actually only less than seven percent of the site area would be slated for public rental housing. All in all, it would provide about 53,800 housing units, of which 40 percent would be public rental housing (about 21,250 units, a lot less than the averaged supply planned earlier), by 2022 (Chow 2014; The Land Justice League 2014). It has further been criticized that the proportion of area slated for public housing has been largely cut down, when compared with the numbers in the previous planning of new towns under the colonial administration: The share of public housing in new towns during the colonial era varied from 10  percent to 20  percent between the 1970s and 1990s, while it was less than 7  percent in the whole area of the NENT (Chow 2014, p. 72). In other words, the public housing proposed for the NENT is planned to be a highly densified type and is to face insufficient public amenities, although the absolute number of units seemingly appears acceptable. The relatively small share of public housing does not invoke enough public interest, as the plan is claimed to cost the displacement of farmers from more than 170-hectare farmlands. Civic groups and the would-be-displaced farmers have banded together to

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blame the government for its corrupt relationship with developers and using public housing as a vehicle to justify the new town development, with the notable, large-scale protest becoming a headline in June 2014 (Cheung et  al. 2014) and continuous smaller actions in the following years (interview with the activist on 2 July 2015). The activism also continued in different forms, when some activists became candidates for the Legislative Council and carried their call for replanning into their campaign in 2016. It is debatable for whom the housing is to be developed. Even Cookson Smith, the planner who participated in planning the new towns in Sha Tin, Tai Po, and Sheung Shui in the 1970s, questions the project and suggests that the young middle-class or the retired community might just reside in Nansha or Guangzhou after the high-speed rail is completed (Wong 2013). To some degree, HKSAR did address the growing anxiety toward the displacement of Hong Kongers within and out of the city. In 2012, the Leung administration of HKSAR announced the implementation of ‘Hong Kong Property for Hong Kong People’ (HKPHKP), which allegedly would prioritize Hong Kong people’s needs for home purchase (Legislative Council 2014). Under the policy, upon selling selected sites, the authorities would add land lease conditions restricting the sale of the flats developed on those sites to Hong Kong’s permanent residents. The restriction was for 30 years from the date of the relevant land grants. Nevertheless, HKSAR implemented the policy only once when two residential sites in the former Kai Tak airport were offered for sale by tender in March 2013. No more offers have been presented since then under this policy. Whether or not the policy would be implemented in the NENT remains a question (Legislative Council 2012). The government, however, opined that various demandside management measures previously implemented have effectively curbed the demand for residential flats from non-local purchasers. Similar rhetoric appeared in the discussion of the NENT planning when the Secretary for Development, Paul Chan Mo Po, suggested in his reply to the questions raised in the Legislative Council that the HKPHKP measure might be applied to the NENT (Chan 2012). Chan’s remarks brought attention to the claim—the NENT is ‘Hong Kongers’ New Town’—made by the Development Bureau, which was responding to mounting criticism that considered the NENT to be developed into ‘a new town for the rich Hong Kongers born to non-Hong Kongers’.3 While the criticism is yet to be substantiated, it did expose the Hong Kong society’s anger toward the HKSAR Government’s inability to tackle

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a series of housing and social crisis resulting from the conflicts between Hong Kongers and their fellow mainlanders. The fact that babies born to non-Hong Kongers account for nearly one-third of the population increase in the city during 2006–2011 have contributed to a growing fear of ‘foreigners’ and unnecessary development and exploitation of resources due to their presence (Wong 2014). Accordingly, the argument of ‘Hong Konger’s New Town’ did not successfully convince the public, especially the young generation who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, and who felt hopeless and footless in facing Hong Kong’s integration into the larger regional economy. In contrast, some young people who formed the action group Age of Resistance suggested that ‘The NENT is anything but Hong Konger’s New Town’ in their campaigns against the forced displacements enforced under the NENT between 2014 and 2016 (interview with the activist b, 6 March 2014; field note, 8 April 2016). They claimed that the new housing coming from the NENT would mostly cater to those mainlander families who intended to raise their Hong Konger children. Even the job increase sketched out by the NENT plan was questioned as being created for the mainlander talent rather than for the locals. Mobility and connectivity are relational constructs, and it remains a critical question to ask for whom are we promoting mobility and connectivity. In monetary terms, the cost of living and working in the changing borderlands of Hong Kong is relatively straightforward—one can pay about 130–180 HKD to enjoy the expanding living circle, but not everyone can afford it. Despite continuous protests by the villagers, young students, and environmental activists, the NENT project was approved by the Legislative Council in June 2014 (Cheung et al. 2014).

Naturalizing Indirect Displacement in New Town Planning Within a Reconfiguring Regional-National Economic Framework In the context of reconfiguring geopolitics that focused on cross-border regional integration, who the city should welcome and accommodate become an issue rather than a taken-for-granted fact. On various occasions, HKSAR had implicitly suggested that Hong Kong welcomed the qualified ‘economic man’ (Pun and Wu 2004), someone who can contribute to the economy through purchasing property or paying rent. Those who could not afford high rent could move to other places such as the outlying areas of the New Territories or even to Dongguan or Shenzhen. More ­surprisingly,

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the seemingly politically insensitive idea was echoed by the public c­ omments of several major politicians, one of whom was the well-known candidate running for the 2012 Chief Executive of the HKSAR Government, Henry Tang Ying-yen. Tang, the then Chief Secretary for Administration of Hong Kong, illustrated a vision of an integrated PRD region, which outperformed New York since 2007. In 2009, Tang frequently talked to the press about how Hong Kongers could move to Dongguan and commute to Hong Kong daily by 2020. In Tang’s picture, cross-border regional integration with an improved and massively extended transportation infrastructure would bring about a better spatial division of land use, employment, and housing that would not be limited by distance and geographies (for example, a family with a monthly household income of 3000  USD can enjoy much greater quality of life in Shenzhen than in Hong Kong). Tang’s remarks sparked widespread concern that his proposal would undermine the autonomy of Hong Kong and similar apprehensions were extended to debates on the launch of the cross-border integration plan under the banner of a Livable Bay Area. Among others, a well-known talk show host, Ng Chi Sum, aired a critique titled ‘Class Wash’ on Ming Pao news (17 February 2011). Actually, Tang is not the only advocate for this ‘one-hour-living zone’, which means that one can travel between all the major cities in the PRD by rail within one hour. The PRD regional integration has been a national strategy proposed since 2008. The five cities included in the Bay Area Action Plan are Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, and Zhongshan. On a different scale, Huizhou, Foshan, Jianmen, and Macau are also included to compose a greater PRD megacity. Moreover, C.Y. Leung, Tang’s then rival and later the elected Chief Executive, ­proposed the development of the Frontier Closed Area adjacent to Shenzhen into a special commercial zone, where mainlanders could enter without a visa. Displacement resulting from migration was, in a way, diluted in these discourses, as it is argued that Hong Kong and other cities in the region would be integrated into a larger socioeconomic circle. Leaving politics aside, what is hidden in these conceptions of cross-­border regional integration is arguably an invisible taxation through high-­land-­sale policy. It is the often-ignored dynamics between tax, rent, and modes of (re)development which contributes to the structural injustice of housing. Hong Kong is known to be a place where the nominal tax rate is relatively low, with a standard income tax rate of 15 percent on net income. There is no capital gains tax, no dividend tax, nor inheritance tax. In such a friendly

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e­nvironment for neoliberal reform, however, there is the open secret expressed by the dictum ‘invisible taxation through high-land-sale policy’. The land-oriented receipts, including proceeds from land sales, lease modifications, property taxes, stamp duties, profits tax from developers and so on, have been collected through ‘a deliberately slow-paced program of selling land lease rights in return for upfront payments by the highest bidders at auctions and tenders’ to achieve the undeclared high land price policy (Poon 2011, pp. 152–154). From 1970 to 1996, land-­related revenues accounted for, on average, 33 percent of annual government budgets; they would reach 45 percent, if profits taxed from development companies and taxes on mortgage portfolio profits are included (Poon 2011). As of 2011, only land premiums (16.8  percent) and stamp duties constituted 27.6  percent of the annual revenue. Most recently, HKSAR saw a rapid increase of stamp duties derived from property transaction by 80 percent between 2014 and 2015, among other growing revenue out of taxation related to land rent.4 This invisible taxation through land, which certainly prefers a sustained property market, has been facilitated by a land supply cap stipulated by the 1983 Sino–British Agreement governing the transition of Hong Kong (Annex III (4) of the Sino–British Joint Declaration). It constrained the amount of ‘new’ land that the government could release to the market for all land use purposes in the territory to 50 hectares. It’s widely believed that Hong Kong went through one of the longest postwar housing booms from 1987 as a result of the land supply cap (La Grange and Pretorius 2005). As the revenue from land sale occupies a significant portion of HKSAR’s budget, it follows that both government and industry are complicit in keeping real estate as a powerful engine to extract high rent, which continues to widen the gap between those who profit from properties and those without property. Many citizens have considered investing properties to be more profitable than waged jobs, which factored into changing patterns of labor participation and a massive expansion of the property-­ related industry greatly (Smart and Lee 2003). The city has topped the 11 years of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey (Demographia International 2015).5 According to the social development index study by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, strong economic growth did not benefit Hong Kong equally. Moreover, there was a 33 percent increase in average spending on housing for an average household between 2008 and 2010 according to the statistics released by the Rating and Valuation Department of HKSAR.  The severe situation was also reflected in the growing number of public rental housing applications

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in the waiting, which increased by 38 percent (from 152,400 in March 2010 to 222,200 in December 2012) in roughly 2.5 years (SoCO 2013). The sum of public housing applications increased by approximately 59,000 applications from 2002 to 2011 (Ngo 2014), which can be attributed to the cut down of public housing supply in 2003–2010 and the ongoing displacement by state-led gentrification. It may be fair to say that the other side of a sustained property market is obviously a worsening housing crisis. For the first time after the equity crisis in 2002–2003, the HKSAR Government decided in 2010 to address housing crisis by supplying more public housing and considering the resumption of the HOS. In addition, it proposed a new five-year plan for building public rental housing and aimed at providing about 75,000 ­public rental flats in total by the Housing Authority during this five-year period (see Table 3.1). However, the sum of public rental housing units to be supplied by the plan would hardly match the accumulated waiting applicants. Nor could it meet the continuously growing demand owing to several factors, including rocketing housing prices, competition due to migration, and massive urban redevelopment that caused displacement from inner urban areas. In short, an economic success based upon expanding urban agglomeration and real estate development does not seem to resolve but exacerbate the housing crisis. The numbers of public housing supplied by the NENT as mentioned earlier, supposedly, could make up the failure of the Five-Year Public Housing Plan (2011–2016). Nevertheless, the siting of all these new units to be concentrated in the borderlands indirectly displaces those in need of affordable housing out of the city center toward the New Towns in the NENT.

Table 3.1  Five-Year Public Housing Plan, 2011–2016 Year 2011/2012 2012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016

(A) Urban area

(B) Extended urban area

(C) New territories

11,200 (100%) 7200 (76%) 6900 (48%) 7900 (45%) 6500 (39%)

0 2800 (18%) 7400 (52%) 3500 (20%) 8100 (48%)

0 1000 (6%) 0 6300 (35%) 2100 (13%)

Flat units: (A) + (B) + (C) = 75,700 (2011–2016) Source: Adapted from [CB(1) 891/10–11(05)] construction plan of public rental housing 2010/2011–2014/2015, [SHC 51/2011] memo for subsidized housing committee at housing society: Housing allocation of public housing applicants

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Displacement of Housing Problems from Urban Politics Social contestation is never absent in Hong Kong but activism for affordable housing has lagged relatively behind. Compared to movements against land grabbing in the NT, which is led by the Land Justice League and joined by many young people based on my observation, activism for housing affordability, which dates back to the late 1970s (Lui and Kung 1985), has found it more difficult to recruit younger students and to renew their campaign in the post-handover era. Among others, the Alliance for Defending Grassroots Housing Rights (hereafter ADGHR), an umbrella organization that intends to bring together activists and advocacy groups of similar concern for housing affordability and equity, was founded in 2001 and managed to gain some new momentum for contestation over public housing crisis. The ADGHR has protested against the privatization of public housing owned by the Housing Authority, including both residential units and the commercial properties (retail and other business) of public housing complex. They have successfully brought attention to the privatization of the commercial element of public housing complexes (So 2010). The rest of their campaign, however, has not gained much support from a wider public, as few people consider a structural reform of public housing a necessary issue to address, although they do complain about the long waiting list for public housing. While the ADGHR did not directly oppose the HOS, it did not agree with the government’s promotion of homeownership through inadequate rent increase that purposefully discourages tenants to stay in the public housing— the Hong Kong Housing Society have raised rent for five times by eight percent to ten percent since 2010 (Mingpao 2018)—and has been protesting against it since then. The ADGHS’ focus on boosting rental public housing supply, however, indirectly complies with HKSAR’s emphasis on constructing more public, housing in developing new towns. It is worth noting how young applicants for public housing are especially identified as an issue group in the increasing competition for public housing. A rapid surge of young single applicants for public housing arguably reflects the anxiety of young people with regard to their anticipated future housing needs (Yip 2014, p. 80). There has been an increase of public housing applicants who are under the age of 30. As of September 2015, nonelderly, single applicants in their waiting were roughly 142,800, about 50 percent of all applicants (Legislative Council 2015). The fact that young, single applicants out-numbered family applicants has attracted unfair criti-

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cisms of the younger generation as their lifestyles are considered as further destabilizing the property-based welfare regime. Since 2013, some young people organized themselves into a pressure group, stating that ‘young people refuse to be slaves to homeownership chasing’. They openly talked about young people’s right to apply for public housing, and blame the neoliberal housing market as a structural force that creates the whole problem. Some young activist scholars with similar concerns established the Local Research Community (LRC), focusing on how inadequate land use planning and land banking contributed to the housing crisis in Hong Kong. Rather than focusing on housing supply as numbers, they pay attention to the geography of housing. LRC has published two reports regarding how the government misrepresented the issue and how housing supply has been offered to the wrong place and wrong people (Local Research Community 2013, 2015). LRC questioned the government’s rationale in developing the green belt at the NT. By carefully examining the existing vacant sites and the authorities’ selective siting of public housing and new towns, LRC revealed that HKSAR purposefully left sites vacant in the inner city and instead pushed for a development toward the borderlands at the risk of displacing farming and farming communities. Based on unequal use of lands, they questioned the rationalization of redeveloping farmlands in the NT into new towns in the name of addressing the housing needs. The development of new towns, as argued, is not simply planning for an increased supply of housing but for a more politically sensitive goal of cross-border integration. In short, housing protests are still in need of new discourse to attract more support from all walks of life to counter the tendency to displace housing problems from urban politics by reducing housing issue to a simple matter of demand and supply.

Conclusion This chapter has offered a review of how housing planning has transformed in post-handover Hong Kong against a reconfiguring political geography in relation to the rise of China. In examining housing talks in Hong Kong, it demonstrates that housing is not simply a supply-and-­ demand issue but a complicated problem that shapes and is shaped by an arrangement of economics, employment, and cross-border geographies. The first ideological work done by neoliberalism is the celebration of liberty of citizens who are to take full responsibilities for their own success or failure (Harvey 2005, pp.  64–65). This is joined by policymakers’

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increasing emphasis on mobility and connectivity while there was not enough attention given to the costs of mobility/connectivity. Underlying the discourse of mobility and connectivity is the second work done (or demanded) by the neoliberal project in Hong Kong, that is, an extending political geography contested by Hong Kong and other Pearl River Delta cities to solve their internal economic problems. I have shown how the extended geography is to be accomplished by both directly displacing farmers to make way for cross-border infrastructure and developments on the one hand and on the other, indirectly displacing urban citizens from the city center toward the new towns built and to be built in the borderlands of NT. Displacement, whether directly or indirectly, is normalized in the process of cross-border regional integration. Public housing paradoxically becomes instrumental to justify the massive amount of developments in line with the extended geopolitics, within which Hong Kong has stumbled in articulating a contextually feasible project to accommodate its people and neoliberal economic experiments. Importantly, the engagement of public housing, a long established institutional and infrastructural framework inherited from the former developmental regime before 1997, is necessary to rationalize the ongoing neoliberal reform. In this way, it echoes the aforementioned discussion of developmental neoliberalism. It is also necessary to pay attention to the case of the NENT project and various forms of displacement hidden in the regime of cross-border integration, including cross-border jobs, cross-border schooling, cross-border public housing and even cross-border retirement housing. While displacement is reinterpreted as an individual choice for mobility, in both social and geographical senses, Hong Kongers are faced with being replaced by mainlander talents. The sense of a border crisis between Hong Kong and mainland China (Huang 2016), following displacement of many kinds, has contributed to recent political disputes. Among others, the Umbrella Movement in the fall of 2014 reflected the accumulating anger and anxiety shared by Hong Kong people as to the city’s future under the shaking framework of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Young high school students and college students stood in line with farmers and working-class people to demonstrate their disagreement with the government’s domination of how the city should proceed (Huang and Ian 2015). Displacement, and a strong sense of dispossession, continuously drives the younger generation to step into politics and situate longignored issues within a continuously rescaling geopolitics, including housing and land supply. There may be a limit—a political one if not geographical one—to normalizing displacement by neoliberalism.

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Notes 1. Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) was designed as shared equity housing for middle income, first-time buyers in Hong Kong. It was sold to the better-­off public housing tenants for them become homeowners. See more in Yip’s (2014) discussion on how HOS contributed to the property-based welfare in Hong Kong. 2. See the Minutes of LegCo regular meeting in 2004 (pp. 5159–5160), 30 June, http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr03-04/chinese/counmtg/hansard/cm0630titranslate-c.pdf, last accessed 21 December 2018. 3. See more discussion about the highly political debates on citizenship in Hong Kong in Appendix I, On Babies born to non-Hong Kongers (20 March 2013), http://gia.info.gov.hk/general/201302/20/ P201302200467_0467_107398.pdf, last accessed 21 December 2018. 4. See the report announced by HKSAR, ‘Tax revenue up 24 per cent’, 4 May 2015, http://www.news.gov.hk/en/categories/finance/html/2015/05/ 20150504_143659.shtml, last accessed 21 December 2018. 5. The annual survey by the Demographia International (2015) suggests that if housing prices exceed three times an annual household income, there would be serious political impediments. In 2015, Hong Kong’s unaffordability was a case to the point. It was the highest recorded, with its median multiples as 17.0, which was followed by Vancouver whose median multiple was 10.6.

References Adams, D., & Hastings, E. M. (2001). Urban Renewal in Hong Kong: Transition from Development Corporation to Renewal Authority. Land Use Policy, 18(3), 245–258. Beeson, M. (2007). Competing Capitalisms and Neoliberalism: The Dynamics of, and Limits to, Economic Reform in the Asia-Pacific. In K. England & K. Ward (Eds.), Neoliberalization: States, Networks, People (pp.  28–47). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Brenner, N. (2004). New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2012). Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”. Antipode, 34, 349–379. Castells, M., Goh, L., & Kwok, R.  Y.-W. (1990). The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome: Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore. London: Pion. Chan, M.-P. (2012, October 24). The Director of Development Bureau’s Concluding Notes to the NENT Debate at the LegCO. Press release (立法會:發

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展局局長就新界東北新發展區規劃及 工程研究議 案 辯論的總 結 發言). Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201210/24/P201210240650.htm. Chan, S.-M., Lung, T.-W., & Yip, P. L. (2014). Housing Is Not Destined. Hong Kong: Shadow Long Term Housing Strategy Steering Committee (in Chinese). Cheng, E.  S.-K. (2016, September 12). The LegCo Elections and the Political Ecology of the New Territories. TheNewsLens. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://international.thenewslens.com/article/48991. Cheung, T., Chan, S., & Lee, A. (2014, June 27). Pan-Democrats, Protesters Cry Foul but HK$340 Million Funding Passes. South China Morning Post. Chiu, S. W. K., Ho, K. C., & Lui, T.-L. (2012). Reforming Health: Contrasting Trajectories of Neoliberal Restructuring in the City-States. In B.-G. Park, R. C. Hill, & A.  Saito (Eds.), Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States (pp. 225–256). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Chow, S.-M. (2014). Messy Package Offered by the NENT.  In S.-M.  Chan, T.-W.  Lung, & P.  L. Yip (Eds.), Recapturing NENT: Six Imaginations of Co-inhabiting in the Rural Hong Kong (pp. 70–73). Hong Kong: Shadow Long Term Housing Strategy Steering Committee/Land Justice League (in Chinese). Demographia International. (2015, January 19). Media Release: 11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.demographia.com/dhi11-media.pdf. Doling, J., & Ronald, R. (Eds.). (2014). Housing East Asia: Socioeconomic and Demographic Challenges. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Feng, B. (2001). A Century of Hong Kong’s Financial Development. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (in Chinese). Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, R. C., Park, B.-G., & Saito, A. (2012). Introduction: Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia. In B.-G. Park, R. C. Hill, & A. Saito (Eds.), Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States (pp.  1–26). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Holliday, I. (2000). Productivist Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy in East Asia. Political Studies, 48, 706–723. Huang, S.  M. (2015). Urbanizing Carescapes of Hong Kong: Two Systems, One City. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Huang, S. M. (2016). Can Travelling Mothers Ever Arrive? Articulating Internal and International Migration Within a Transnational Perspective of Care. Population, Space and Place, 22(7), 705–717. Huang, S.  M. (2017). Revamping Tradition: Contested Politics of “the Indigenous” in Postcolonial Hong Kong. In N.  Alsayyad, M.  Gileem, & D. Moffat (Eds.), Whose Tradition? (pp. 85–110). London: Routledge.

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Huang, S.  M., & Ian, R. (2015). Raising Umbrella in the Exceptional City: Encounters with “Others” in the Liminal Spaces. Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology, 83, 25–56 (in Chinese). Jessop, B., & Sum, N. L. (2000). An Entrepreneurial City in Action: Hong Kong’s Emerging Strategies in and for (Inter)Urban Competition. Urban Studies, 37(12), 2287–2313. La Grange, A., & Pretorius, F. (2002). Private Rental Housing in Hong Kong. Housing Studies, 17(5), 721–740. La Grange, A., & Pretorius, F. (2005). Shifts Along the Decommodification-­ Commodification Continuum: Housing Delivery and State Accumulation in Hong Kong. Urban Studies, 42(13), 2471–2488. La Grange, A., & Pretorius, F. (2016). State-Led Gentrification in Hong Kong. Urban Studies, 53(3), 506–523. Lam, Y.-C. (2015). Choi Yuen Village Land Resumption and Anti-express Rail Link Movement in Hong Kong: A Study of New Social Movements (PhD dissertation), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. Lan, I.-C. (2014). Governing Neoliberal Hong Kong: Space, Scale, and Strategy. Taipei: Chengchi University Press. Legislative Council. (2012). LCQ8: North East New Territories New Development Areas Planning and Engineering Study. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201210/31/P201210310299.htm. Legislative Council. (2014). LCQ5: The “Hong Kong Property for Hong Kong People” Policy. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.info.gov.hk/ gia/general/201406/11/P201406110675.htm. Legislative Council. (2015). LCQ16: Construction and Allocation of Public Rental Housing. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/ general/201511/25/P201511250452.htm. Local Research Community. (2013). Myth and Reality: Land Problem in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Logos HK. Local Research Community. (2015). No Place for Home: New Perspectives for the Long Term Housing Strategy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Logos HK (in Chinese). Lui, T. L., & Kung, J. K. S. (1985). City Unlimited: Housing Protests and Urban Politics in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Wide Angle Press (in Chinese). Mingpao. (2018, January 11). Rent Increase by 8% with Subsidy Available to Those in Need (加租8% 設援助租減半). Mingpao. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%e6%b8%af%e8%81%9e/article/20180111/s00002/1515606935469 (in Chinese). Ngo, J.  (2014, May 30). Dreams of Home and Marriage Falling Apart. South China Morning Post. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.scmp. com/news/hong-kong/article/1521380/dreams-home-and-marriage-falling-apart.

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Park, B.-G., Hill, R.  C., & Saito, A. (Eds.). (2012). Locating Neoliberalism in East  Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States. Chichester: WileyBlackwell. Planning Department. (2014). The Study on the Action Plan for Livable Bay Area of the Pearl River Estuary. Retrieved August 13, 2015, from http://www.prdbay.com/ft/home.asp. Poon, A. (2011). Hong Kong’s Land Policy: A Recipe for Social Trouble. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Journal. Pun, N., & Wu, K.-M. (2004). Lived Citizenship and Lower-Class Chinese Migrant Women: A Global City Without Its People. In A.  S. Ku & N.  Pun (Eds.), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City (pp. 139–154). London and New York: Routledge. Shin, H.  B., Lees, L., & López-Morales, E. (2016). Introduction: Locating Gentrification in the Global East. Urban Studies, 53(3), 455–470. Smart, A. (2006). The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, Fires and Colonial Rule in Hong Kong, 1950–1963. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Smart, A., & Lee, J. (2003). Financialization and the Role of Real Estate in Hong Kong’s Regime of Accumulation. Economic Geography, 79(2), 153–171. So, S. L-Y. (2010). The Victims of Privatization: The Case Study of the Link REIT in Hong Kong (MPhil thesis), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. SoCO (Society for Community Organization). (2013). The Report on the Non-­ Elderly Single Family’s Housing Need. Hong Kong: SoCO. Sung, T. (2015, April 30). New Territories New-Towns Plan Gets Green Light from Planning Board. South China Morning Post. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1781108/new-territories-new-towns-plan-gets-green-light-planning. Sung, Y.-W. (2002). Redefining Hong Kong’s Strategy for Growth and Development. In Y.-M.  Yeung (Ed.), New Challenges for Development and Modernization: Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific Region in the New Millennium (pp. 75–100). Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Swyngedouw, E. (2004). Scaled Geographies: Nature, Place, and the Politics of Scale. In E.  Sheppard & R.  McMaster (Eds.), Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method (pp. 129–153). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. The Land Justice League. (2014, June 11). A Short Version of Why Shall We Oppose the NENT I (反東北懶人包之一:要求政府立即撤回新界東北發展計 劃的十個理由). Inmedia. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www. inmediahk.net/node/1023522 (in Chinese). Time. (2012, June 28). Q&A: Hong Kong’s New Leader Is a Divisive Figure, but Aims to Build Bridges. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://world.time. com/2012/06/28/qa-hong-kongs-new-leader-is-a-divisive-figure-but-aimsto-build-bridges-2/.

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Vogel, S. (2005). Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wong, O. (2013, March 6). Veteran Planner Cooks on Smith Can’t See Point of New Border Town. South China Morning Post. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1180373/veteranplanner-cookson-smith-cant-see-point-new-border-town. Wong, Y.-C. (2014, June 25). The NENT Is Anything but Hong Konger’s New Town. Inmedia. Yeh, A. G. O., & Ng, M. K. (2000). Planning for a Better Living Environment in Asia. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Yip, N.-M. (2014). Housing, Crises and Interventions in Hong Kong. In J. Doling & R.  Ronald (Eds.), Housing East Asia: Socioeconomic and Demographic Challenges (pp. 71–90). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Yung, B. R. (2008). Hong Kong’s Housing Policy: A Case Study in Social Justice. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

CHAPTER 4

When Neoliberalization Meets Clientelism: Housing Policies for Low- and Middle-­ Income Housing in Bangkok Thammarat Marohabutr

Introduction By the 1960s, incompatibilities between the amount of available urban living space and growing housing demands in response to Bangkok’s industrialization policy as well as rural-to-urban migration had aggravated housing problems in the capital city of Thailand. The limited supply and prohibitive cost of traditional housing forced low-paid migrant workers to set up squatter settlements. Central to the housing problems of urban Thailand since the authoritarian regime, squatter settlements are regarded as a significant issue that governments must eradicate. In addition, enhancing housing opportunities for low- and middle-income groups has also been a major governmental agenda. The establishment of the National Housing Authority (hereafter NHA) in 1973 marked the beginning of an organized governmental initiative to provide a concrete solution to housing problems. The role of T. Marohabutr (*) Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_4

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the NHA was undermined, however, by the financial viability and the robust private housing sector. During the 1980s, housing expansion by the private sector was motivated, at least in part, by neoliberal recommendations to ‘let market forces work’ and ‘build institutions for markets’, pursued jointly with liberal economic policies and industrial reorganization (Carroll 2012, p. 351). However, the private sector housing boom eventually plummeted as a result of the 1997 economic crisis. At the beginning of the 2000s, the government placed an emphasis on populist housing policies to enhance opportunities for those excluded from the more dominant private housing developments. According to the latest census in 2010, the homeownership rate in Thailand was 78.9  percent. However, this rate in Bangkok was much lower, reaching only 51 percent (NSO 2012). The vast majority of housing for Bangkok’s population has stemmed from the private sector, accounting for more than 74  percent of total housing stocks there (Pornchokchai 2002, p. 6). In 2010, the average house price in Bangkok was approximately 2.279  million baht (US$72,928)1 per unit (ibid., p. 60), whereas the minimum wage was only 206 baht (US$6.6) per day (Del Caprio et al. 2014, p. 6). As a direct consequence of this fact, the government initiated public housing projects for low- and middle-income people, but the public sector’s role has largely been negligible (NHA 2008). Approximately 14–26  percent of the population still resided in squatter settlements (Bhatkal and Lucci 2015, p. 8). Under the aforementioned housing contexts of Thailand, this chapter discusses the neoliberalization of the Thai housing sector, and its complication by the evolving role of the Thai state vis-à-vis authoritarianism, democratization and clientelism. While the financial liberalization from the 1980s facilitated the neoliberal transformation of the Thai housing sector by increasing the Thai government’s dependency on the private sector input, pro-poor housing policies in the 2000s demonstrated a picture of clientelism as it involved relationship between political actors in exchange for vote and political sustenance in Thai politics. The remaining chapter first examines the political economics of Thai housing policy. Then, the subsequent section discusses the onset of the neoliberalization of the Thai housing sector, followed by the rise of clientelism. The final section concludes this chapter with some reflection.

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Pre-1980s Thai Housing Policy Unconsolidated Housing Policy, the 1940s–1972 Rural-to-urban migration played the most substantial role in Bangkok’s development prior to 1960, responsible for nearly 50  percent of urban population growth at the time and continuing to be significant up through the 1970s (Askew 2002, p. 57). But, such scale of migration and population growth added pressure on housing provision. A report of Litchfield Whiting Browne and Associates, an urban planning consulting firm, stated that 46  percent of Bangkok’s population lived in squatter housing in 1958, revealing the immense scale of the city’s housing deficiency (CDO 1996, p.  1). In 1960, the government established the Slum Clearance Office in response to the rapid growth of squatter communities, but because no long-term housing expansion plans existed, government assistance was perceived as inadequate despite the existence of various housing institutions.2 Only 10,240 rental housing units were built by the Housing Bureau and the Housing Division of the Public Welfare Department between 1940 and 1973, accounting for only three percent of the total accrued housing deficiency at the time (Chiu 1981, p. 80). The military authoritarian regime did not initiate any housing policy in collaboration with the private sector, as private capital accumulation in Thailand was still immature (Akira 1999). The regime could only provide minimal housing solutions prior to the establishment of the NHA after the National Executive Council passed the National Executive Decree No. 316  in December 1972 to create the organization. The NHA was the single national housing agency tasked to actively solve housing problems of the poor and can be seen as a means to uphold the legitimacy of the military government. The Establishment of NHA as Housing Provider The NHA brought together the responsibilities that were previously shared among extant public housing institutions, namely, the Housing Bureau, the Slum Clearance Office, the Housing Division of the Public Welfare Department and the Housing Welfare Bank. The purposes of the NHA included (1) supplying housing for rent, lease-purchase or outright purchase, (2) subsidizing citizens hoping to possess public housing for rent, lease-purchase or outright purchase and (3) administering buildings and housing estate businesses to contain squatter settlements (NHA 1976).

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Despite the ambitious start, the NHA was subject to various criticisms. For instance, the NHA Board of Directors was accused of lacking professionalism because they were appointed by the military government based on personal bonding rather than their experiences or expertise in housing (Khan 1999). NHA housing was also deemed unaffordable for low-income households, mainly because the criterion for construction had been set too high (Tanphiphat 1983). The First and Second Oil Crisis of the 1970s exacerbated the affordability problems (Huwanan et al. 1991). Subsequent to the 1977 coup d’état, Thailand was ruled by a semi-­ democratic government under the headship of an unelected prime minister. To prevent national economic stagnation, General Kriangsak, who was the then prime minister (1977–1980), regarded housing development as an ‘economic engine’ (Bongsadadt 1985, p.  2). However, because the 1972 land subdivision law needed private developers to provide housing in large subdivided lots and equip them with comprehensive infrastructure, they were dissuaded from taking an active role in housing provision (Kritayanavaj 2007). Having faced financial constraints and partly in response to the World Bank recommendation, the NHA chose to reduce the standard of their housing units by diverting their attention to the site and services projects as well as the slum upgrading projects (Tanphiphat 1983). At the same time, the NHA began to build housing for middle-­income groups, which was a measure to secure revenues for financially supporting the construction of housing for low-income groups (Yap 2002), but the scale of the NHA housing supply was nowhere near meeting the demand at the time (NHA 2008).

Bangkok’s Housing Under Neoliberalization The Thai government has always taken the lead in promoting housing opportunities for Thai people. The establishment of the NHA in 1973 paved the way for housing solutions under a single public housing agency. In order to build housing units for both low- and middle-income groups, the NHA did not build housing projects by itself. The NHA’s administration chose private corporations who won construction bids on public housing projects. Construction contracts were given to the corporations offering the lowest construction costs to the NHA (Buracom 1987). However, by the end of the 1970s, because of economic stagnation, the NHA played down its role in housing promotion, notwithstanding the policy to promote cooperation with the private sector. During the 1980s, the Thai economy had begun to flourish because of economic liberalization and the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI).

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With the support of governmental policy, the momentum of housing development shifted to marketized housing led by the private sector. While the shift to the expansion of private housing activities may represent the neoliberal transformation of the Thai housing sector, the private housing boom during the 1980s still reflected the government promotion of state-managed markets to address the national concern of providing housing for low- and middle-income groups (Hatch and Yamamura 1996). Contributing to the expansion of the private housing sector was the idea of ‘enablement’ or an ‘enabling strategy’ suggested by the World Bank in the mid-1980s, under which financial, institutional and legislative frameworks were provided by the public sector so that private developers could effectively build and offer urban housing to low- and middle-income groups (Pugh 1994, p. 166). By introducing capital for private housing construction through the Bangkok International Banking Facility (hereafter BIBF), the proposal of the World Bank was answered in 1992 by the government headed by the then Prime Minister Chuan (1992–1995) from the Democrat Party. Consequently, a large percentage of FDI was committed to housing provision (Phongpaichit and Baker 2002). The work of the Joint Public-Private Consultative Committee further assisted in the success of FDI promotion. The committee shaped ‘the role of the public sector […] into that of a planner, supporter and facilitator of private sector participation’ (Muscat 1994, p. 262). It offered recognition of the significance of the private sector in 1992 by acting as co-providers of housing welfare for Thai citizens under the management of the Housing Policy Sub-Committee. They were responsible for the design of a housing expansion policy at the national level by approximating housing demands and establishing aims for housing improvement for the public and private sectors, and they cooperated with other relevant public agencies (Na Thalang 2007). The government support for the private housing boom accompanied the financial liberalization policy, enabling both house buyers and developers to access public and private banking services as part of credit stipulation (Yap and Kirinpanu 2000). Measures from the Board of Investment (hereafter BOI)3 encouraged private developers to construct low- and middle-income housing units; other initiatives, such as the five-year ­corporate income tax exemption, were also launched by the government to help private developers. Housing funds from Government Housing Bank (hereafter GHB) and other commercial banks increased and became a source of funding for developers. House buyers were able to employ various resources for house purchase, and outstanding home loans increased rapidly as seen in Table 4.1.

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Table 4.1  Financial institution and outstanding home loans, 1981–1993 Type of institution

GHB Commercial banks

Yearly growth rate 1981–1985

1985–1990

1990–1993

3.95% 24.16%

27.90% 41.20%

37.92% 33.35%

Source: Tanphiphat (1994, p. 34)

The housing statistics attest to the fact that the private housing sector has actively been enhanced, promoted by the government through housing finance measures in place of the diminished role of the state-owned NHA.  The figure for official housing units built in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (hereafter BMR) by the private sector was only 24 percent of all housing stocks in 1974. By 2001, it rocketed to more than 74 percent (Pornchokchai 2002, p. 6). The number of housing units developed by the private sector reached 30,411 units in 1987, and then increasing to 45,192 units in 1988 and to 57,622 units in 1989 due to capital viability for the housing market (Foo 1992a, p. 1139), with low-­ cost housing units accounting for approximately ten percent of the total housing units developed (Foo 1992b, p. 101). Although the direct role of the statist housing agency was abandoned, this shift does not weaken the role of the state in the Thai housing policy, because the government intervened in the financial sector to support housing development. The influx of foreign capital, improvement of housing finance and statutory government initiatives such as the Housing Policy Sub-Committee under the Joint Public-Private Consultative Committee played a crucial role in private housing development. Such active government actions during the financial liberalization dispute the ideal-type neoliberal policy paradigm that limits the role of the state. Explained by the ‘roll-out’ neoliberal concept denoting the dynamics of neoliberalism which has transformed through policy learning and interaction with existing institutions (Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 41), the financial liberalization by the Thai government was the resolute measure planned to stimulate the private housing market and boost housing opportunities for the low- and middleincome groups in substitution for the NHA’s initiatives. During the Chuan government from 1992 to 1995, the private housing boom continued, thanks to continuing supportive government policies such as the injection of foreign capital through the BIBF and the

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Fig. 4.1  A private low-cost condominium built before 1997 in Bang Ka So subdistrict. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr

BOI. During this period, thriving housing activities in construction and transaction served as a sign of the growing speculative bubble. While the anticipated demand was only 382,240  units based on figures from the Seventh National Plan, developers managed to construct approximately 775,000 housing units in the BMR between 1992 and 1996 as a result of these measures (see Fig. 4.1 for one of the projects during this period). From 1987 to 1996, the number of unoccupied units increased by almost three times—281 percent—from 88,697 units to 337,822 units (Yap and Kirinpanu 2000, p. 18). This rapid increase was seen as a bubble, as the unoccupied units were purchased for speculative means. In a survey of 1995 housing stocks by the Agency for Real Estate Affairs, about 60 percent of housing units in over 1500 housing projects in the BMR were found to have been inhabited, 35 percent had been purchased but were unoccupied and the remaining five percent remained unsold (Yap and Kirinpanu 2000, p. 17). The share of vacant units among all the housing stocks in the BMR was estimated to range between 13 and 15 percent, from 1992 to 1996 (ibid., p.  18). On the demand side, because of the

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liberalized financial measures, the commercial banks were more than willing to lend housing mortgages to any people wishing to buy houses for speculative purposes without credit monitoring. As more upper-income persons and firms intended to assemble hefty profits from the purchase and sale of land and houses, speculative behavior amplified, leaving hundreds of thousands of units empty until the slump of the property market in 1997 (Leightner 1999, p. 368). The untamed housing activities ultimately led to the economic crisis of 1997, when transnational currency speculators compelled the Thai government to float the Thai baht,4 which decreased in value quickly. As the baht devalued, substantial foreign exchange deficits were experienced by foreign loan extenders (Yap 2014). As a consequence of the financial crisis, the economy faced a negative growth of 1.4 percent in 1997 and 10.5 percent in 1998 (ILO 2006, p. 5). While people’s incomes decreased, house buyers ceased making their housing loan payments at the same time, and speculators began to unload units out of fear of surplus. The commercial banks also discontinued providing loans due to the high level of insolvent debts by housing developers and their lenders (Yap and Kirinpanu 2000). As a result, the Thai housing market plummeted alongside the 1997 economic crisis. Following the crisis, Thailand’s housing market gradually recovered and restabilized, thanks to the government initiating various measures such as tax incentives for housing purchases and reduction of transfer fees. Foreigners’ access to the housing market was also liberalized (Vanitchvatana 2007). The 1999 Land Code Amendment Act provided the means for foreign investors to acquire and possess up to 1600 square meters of residential land valued at no less than 40  million baht (US$1.28  million). Provided that foreigners did not possess ownership of more than 49 percent of the entire floor space of a condominium building, they were also permitted by law to purchase a condominium unit by the 1999 Condominium Act (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2000, p. 95). Such policies reduced barriers to investment (Portes 1997). The shift to the promotion of private housing after the mid-1980 as well as the use of financial measures by the government as market incentives to attract housing investments in the private sector is representative of the neoliberal transformation of the Thai housing sector. While the national government intervened in the financial sector with the intent of fostering the growth of the private housing industry, the role of the NHA as the state housing agency in public housing development for low-income

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groups diminished. These changes attest to the ways in which both ‘roll-­ back’ and ‘roll-out’ neoliberal principles worked together, discrediting the role of socially collectivist institutions (Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 37). The financial liberalization from the mid-1980s aimed to support private housing as the key to foster the national housing industry. Marked as ‘the big sudden boom’ (Pornchokchai 2002, p.  4), the private housing sector responded actively to these measures, resulting in thriving housing construction and the rapid increase of housing stocks in Bangkok’s market, leading to a bubble in the late 1990s. Housing affordability problems were acute for low-income households. If wage laborers wanted to buy a house, they needed to get married so that together they could work to earn from overtime payment to supplement their basic income in order to even have the possibility of making a house purchase (UNHSP 2008, p. 56). As the poor were marginalized by this housing boom, pro-poor public housing policies emerged during the 2000s, but in the context of evolving democratization combined with the rise of clientelism, all of which complicated the role of the state that pursued populist housing policies.

Housing for the Poor and Clientelism Clientelism is a political phenomenon, often associated with democratization and democracy (De Sousa 2008). As a distinct form of patron-client relationships in democratic regimes (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007), clientelism refers to a political exchange of politicians giving patronage to voters in return for their votes and political support (Robinson and Verdier 2013). In the context of Thailand, during the development of a pluralist democracy in the late 1990s, the Thai clientelist mode manifested in the form of money politics and populist policies in electoral competition (Bjarnegård 2013). During the 2000s, pro-poor housing in Thailand heavily reflected a picture of clientelism, as it dealt with the promotion of a populist housing policy, with a view to gain votes and political support from the grassroots. Thailand passed a new Constitution in 1997, which is claimed as one of the most democratic constitutions in Thai history. The 1997 Constitution allowed the party list system to form a government and resulted in the rise of plutocracy. It also enhanced the executive power through a fully elected bicameral parliamentary structure built on an electoral system favoring the dominant political parties. Therefore, cabinet members were usually appointed from the

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members of the parties that won the general election. It also authorized the public to indict corrupt cabinet ministers, as well as create think-tank community organizations (Pongsudhirak 2008). Businesses took this chance to penetrate politics. In the interim, previous parties and politicians were removed as they had been accused of causing the 1997 economic crisis. This created the chance for a power grab by the Thai Rak Thai (hereafter TRT) Party. Thaksin, the telecom tycoon, became the prime minister (2001–2006) after an overwhelming victory in the 2001 election. As outside businessmen gained ministerial positions in the executive cabinet through the party list system, nepotism prevailed (Chaiwat and Phongpaichit 2008). Under the circumstances, Thaksin seized the opportunity and instituted populist policies in an effort to maintain the popularity of his TRT Party among the masses. These policies included a debt suspension program, a micro-finance program for the rural poor and unemployment benefits as a social security scheme. The promotion of low-cost housing was included in the government policy to cater to low-income people affected by the 1997 crisis. In late 2002, Thaksin announced a policy called ‘A Million Housing Units’ to answer the issue of housing shortages for the poor as well as to preserve the political legitimacy of the recently elected government. Under Thaksin, the NHA regained its importance. Two initiatives stand out: the Baan Eua Arthorn and the Baan Mankong projects. In 2003, the Baan Eua Arthorn (literally meaning ‘We Care’ Housing) project began as a low-cost populist public housing project and was administered by the NHA (see Fig. 4.2 for one of the Baan Eua Arthorn projects). The project aimed to alleviate housing problems and boost the living conditions of low-income groups, who were previously excluded from the private housing market. A mass construction of 477,000 units in the BMR and 123,000 units in other urban areas formed the basis of the Baan Eua Arthorn project (Yap 2014, p. 240). The cost per unit was 390,000 baht (US$12,480), an affordable cost for workers with salaries of less than 15,000 baht per month (Chanond 2009, p. 25). The implementation of the populist Baan Eua Arthorn project strongly featured clientelism in housing the poor. Claimed as one of his populist policies, Thaksin considered the Baan Eua Arthorn project as one of his most emblematic projects that demonstrated his government’s emphasis on a ‘new social contract’. Such a contract effectively claimed that it was the responsibility of the government to solve social issues and issues of well-being faced by the masses and to then improve the quality of their

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Fig. 4.2  A Baan Eua Arthorn low-cost public housing estate in Salaya subdistrict. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr

lives by creating jobs and welfare opportunities. The ‘new social contract’ was different from the way the government treated the poor during the military authoritarian regime before the 1970s. During that period, the government promoted political stability and economic development through policies aimed at expanding middle-classes and suppressing civil unrest rather than improving the social well-being of the poor (Hewison 2003, pp.  10–11). The populism under Thaksin’s ‘new social contract’ was a key factor in the Thaksin regime for garnering increased popularity and political support from the grassroots majority (Hewison 2004). If the Baan Eua Arthorn project was to supply low-cost housing units en masse, the Baan Mankong (literally meaning ‘Secure’ Housing) was a slum upgrading scheme that started in 2003 to help people living in squatter settlements. The Baan Mankong project aimed at benefiting 300,000 households in 200 cities, and it was implemented by the Community Organization Development Institute (CODI), an independent public

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organization in charge of improving housing conditions (Boonyabancha 2005, p. 22). For the benefit of those living in squatter settlements, the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme accompanied various measures to improve the material conditions of their current residences. Such measures included the promotion of the tenure security among landowners, which was previously overlooked. A typical method for this tenure security was the introduction of long-term land leasing agreement with landowners to eliminate the possibility of eviction (Boonyabancha 2005). The promotion of the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme by Thaksin was based on his interest to bolster his populism. The nationwide slum upgrading scheme subsequently became the responsibility of CODI, a newly established public agency endorsed by the 1997 Constitution. Under the Baan Mankong scheme (see Fig. 4.3 for an example), squatter dwellers were to take the responsibility of their own housing issues, employing a community-based but self-help approach, with monetary support and

Fig. 4.3  A Baan Mankong slum upgrading project at Bon Kai community. Photographed by Thammarat Marohabutr

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direction from CODI as well as contributions from community-­based nongovernmental orgaizations (NGOs) (Boonyabancha 2005). Public agencies were to direct and manage people’s initiatives. By 2009, a total of 94,852 households in 1643 communities benefited from the Baan Mankong scheme. Of these, 35,301 households from 378 communities lived in the BMR (CODI 2011). However, the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme has caused a price increase of the upgraded housing units by 38  percent since the beginning of the scheme. Also, the owners have tended to rent out their units instead of keeping them for their own living. This is because, on average, they have to pay back the loan 1871  baht (US$60) per month, while they can get 3084  baht (US$98) per month from the rent (Siam Thurakij 2011). The Baan Eua Arthorn project was suspended in 2007 following the military coup d’état in 2006 that eventually deposed the Thaksin government. Because the Thaksin government was accused of being responsible for massive public spending, the NHA committee under the subsequent junta chose to shelve the project (NHA 2008). Additionally, the remainder of the projects awaiting bids was postponed. The Democrat Party and the rest of the opposition under Abhisit’s leadership took control of the government in 2008 after two fleeting administrations by the People’s Power Party under Thaksin and his associates. Despite the fall of Thaksin, clientelism continued to survive. When Abhisit became the prime minister by parliamentary vote in 2008, the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme continued to operate through the provision of financial support valued at 1.5 billion baht (US$48 million) (Krungthep Thurakij 2009), even though the Baan Eua Arthorn low-cost housing project was suspended in 2007. Abhisit asserted that his policies originated from the notion of social welfare, while many condemned his government for its enormous spending and concealed populism (Leeahtam 2011). Abhisit also received criticism that he had copied Thaksin’s ­populist policies with a view toward gaining popularity from the poor (The Straits Times 2009).

Urban Contestations over Housing for Low-Income People Urban contestations over housing for the low-income people happened, as government support to solve the housing shortage was limited. Before the 1970s, the military authoritarian governments perceived that squatter

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settlements were the site of accommodating dwellers with rural background and that such settlements could jeopardize social order and economic development (Ockey 2004). The incident in the Trok Tai squatter settlement demonstrated urban contestations during this period before the establishment of the NHA. In 1968, after the Trok Tai community had been destroyed by fire, rebuilding within the damaged area was forbidden by the municipal authority and the landlord. The few remaining public housing units, mostly rental units, were occupied and insufficient for all of the affected people. Temporary shelters were set up in the far-­ flung Huai Khwang district, but squatter residents refused to move there. Instead, they used several tactics to draw attention of the public and contest the government to stay put. The Housing Division committed to providing them with public housing units, but the squatter residents refused the selection method, arguing that it was unfair for all affected people. The squatter residents also made complaints to local newspapers; they approached newspaper offices by themselves and without any assistance from social activists. The despair of Bangkok’s poor people and the government’s ignorance regarding housing problems were publicized until the landlord allowed the affected residents to resettle in the land plot (Buracom 1987; Ockey 2004). In the Trok Tai incident’s aftermath, the government was urged to more seriously execute pertinent housing measures for the poor. This was particularly apparent during the pro-democracy period when the government’s viewpoint toward squatter settlements changed. In 1973, the Thanom military government was ousted by the student and labor uprising. The pro-democracy period during the 1970s paved the way for civil movements demanding housing rights. The popularly elected government of Kukrit Pramoj (1975–1976) declared, as one of its primary agendas, that the government would solve the problems of low-income people through the NHA. The democratic government, despite being short-­lived, began to attach importance to the housing rights of the poor by creating new programs on housing development for the NHA to administer. However, the NHA could only provide very minimal housing solutions. The Khlong Toei community’s case demonstrates the social function, albeit limited and weakened until the 1990s, of the NHA to resolve community hardship. Occupying the land of the Port Authority of Thailand (hereafter PAT), the Khlong Toei community was pressurized to evict in order to make room for real estate development during the Thanom military government. The Khlong Toei community comprised 21 squatter

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settlements built by migrants who served mainly as a cheap workforce for the port of Bangkok. In response to common eviction efforts, anti-­eviction activities were organized with a high degree of cooperation among the community’s members, organizing community committees and choosing leaders to negotiate with the PAT. After the 1973 uprising, the community’s movement grew with assistance from volunteer students, academicians and NGOs working on welfare improvement. As the eviction would affect a large number of people, the NHA provided the community with basic services such as house registration, water and electricity as temporary solutions (Askew 2002). In 1981, the PAT insisted on the community eviction, as it needed the land for export-processing zone development. Again, the media were used to attract public interest against the eviction threat. However, instead of publicizing their misery, the community members revealed that they were capable of helping themselves through organized community activities. Consequently, the community was assisted by the NHA to negotiate with the PAT for land sharing, resulting in the leasing of a dissevered land plot to the NHA for community settlement (Berner and Korff 1995). The case of Trok Tai and Khlong Toei communities may not be considered as examples of clientelism. Before the NHA was established, the squatter settlements were judged as an unwanted part of the city to get rid of. The poor were subject to the authority, and the authoritarian regime did not need any vote or political support in exchange. Although the self-­ reliance of the squatter residents was later developed as seen in the Khlong Toei community, it was neither a significant bargaining power nor the source of political support, for the government needed to earnestly encourage solving housing problems. The picture of developmentalism in Thai public housing was not realized either. The principles to promote housing, notwithstanding, the NHA provided the poor with minimal housing solutions and failed to generate a meaningful state-managed housing market. It is noteworthy to acknowledge that urban contestations over housing for low-income people never happened in the Thai formal private-housing sector. As Odhnoff et al. (1983) argue, because of their rural cultural background, Bangkok’s working class has never become a powerful proletariat class. They never claimed their rights to private housing as they believed that the decision to buy units in private housing was based on the ability of individuals to pay. Marginalized people, usually low-income groups, still depended on either squatter settlements or public housing. The latter was

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used by politicians to draw votes and political support in the 2000s. The clientelist trait has thus become conspicuous in the populist housing policy behind the Baan Eua Arthorn and the Baan Mankong schemes.

Conclusion When analyzing Thai housing policy for low- and middle-income groups under a conceptual framework of conventional neoliberalism rooted in the histories of the West, it is apparent that such a conventional neoliberal framework does not fully explain the complex Thai politics entwined with the development of low- and middle-income housing in Bangkok, intended to enhance opportunities for the less economically advantaged population. This brings up the involvement of the evolving role of the state and the prevalence of clientelism in contemporary Thai politics. By the end of the 1970s, housing development led by the statist role of the military and semi-democratic regime was unable to solve the housing problems of the poor. This was despite the establishment of the NHA to help achieve the legitimacy of the then authoritarian regime by addressing poor people’s housing problems. The military-backed NHA bureaucrats allowed successful private bidders on public housing construction projects from the NHA to build upper-segment housing units to make a profit. But, the development of formal public housing units was marred by financial problems and the economic downturn. This undermined the government’s attempt to intervene in housing markets through the NHA. The financial liberalization from the 1980s by the Thai government enabled the private sector-led growth of housing industry boosted by the inflow of financial capital. This phenomenon mirrors the roll-out n ­ eoliberal principle reflecting neoliberal transformation. Economic restructuring to promote the export-oriented industrialization (EOI) attracted an influx of foreign investments into the country, especially in the BMR, in tandem with urban expansion and the growth of the middle class, stimulating greater housing needs. Although the ‘enabling strategy’ proposed by the World Bank advocated the private sector in low- and middle-income housing development in the early 1990s and indicated neoliberalization, the government only allowed the private sector to act as a co-provider of housing under the framework of the Joint Public-Private Consultative Committee (Carroll 2012). The private sector was allowed to have access to the financialization program through the BIBF, providing housing financing for private developers to expand into the low- and middle-income markets along with

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the BOI’s tax incentives encouraging them to build more housing for the lower-income segment of the population. However, oversupply triggered a bubble in the housing market, coupled with the speculative activities of upper-income groups while excluding the poor from housing opportunities. Eventually, the housing sector collapsed in the midst of the 1997 economic crisis. Despite the fact that many urbanites would have benefited from housing projects headed by private developers, the newly elected Thaksin government of the early 2000s revived the role of the public sector to promote the Baan Eua Arthorn low-cost housing project and the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme for marginalized groups. These initiatives were part of the Thaksin government’s populist policies. However, democratization was soon overtaken by plutocracy and nepotism, under which businessmen leaped at the chance to enter politics. This denotes the particular characteristics of TRT Party and Thaksin’s premiership which favored relatives and closed party members with administrative positions in the cabinet. While Thaksin’s ‘new social contract’ was claimed to solve the housing problems of the poor, its populist housing policies were established as a means to garner political support and increase popularity for his regime from the masses in a form of clientelism. Housing populism continued after the Thaksin regime. The successive Abhisit government emulated Thaksin’s populist housing policy by supporting the Baan Mankong slum upgrading scheme. The clientelist ideology has also been preserved in recent housing policies made by the subsequent military government, such as the initiation of the Baan Yangyeun (literally meaning ‘Sustainable’ Housing) low-cost public housing project in 2015. Under this project, unsold housing stocks built under the Baan Eua Arthorn were resold. Another clientelist project is the brand new ‘Baan Pracharat’ (literally meaning ‘Civil State’ Housing) scheme offering buyers with low-interest mortgages. These policies have been criticized for rebranding populism in an effort to draw legitimacy for the military government as well as political support from the grassroots (The Nation 2015). Enhancing housing opportunities for the low- and middle-income groups attests to the fact that the influence of neoliberalism on the Thai housing development has been mediated by the influences of the evolving role of the Thai state and clientelism. The government of Thailand has always intervened in the housing sector to facilitate and regulate housing activities and ensure that a thriving housing sector becomes a source of the legitimacy of the ruling regime.

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Notes 1. One baht is equivalent to US$0.032. 2. Other public housing institutions included the Housing Division launched in 1940 and the Housing Bureau in 1942 by the national government to resolve housing issues. These institutions were to be ‘aiding the population concerning their housing, employment, professional, and other problems with a view toward advancing their interests and wellbeing’ (Karnjanaprakorn and Bunnag 1978, p. 42). With regard to financial assistance, the Housing Welfare Bank (later the Government Housing Bank or GHB) was established under the Ministry of Finance in 1953. 3. The BOI was introduced by the Third National Plan between 1972 and 1976. It allowed fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to draw foreign investors such as exempting corporate income tax by up to eight years and lowering the import duties on machinery and raw materials (Decharuk et al. 2009). 4. The Thai baht maintained its peg at 25 baht per US dollar until the financial crisis started on 2 July 1997. It depreciated to a peak of 54 baht per US dollar in January 1998 (Wang and Tang 2009, p. 167). Its value is approximately 36 baht per US dollar, as of April 2016.

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CHAPTER 5

Neoliberal Urbanism Meets Socialist Modernism: Vietnam’s Post-Reform Housing Policies and the New Urban Zones of Hanoi Hoai Anh Tran and Ngai-Ming Yip

Introduction Neoliberalism has, arguably, demonstrated its power in describing the changing course of governing ideology and strategies in the United States and Britain. Yet, as the concept proliferates across a variety of countries with diverse social and political systems and as scholars resort to it to offer a universalizing conception of the changes in such countries, it appears that the concept has been overstretched beyond its analytic utility. This is the case with Vietnam. Since the introduction of the economic reform, Doi Moi, in 1986, Vietnam has been transitioning from a socialist system to a market economy,

H. A. Tran (*) Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] N.-M. Yip City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_5

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with the state retreating and the market (or the third sector), at least in theory, advancing into almost every aspect of the social and economic arenas. In fact, the concept of neoliberalism, despite being generally defined as ‘a politically guided intensification of market rule and commodification’ (Brenner et al. 2010, p. 184) as well as being perceived as ‘[a] global proliferation of a particular logic of late capitalism’ (Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012, p.  380), has become more inconsistent and imprecise, attracting more contestation when expanded to discuss phenomenon in other sociopolitical contexts (Brenner et al. 2010). In this respect, as several authors observed, Vietnam could hardly be considered a showcase for neoliberalism (Masina 2012, p. 204; see also Gainsborough 2010), and it is problematic to connect Vietnam’s transition to a market economy with the triumph of neoliberalism in Vietnam. It is the goal of this chapter, in echoing the general theme of this book, to clarify the specificities of neoliberalism in Asian cities in general and the transitional economy of Vietnam in particular. This chapter will focus on the housing policy in Vietnam, and new urban zones (Khu do thi moi in Vietnamese, henceforth KDTM) in Hanoi as a case study. Not only is housing one of the policy areas that have undergone the most comprehensive reform toward market domination, but it is also a sector that has witnessed the deepest engagement of international agencies in policy reform and the involvement of international capital. Hanoi is also the ‘political’ city in Vietnam in which the manifestation of state policy is more apparent. Thus, it is able to offer rich empirical data for critically examining the impact of the neoliberal logic on policy development in Vietnam. The discussions in this chapter are based on the data on evolving housing and urban policies over the last two decades as well as the data on four new urban zones in Hanoi. Information on the four areas was collected during the period 2011–2013, which includes detailed plans of the development, an inventory of the relevant built up environments and the use of public spaces, as well as interviews with representatives of the developers/ management boards and residents. The interviews were carried out in two stages. Simple fact-finding semi-structured interviews were carried out with the representatives of one developer/management board from each study area and 48 residents from each study area who had equal representation. This was followed by more focused in-depth interviews with other 24 residents (six from each area).

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Impact of Neoliberalism in Asia Neoliberalism has been used, not as a consistent concept, but ‘in many ways to refer to a whole range of things, outcomes and processes’ (England and Ward 2007, p. 11). At least four different understandings of neoliberalism have been engaged: as policy and program, as an ideological hegemonic project, as state form and as governmentality (an art of government for producing ‘neo-liberal subjects’) (England and Ward 2007, pp. 11–13). Yet, while neoliberalism is apparent in policies and programs in countries in Asia, it is less evident as an ideological hegemony project, state form or governmentality. Seemingly in countries in which neoliberal policies are being practiced, policy space has not shrunk to make way for the market: instead, new opportunities for an escalated involvement of the state have been created. Even when the neoliberal outlook has been expressed in one policy area, the state’s polymorphous nature means that it would not be able to create the same degree of neoliberalist approaches in all areas of policy (Weiss 2012). Similarly, neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project encounters a noticeable contradiction with respect to developmentalism. Despite the fact that both ideologies share some commonalities—being ‘ideologically imbued political projects’ based upon market incentives and underpinned by state intervention (Hill et al. 2012, p. 5)—there is, in fact, an inevitable clash between the two ideologies. As observed by Park and Saito (2012), ‘the process of neoliberalization [in Asia] has little to do with laissez-faire deregulation, but involved the mobilization of state power in the extension and reproduction of market rule’ (p. 299). It appears that the divorce of the neoliberalization process in Asia from laissez-faire deregulation distances the Asian approach from neoliberalism in the West with its neoclassical economic fundamentalist origin (Moody 1997), albeit everyday political operations and societal effects have produced ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism in the West, which creates the disjuncture of ideology and practice (Brenner and Theodore 2002). However, notwithstanding the resistance of deep-rooted developmentalism, the force of neoliberalism is still overwhelming. This is partly driven, as argued by Hill et al. (2012), by the commonalities between the two ideologies in which economic performance is the overpowering goal, and more importantly, pragmatism has pushed such countries to experiment and modify neoliberal approaches used elsewhere to repair their inadequate regulatory systems. Less direct is the democratization

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­ ovement that has pushed for a reconfiguration of state-society relam tions and has resulted in more economic freedom being granted to the market. In this respect, the key to successful neoliberalization is the capacity of the preexisting institutional setting (Chiu et al. 2012) and the capacity of the bureaucracies (Fine and Chang 2012). Hence, the process of neoliberalization in a developmental state is path-dependent. This results in a ‘hybridity approach’ (Park and Saito 2012) to create ‘developmental neoliberalism’ (Choi 2012) in some Asian countries. This is of particular relevance in transitional economies in Asia as well.

Neoliberalization in Transitional Economies in Asia Undisputedly, transitional economies in Asia, like Vietnam and mainland China, have been gradually moving from centrally planned socialism to market capitalism. Yet, there has been disagreement on whether or not such countries have ‘definitely moved towards neoliberalization’ as claimed by Harvey (2005, p. 151). The departure point is the ideological underpinning of policy change as well as the institutional approach of the reform. Based on a set of claims that characterized neoliberalism put forward by its proponent (for example, Holland et al. 2007; Kingfisher 2002), Nonini (2008, pp. 153–154) summarized four essential attributes of neoliberalism: market supremacy, a minimalist state, globalization and rational self-­ interested individuals. In the case of mainland China, despite market liberalization allegedly being promoted, it has nevertheless only resulted in the creation of ‘a recombinant or hybrid assortment of oligarchic institutions, practices and discipline power […] the boundary between the Chinese state and private “civic society” has grown increasingly unclear’ (ibid., p.  156). The blurring of boundaries between the state, markets and civic society, the anti-­globalization sentiment and the ubiquitous guanxi networks of complex benefit exchange that undermine the rational economy has led Nonini (2008) to conclude that a strong form of neoliberalism (that have all four of the claims mentioned earlier) does not exist in China. At best, a weak form of neoliberalism exists within a limited proportion of Chinese citizens. In Vietnam, on the other hand, with its heavy reliance on foreign direct investment and foreign aid1 (Masina 2012), it is not surprising to find that ‘international organizations have long pressed for broader neoliberal

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restructuring as a means to “civilize”, modernize and privatize the landscape through minimizing state intrusion in the market’ (Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012, p. 388). Experts and expert knowledge are instrumental to such processes in Vietnam as ‘a situated knowledge project […] dependent upon the production, circulation, and consumption of expert knowledge by actors both within and beyond the state’ (ibid., p.  392). Hence, Vietnam has, in fact, ‘been cautiously but indispensably aligned with (but not subject to) the neoliberal corporate and financial interests of the Western economies’ (Fine and Chang 2012, p. 315). However, it is the internal forces, noticeably self-interested officials at all levels, who are more favorably positioned themselves to acquire resources, that are more instrumental than the push of international agents in maintaining the neoliberal momentum for the pursuit of a market system for private property (Harms 2012). In both Vietnam and China, the state has always been at the center of the liberalization and marketization policies and has not renounced its guiding role (Masina 2012). Vietnam’s ‘reforms cannot be too easily understood in terms of neoliberalism’ (ibid., p.  206), as the regulatory regimes have not been shifted from the state to either the market or individuals (Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012). The continuity of norms, institutions, beliefs and morality has created the path-dependent trajectories of reform in Vietnam.

Urban Housing Development and State-Led Social Engineering in Vietnam It is not possible to understand urbanization in Vietnam without taking into account the modernization agenda and the role of modernist planning in the shaping of the urban landscape and social life. In the Vietnamese political discourse, modernization is in fact being perceived as a pathway to socialism. During the time of central planning, Vietnamese cities were developed following the ideals of socialist modernism (Schwenkel 2012). Modernist urban planning and architecture borrowed from ‘socialist’ countries in the Eastern bloc were used to foster a ‘socialist way of living’ for the ‘modern, socialist person’ (Tran 1999, pp. 108–109). Modernist planning has, for many years, been part of the Vietnamese government’s social engineering efforts to build a modern, orderly and civilized socialist society in which an urban lifestyle and social conduct are

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to be shaped through the physical and social structuring of urban space. From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, ‘collective’ apartment buildings (Khu Tap The, henceforth KTTs), designed and provided by state institutions, were promoted to be the most appropriate housing form, a form that would help to build a socialist way of living (Tran 1999). Organized according to the Soviet planning principles of self-contained mikrorayons, residential housing in the form of identical multi-story blocks was constructed. Together with the associated services, such as kindergartens, schools and department stores, the KTT followed the ideas of high modernism in which order and control were crucial (Scott 1998). However, by the mid-1980s, such building forms were considered to be a total failure, not only because of their monotonous architecture and poor technical standard, but also because they were considered socially inadequate. With no consideration given to lifestyles and diversity, the homogenous, monotonous and living machine-like design of the KTT apartment blocks was deemed to be lagging behind the increasingly individualized, consumerist lifestyles (Tran 1999). The economic reform (Doi Moi) has opened up Vietnam to the outside world and led to spectacular economic growth and rapid urbanization (The World Bank 2011). Vietnam has transformed greatly, from being one of the poorest countries in the world to a lower middle-income country by 2010. While poverty has been greatly reduced, the gap between the rich and the poor has vastly widened. Against this backdrop, housing reform has resulted in the introduction of a series of state measures to relax the state’s monopoly of the housing industry and establish a legal framework for a housing market. The ban on private housing construction was lifted, encouraging the private sector to take part in housing development. As the state withdrew from housing provision and with the new housing production mainly targeting high-end customers, there remained an acute shortage of affordable housing (Tran and Yip 2008). While the general urban housing condition greatly improved, housing inequality was rapidly on the rise (Gough and Tran 2009). The agenda of modernization is still highly relevant after Doi Moi. To ‘push forward industrialization and modernization with a socialist ­orientation’ (in Vietnamese, day manh cong nghiep hoa, hien dai hoa theo dinh huong xa hoi chu nghia) (Communist Party of Vietnam 2001, p. 1; emphasis added) was clearly stated as the directive for the socioeconomic development of Vietnam from 2001 to 2010 (see Fig.  5.1). What was new, after many years of isolation, was the goal of ‘integration with the

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Fig. 5.1  A poster from the early 1990s: Enforce industrialization, modernization in the capital city. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

global economy’ (hoi nhap quoc te), which was also seen as a pathway toward modernization. Vietnamese cities are to be developed to meet the goals of ‘industrialization, modernization and integration with the global economy’ (Prime Minister of Vietnam 2009, p. 1). Relaxing the state monopoly on house building has triggered an unprecedented construction boom throughout the whole country. The construction of private housing by individual households known as ‘popular housing’ has flourished, with buildings reminiscent of the traditional shop houses of three to four stories facing the street (Tran 1999). During the first decade after Doi Moi, ‘popular housing’ constituted more than 70 percent of all housing production in the city and greatly contributed to improving the overall urban housing condition (Geertman 2007) (see Fig. 5.2). However, by the end of the 1990s, this incremental, small-scale housing development was regarded, by politicians, architects, and planners alike, as running contrary to the (still very relevant) modernist ideas of an orderly, civilized, modern urban landscape (Thanh Uy Ha Noi 1998).

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Fig. 5.2  Private housing development by individual households. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

A  new directive for housing development was introduced in 1999, in which large-scale development by large developers in the form of comprehensive projects was promoted and small-scale development no longer supported (Government of Vietnam 1999). The new urban zones or KDTMs, as such projects are called, are ‘integrated urban zones with technical infrastructure, social infrastructure, residential areas and other services, and are to be developed in connection with an existing urban area or as a separate new area with demarcated borders with specified functions that comply with the approved urban development plan’ (Government of Vietnam 2006, p. 3). This new orientation in housing development and the way of life it fosters are considered to be in line with the socioeconomic orientation of Vietnam, which emphasized the goal of integration with the global economy (Prime Minister of Vietnam 2009).

The Case Study Areas The four new urban areas included in our study are Linh Dam, Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh (henceforth THNC), Viet Hung and Ciputra (see Fig. 5.3). THNC is the smallest of the four areas, located about five kilometers away from the old city center with an area of 32 hectares and a planned population of 15,000 people. Linh Dam, Viet Hung and Ciputra are large areas

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Fig. 5.3  New urban areas in Hanoi

of respectively 184, 210 and 395 hectares with an intended population of 25,000, 26,000 and 50,000 people. These three areas are situated seven to ten kilometers from the old city center. Linh Dam was the first new urban zone and was started in 1997, while Viet Hung is the newest, with its construction having started in 2004. Apart from THNC, which has been completed, the other three areas are still in different phases of construction but have all been put to use. These areas have been chosen for their different developers’ profiles and the different KDTM concepts that have been applied during different periods. Linh Dam was the first KDTM site in Hanoi, and the developer for its first two phases was the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUD), a major public company founded in 1989 by the Ministry of Construction. In 2000, HUD expanded to take over several other public companies at both the national and local levels to become

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HUD Holdings, an equitized public corporation with the state holding 100 percent of the shares. HUD Holdings is the developer of Viet Hung as well as the later phases of Linh Dam. THNC is being developed by Vinaconex, one of Vietnam’s largest equitized real estate companies, also belonging to the Ministry of Construction. Publicly listed in 2008, the majority of the company’s shares are still held by the state. Vinaconex has more than 40 subsidiaries and has projects across Vietnam. The developer of Ciputra is South Thang Long Development Co. Ltd., a joint venture established in 1996 between the Ciputra Group, one of Indonesia’s most influential real estate developers, and the state-owned Urban Development and Infrastructure Investment Company of Vietnam. The Ciputra Group holds the majority share and is the one to define the mission. The Ciputra Group is considered to be an initiator of the many ‘new town’ or ‘new urban area’ developments in many Asian cities that have been built over the past few decades (Leaf 2015). Over the years, Ciputra has developed the concept of ‘quality real estate development’, with the private provision of housing going hand in hand with basic services and infrastructure, as well as private governance. The choice of Ciputra as a developer and the application of its development model to Hanoi were conscious moves by the municipality, expecting to set an example of modern urban development in Hanoi, and for it to be followed by domestic companies.

Neoliberal Imperatives and State Control A study of the selected KDTMs shows a mixed picture. We can observe not only emerging neoliberal characteristics such as the focus on elite consumers, the emphasis on profit-making and the neglect of public services (Peck et al. 2013), but also the increase of state control and the continuation of modernist planning and the social engineering tradition. Homogenous Landscape of Order and Control Planned, ‘integrated’ or ‘synchronous’ development (phat trien dong bo in Vietnamese) is at the core of the KDTM policy. The size of a KDTM is also regulated. Each KDTM is required to cover an area of at least 50 hectares or more,2 with a population of at least 5000 people or 1000 households. The ground floors of high-rise residential buildings in KDTMs are to be reserved for public facilities, offices or commercial premises (Hanoi

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People’s Committee 2001). These areas are required to be 60  percent high-rise housing (of nine floors or higher) and 40 percent landed houses (Hanoi People’s Committee 2001). To mark the move away from the piecemeal development practices of the 1990s, the development of these areas is explicitly regulated so that the ‘subdivision of land for construction of attached houses is not allowed’ (ibid., item 7). ‘Planned’ and ‘orderly’ are highlighted as desirable features of a good ‘model’ for the KDTM: ‘the buildings need to be uniform, harmonious and orderly’ (Ministry of Construction 2008, p. 3). The developers, both domestic and global, clearly share the government’s modernist vision of a planned and orderly urban development. In THNC, this vision of an orderly development has led to the preference of offices, banks and global chain restaurants, instead of grocery shops or popular restaurants. As revealed by the chief planner of THNC, this strategy is specifically employed in order to keep the area in good order, as shop premises on the ground floor would create a ‘spilling out’ effect onto the sidewalk and consequently a disordered urban streetscape (interview October 2011). As it is, current offices or upscale restaurants were built with a raised ground floor that creates a clear demarcation between the buildings and the street (see Fig.  5.4). In Ciputra, the few commercial

Fig. 5.4  Raised ground floor to create demarcation between the buildings and the street in THNC. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

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premises located on the site were also designed with a raised ground floor to mark the separation between the buildings and the street. Ciputra is the first gated community in Vietnam, and it promotes a highly controlled, ‘orderly’ way of living, not only in terms of the physical environment but also in terms of ‘orderly’ conduct. It is explicitly expressed in Ciputra’s management admonitions: ‘All residents are expected to exhibit good and reasonable conduct at all times’ (Ciputra Residents’ Handbook n.d., p.  111). The Residents’ Handbook also emphasizes ­‘tidiness’ and ‘civilized’ behavior, against which ball sports, hanging up clothes on the balconies and running in the playground are not permitted (ibid., p. 154). Ciputra has a large army of security guards patrolling every street corner to make sure such rules are adhered to. In fact, ‘order’ and ‘civility’ are the most important features of the Vietnamese discourse of modernization and modernity (Harms 2014). Civility (van minh in Vietnamese) refers to the will to impose order on human beings in social groups (Harms 2014, p. 226). This does not only reflect the mindset of planners and politicians; it is shared by most Vietnamese. The ‘civilized living’ promoted in the KDTMs embodies a notion of discipline and restraint that is considered necessary for the development of a modern city and country. In this respect, the planning and construction of urban spaces in the KDTMs still embrace a social engineering mission, not unlike that of the KTTs. There is, however, a significant difference as the emphasis of the planning of the KDTMs is no longer on social equity or public services, as can be seen in the next section. Forgoing Public Services Central to the KDTM strategy is the mobilization of private capital for infrastructure and housing development, and the exchange of land for infrastructure. Planning regulations stipulate that KDTMs have to provide basic social infrastructure in the form of public facilities such as schools, preschools, playgrounds and places for recreation, public transport, healthcare centers, hospitals, grocery shops and markets (Government of Vietnam 2006). To provide incentives for developers to invest in the KDTMs, a series of directives were introduced. The most important ones are the exemption from the land premium, tax breaks and financial support for infrastructure investment. Administrative as well as financial support for site clearance is also provided (Government of Vietnam 2006). Investments by foreign

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developers are encouraged with favorable land lease schemes, tax breaks and an increased level of autonomy in running projects (Tran and Yip 2008). Apart from the developers’ contributions to infrastructure development, 20 percent of the developed residential land or 30 percent of the new housing units are to be returned to the municipality as public housing (Hanoi People’s Committee 2001). This appears to be a win-win situation for both the local government and the investors. The local authority is able to develop infrastructure and achieve urbanization without stretching its already constrained budget, whereas the inexpensive urban land enables developers to generate windfall profits (The World Bank 2011). However, in reality, the public sector may not get its fair share of the financial returns. The land premium and tax the local governments are able to get have been greatly reduced. This is because the base for assessing the value of the land has often been deliberately set at the value of the raw land at the beginning of the project, but not at the value of the land after the construction of infrastructure. This may result in the local government getting only one-tenth of the actual market price of the developed land (The World Bank 2011, p. 19). This effectively transfers great benefits to the developers and investors and implies a very expensive way of developing basic public services. It is even worse when the public services the developers have to develop under the agreement are not delivered. This has happened in most KDTMs. For instance, both Viet Hung and Ciputra should have public schools, but instead only private schools and preschools were provided. Likewise, THNC’s planned playground has been turned into a parking lot, and there is neither a park nor a sports ground being constructed as a replacement. None of the four study areas have hospitals, healthcare centers or traditional markets. The infrastructure that is provided in the KDTMs is largely transportation-related, and commercial facilities are out of the reach of the majority of average Vietnamese. Even now, many years after these areas were first put into use, THNC, Linh Dam and Ciputra have still not invested in water treatment facilities, which were required in the approved development plan. Household wastewater was being discharged to local rivers and waterways without treatment, polluting the city’s groundwater (Dan Tri News 2015). The KDTMs are luminous examples of a policy failure that results in the loss of public land to private interests.

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Commodification of Housing and Urban Life Market logistics that perceive the residents as consumers and housing as a commodity can be observed clearly in THNC and Ciputra. While the HUD developed Linh Dam (and to some extent, Viet Hung) in a similar way as was done in the period of the planned economy, in which the implementation of the government planning directive was presented as the development goal in itself (Vien Qui Hoach Xay Dung 1999), the other domestic developer, Vinaconex, employs a clearly market-only-­ oriented approach to the development of THNC. Vinaconex R&D, the developer of THNC, is a subsidiary of Vinaconex Corporation. The chief planner of Vinaconex R&D, Dr. Hoang Huu Phe, an academician-turned businessman with global aspirations, was highly influential in the conceptualization of THNC. Educated in Kiev in the late 1980s and having received a doctorate degree from the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, Dr. Phe is greatly influenced by European (international) architecture. The slogan for THNC is ‘Europe in the heart of Hanoi’, and the area was advertised as ‘a new housing area in Hanoi with features of the urban areas of developed countries (mang dáng dâṕ của các khu dô̵ thi ̣ tại các nư ớ c phát triển)’ (Vinaconex Corporation n.d.). Dr. Phe considers high-rise living to be a lifestyle that fits modern city dwellers with busy professional lives. He was explicit in saying that THNC targeted the young Vietnamese professional class, the yuppies (Hoang 2014, p. 10). He expected them to embrace this modern living style, since ‘they are the ones who travel and understand the typology’, setting a trend for others to follow (ibid.). He also believed in new precasting technology, slip forming, that helps to reduce construction costs. THNC is a technologically driven project carried out with international partners from Austria and Belgium. It uses a combination of precasting and a new slip form and precast technology imported through an Austrian engineering company (Vinaconex Corporation n.d.). THNC is the first domestic company to refer to residents as ‘consumers’ and ‘consumer tastes’ in their project declaration. The project blurb mentions the ‘supply and demand law’ of a market economy and a new housing concept to realize more effective land use in an era of rising land prices. It also refers to the ‘changes in the perception of housing and dwelling among housing consumers’. These are apparently responses to the changing taste of residents in a time of economic stabilization. If a house was previously ‘a place to live’ and ‘a source of income’ and ‘an

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investment’, it is now also ‘a manifestation of the social standing of the owners’ where they display and enjoy the ‘fruits of their labor’ (Ministry of Construction—Vinaconex 2001, p. 3). Likewise, Ciputra also clearly stated its intention to create ‘a commercial and international transaction center in combination with a modern residential area achieving international standards’ (South Thang Long Urban Development Ltd. and Hanoi Urbanization Architecture Consulting Company 2003, p.  7). It aspires to creating a ‘high quality residential area’ for Hanoi (interview with a representative from the Project Management Board, June 2012). Furthermore, establishing a brand name in Vietnam is important for the company. Special design features are consciously used to manifest a brand identity. These include a massive entry gate in the form of a triumphal arch with horses on top, as well as fanciful public works of art and landscaping (see Fig. 5.5). Ciputra clearly targeted wealthy people. The representative from Ciputra’s management board stated that their clients are ‘people with

Fig. 5.5  Public artworks in Ciputra. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

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money […] people with the need to live in an unprecedented residential area, a civilized, modern area with all the services’ (interview with a representative of the Ciputra Project Management Board, June 2012). Ciputra provides not only housing, but also offers a whole lifestyle package. This is manifested distinctly in the way residential solutions are communicated. The urban spaces in Ciputra (Ciputra Hanoi 2014) are presented as consumer goods that are produced to serve the specific desires of a specific group of users: The Link is a celebration of all that is good in life. Offering an innovative integration of modern design concepts with the luxuries of all the facilities within the biggest new urban development in Hanoi, The Link promises to bring a living environment that is unparalleled […] Premier lifestyle awaits you at The Link.

Aesthetics is an important feature of this prestigious lifestyle. The homogeneity of the built form and the orderly and well-maintained landscape were produced and sustained to construct a sense of social distinction, a prestigious way of living that aimed to attract wealthier citizens. The commodification of urban spaces and the consumer lifestyle promoted in Ciputra seem to have had significant consequences on social life in the area. While the residents in the other three areas have a lively social life in the form of self-organized activities such as chess clubs, yoga, ballroom dancing, poetry recital and so on, ‘community activities’ in Ciputra are organized by the management board and presented in the form of carefully packaged products. It has been found that residents in Ciputra have much fewer and less intimate contact with their neighbors compared to the generally warm relationships and interdependency between neighbors in other areas (Tran 2015). The four KDTMs show different development approaches, not only between foreign and domestic developers, but also among different domestic public developers. This illustrates the blurring of the public and private sectors and raises questions regarding the common assumption of a clear division between state and market. Increasing State Control The way KDTMs are planned and developed signifies a change of course in urban housing development—from spontaneous and market-driven

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small-scale house building to large-scale planned developments dominated by the state. This is apparently a reaction against the ‘incremental’ but ‘disorderly’ small-scale development of the ‘popular housing’ of the 1990s (Thanh Uy Ha Noi 1998, p. 3). Planners and politicians saw two problems with the immense growth of private housing construction. Firstly, these were developments that were out of their control as it was estimated that 70 percent of these were built without building permits (Koh 2004). The city development control offices did not have the capacity to exercise development control, and infrastructure development seriously lagged behind people-led housing developments. Second, small-scale urban housing as an urban form was considered unsuitable for attaining the goal of developing Hanoi into a modern capital city (Thanh Uy Ha Noi 1998). In this respect, the new urban area is promoted as an urban development ideal for a modern, civilized and orderly city. Furthermore, to orient housing development toward the form of organized large-scale ‘projects’, the state has stepped up its control of nearly every aspect of such housing development (Thanh Uy Ha Noi 1998) and has reinstated its role as a direct player in housing development, rather than being merely an ‘impartial’ regulator. Public sector companies are entrusted with the largest and most lucrative projects. Private firms, which are encouraged to get involved, need to have a very good connection with the state in order to secure large development projects. In fact, three of the four KDTMs we mentioned in this chapter are planned, financed and built by state corporations. Even the project of Ciputra, with its ‘foreign’ investment, had to be developed by a joint venture to ensure that the state would still be able to retain substantial leverage over the project. In fact, similar U-turns in neoliberal policies were observed in mainland China at the turn of the century. After two decades of neoliberalization following the economic reforms of the early 1980s, China shifted from neoliberalism to state liberalism. Whilst a deepening of neoliberal policies, such as market expansion and privatization continued, state involvement did not retreat, as neoliberal doctrines predict. Instead, there was a stepping up of state intervention in nearly every aspect of people’s lives (Chu and So 2010). Paradoxically, this did not lead to the collapse of the market but rather to the endeavors to develop the economy further.

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Contestation The modernist efforts by planners and developers to keep an orderly streetscape are being counteracted by spontaneous self-organizing initiatives in most areas, with the exception of Ciputra. THNC has only succeeded in keeping ‘orderly’ street fronts on the main avenues. Ground floor premises on narrower streets and lanes are lined with budget shops and restaurants that make extensive use of the pavements. In both Linh Dam and Viet Hung, the sidewalks in front of the commercial premises are effectively appropriated as extended shop and restaurant areas and contribute to a dynamic urban streetscape. Residents also actively organized themselves to cope with the lack of services and infrastructure. In Linh Dam, many outdoor spaces were turned into badminton courts, football fields and sports grounds (see Fig. 5.6), while in Viet Hung, residents gathered a community fund to invest in benches to be placed in the park (Tran 2015). Lacking both a playground and a park, the residents of THNC effectively appropriated the large square in front of the two 34-floor towers for all kinds of sport: tai-chi in the early morning, skateboarding during the day, aerobics and dance in the evening. To compensate for the lack of traditional markets, spontaneous open markets are held every day by occupying some of the streets. It is these self-organized space-making activities engaged in by the residents that turn these otherwise sterile modernist areas into lively urban spaces. In Ciputra, the rigorous control and surveillance, combined with the residents’ desires to adapt to an elite orderly lifestyle, does result in a more ‘proper’ use of the urban space. However, as the wealthy residents of Ciputra depend on domestic helpers who often come from rural areas,

Fig. 5.6  Self-organized space-making in Linh Dam. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

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Fig. 5.7  Appropriation of the reception hall in Ciputra by nannies. Photograph by Hoai Anh Tran

Ciputra’s space gets used in ways other than what was intended. For example, the lavishly ornate reception areas in the residential towers in Ciputra that are meant to be a place of representation are often occupied by a group of nannies who use these large rooms and their sumptuous sofas for child feeding and as a socializing space (see Fig. 5.7). While the areas were relatively new, resident groups—a local form of resident organization—were quickly formed in THNC, Linh Dam and Viet Hung. These resident groups are instrumental in the organization of community activities, dissemination of information and defense of residents’ interests during negotiations with management boards and developers in times of disputes. In Linh Dam, the residents have successfully negotiated with the management board to provide accessible outdoor training equipment as well as playgrounds as alternatives to the existing expensive indoor gyms and tennis courts which benefit only the wealthy and exclude the poor. On the contrary, in the privately managed Ciputra, citizen p ­ articipation

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is replaced by the consumerist market mechanism which apparently leads to the weakening of social interaction within the area. Self-organized, or people-led, space production has been described as characteristic of Vietnam’s urban development (Geertman 2007; McGee 2009), and hence the urbanization processes in Vietnam can be understood as simultaneously state-led and people-led (McGee 2009). With such a perspective, while the urban spaces of the KDTMs can be perceived as a product of the modernist visions of the local government and real estate entrepreneurs, such a view is being challenged by people with their everyday life space-making activities as visible, albeit limited, forms of contestation against the elite planning visions. On the other hand, highly controlled private management regimes, such as that of Ciputra, can have long-term consequences in the Vietnamese society. With space-making endeavors being curtailed by the rigid management practices, the space available for citizen involvement has also been squeezed to the minimum. Likewise, it would be difficult to create a sense of community, as its breeding ground of social interactions and engagement has been seriously restricted. Among the professional communities in Vietnam, the development of highly controlled urban spaces, such as that produced by Ciputra, has been criticized. Some planners consider that such urban form and the lifestyle it fosters are not suitable for the majority of Hanoians, as enclave urbanism creates spatial and social segregation and contributes to polarization and conflicts between social groups (Luong and Do 2009). The failure to provide social infrastructure and public services has been the main source of discontent and protests from the residents. In both Viet Hung and THNC, several residents were reported to have had to sell their apartments and move due to the lack of traditional markets and public schools (Hanoi moi Online, 17/12/2009). The lack of wastewater treatment also led to several complaints from the residents, especially after several incidents of flooding caused by the wastewater pipes occurred. Worse than that, there is no mechanism to enforce the provision of these public services. The Environmental Inspection Office was reported to say that they could only fine the developers but had no power to force the developers to construct a water treatment station (Dan Tri News 2015).

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Conclusion Evidence of a neoliberal urban policy is apparent in Vietnam’s urban development policy and practice. Not least are the massive commodification of the old housing stock, the overwhelming reliance on private capital for delivering new housing and urban infrastructure and also the adoption of the concept of New Urban Zones. The development of the KDTMs is evidently a neoliberal approach, with the emphasis placed on market imperatives. Elite consumers as the prime clientele are clearly observed in the case of Ciputra, whereas in the state-led project THNC, the illusive concept of ‘customer’ is adopted for the first time in official documents in relation to the planning and design of the built environment and the delivery of services to the residents. However, a more explicit attempt to import an unequivocally exclusive and luxurious lifestyle for the aspiring wealthy middle-class in Vietnam is witnessed in Ciputra. Urban policy is also beginning to skew toward ‘profit making values at the expense of use values, social needs and public goods’ (Peck et al. 2013, p. 1092). To attract investment from private capital to pay for the much needed physical infrastructure, large pieces of land are being sold cheaply to investors in exchange for their commitment to install the necessary infrastructure and public services. Yet, this only creates opportunities for the investor to make windfall profits while the required social infrastructure and public services are often delayed, some even indefinitely. Not only are private companies being delegated by the state to shape the physical landscape and connectivity to selective parts of the city, they also have the power to engineer the social milieu of the city. In this way, urban development strategies in the form of KDTMs become instrumental in the creation of landscapes of segregation within the city. Yet, despite the neoliberal outlook of KDTM development on the surface, this is no simple case of the victory of the market. There is no sign the state is prepared to relinquish its control over the market. Rather, the case of the KDTMs illustrates the reaffirmation of the role of the state in urban planning and housing production. The state does not only direct and control urban housing development through investment and planning regulations, but is also directly involved—via entrusted equitized companies—in the implementation. While there is indeed an increase of private capital and the participation of the private sector in urban development, it is the equitized public companies, still directed by the state, that are taking the lead.

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In the development of the KDTMs, state companies are the leading players in urban development. Yet, this cannot simply be interpreted as the return of state control, as it was in the socialist era. In the new form of state companies, they are being set up as new ‘business’ players in urban development, which is ‘linked to state enterprises and/or bureaucratic institutions of the party state […] [with the aim] to exploit commercial opportunities that emerged during the reform years’ (Gainsborough 2010, p. 34). The KDTMs have become new business opportunities that the state wants to control as well as to be able to reap the profit (see also Shin 2009, for similar processes in mainland China). Hence, a simple dichotomy of state player versus market players, or public sector versus private sector, is inadequate for understanding the complexity of urban development processes in Vietnam’s transition economy. The state is not only a gatekeeper or facilitator, but also a major player in asserting its business interests in this new business arena (Gainsborough 2010). Neither is such blurring of state and market a feature of the transition in which the growing market sector would eventually overtake state agencies as the major player in the economy. As So and Chu (2012, p. 184) have commented on the neoliberalization of China: If a nation has a weak capitalist class but a strong state, it is highly unlikely that it would carry out neoliberal policies wholeheartedly… even if neoliberalism works […] it is bound to produce massive dislocations, mounting tensions, and intensified class conflict and protests. The state, therefore, stepping in to restrain neoliberalism’s excesses, produces a variant of neoliberalism quite unlike the orthodox model.

Hence, in Vietnam, we may be witnessing the involvement of a new hybrid state in the economy, the making of which is similar to what has been discussed in China regarding local state corporatism (Oi 1995) and state entrepreneurialism (Duckett 1998; Shin 2009). State players have exploited their power position in the regime by creating regulatory and operational institutions to their advantage in siphoning off economic benefits for their own interests in the newly created but immature market system. A symbiotic relation between the sectoral interests of the local state, the economic interests of individual bureaucrats and their agents in the market operations would help to reinforce and sustain such a system. Such a hybrid system in the urban system is sustained, or even reinforced, by the mainstream discourse of socialist modernization and mod-

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ernism. As the ruling regime in Vietnam still adopts a ‘socialist’ ideology as the foundation of political legitimacy and as modernization is still portrayed as the pathway toward socialism, the rhetoric and visions of modernist planning would continue to be the dogma used in planning urban development. In this respect, the development of orderly cities and the reshaping of urban life by rational, comprehensive planning dictate the policy on new urban area law and the resulting urban form. The case of THNC is exemplary of the application of ‘innovative’ ideas of planning conception and the employment of ‘advanced’ construction technology in urban development. It also illustrates the prominent role of expert knowledge in the shaping of the urban landscape according to modernist imaginaries. Ciputra’s version of modernization further demonstrates the desire of the Vietnamese state to achieve modernization of a global standard (Leaf 2015). As Brenner and Theodore (2002) commented, exploring the path-­ dependent nature of neoliberalization is a key to understanding ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism. Our analysis of the KDTMs in Vietnam shows that the manifestations of neoliberalism in post-reform Vietnam can be perceived as an expression of socialist modernism meeting neoliberal influences. This leads to the formation of hybrid urban strategies in which the ideals of socialist modernism combine with economically motivated neoliberal rhetoric (Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012). It is a complex process in which ‘neoliberal ideas are translated in order to fit Vietnamese past and future imageries’ (ibid., p. 398). The development of Vietnam’s KDTMs produces a form of ‘market modernism’, which ‘emphasize(s) the fundamental profit motivation [behind the development] and the role of market mechanisms for its ­delivery’ (Leaf 2015, p. 170). Market modernism highlights the hybridity of these developments as hybrid products of a transitional system, a hybrid system brought about by a complex interaction among the emerging market imperatives amidst the changing socialist legacy (Gainsborough 2010). Underlying the conception of market modernism is the still-pervading goal of modernization, and the belief in the urban solutions of modernist tradition, even though the social (or equity) orientation of an earlier modernist reform is being replaced by the emphasis on the economically motivated incentives (Leaf 2015). As such, ‘market modernism’ can claim its legitimation as a continuation of the political rhetoric of ‘socialist modernism’ which has been framed in the socialist era as an ideological motivator for nation building.

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Not only is a modernizing strategy, promising to build a modern city, integrated with the global world pivotal to nation building, it also helps to neutralize resistance toward the undesirable impacts of neoliberalism. As Leaf (2015, p.  170) argues, for most people in the developing world, modernism, modernity and modernization generally carry the positive meaning of a ‘developmental dream of entering the modern world […] even for those who will not benefit directly from such development’.

Notes 1. From 2005 to 2014, Vietnam received on average US$7b foreign direct investment each year. FDI in Vietnam was 1.6 times that of China, relative to their respective GDP over the period. Whilst China is a net contributor of international aid, Vietnam received an average of US$3.2b in international aid during 2005–2014. Vietnam’s reliance on foreign money (direct investment and foreign aid) in the period was 2.5 times that of China (relative to the GDP) (World Bank 2016a, b, c). 2. Only in special cases can KDTMs be of 20 hectares, but no smaller (when the site is restricted by other projects and when the upgrading involves existing urban areas).

References Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways. Global Networks, 10(2), 182–222. Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”. Antipode, 34(3), 349–379. Chiu, W. K. S., Ho, K. C., & Lui, T. L. (2012). Reforming Health: Contrasting Trajectories of Neoliberal Restructuring in the City-States. In B.-G. Park, R. C. Hill, & A.  Saito (Eds.), Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States (pp. 225–256). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Choi, B.  D. (2012). Developmental Neoliberalism and Hybridity of the Urban Policy of South Korea. In B.-G. Park, R. C. Hill, & A. Saito (Eds.), Locating Neoliberalism in East Asia: Neoliberalizing Spaces in Developmental States (pp. 86–113). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Chu, Y.-W., & So, A.  Y. (2010). State Neoliberalism: The Chinese Road to Capitalism. In Y. W. Chu (Ed.), Chinese Capitalisms: Historical Emergence and Political Implications (pp. 46–72). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ciputra Hanoi. (2014). Central Park (Block Q). Retrieved January 17, 2014, from http://www.ciputrahanoi.com.vn/445/748/Central-Park/Central-ParkBlock-Q.htm.

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CHAPTER 6

Beyond Property Rights and Displacement: China’s Neoliberal Transformation and Housing Inequalities Zhao Zhang

Introduction Over the past four decades, urban housing and its associated massive construction, displacement and gentrification have been focal points to anchor intellectual debates about neoliberal policies, especially in the Western liberal states (for example, Smith 2002; Swyngedouw et al. 2002) and newly industrialized economies (for example, López-Morales 2011; Shin and Kim 2016). Since the outbreak of the most recent global recession, the preexisting pro-homeownership milieu and deregulated financial policies have been condemned as the essential triggers that resulted in the systemic economic (housing) crisis across the world (Aalbers 2012; Rolnik 2013). The post-crisis solutions in the forms of government bailout plans, austerity measures and increased privatization have been taken as an intensification of—rather than a termination of—neoliberalization (Peck et al. 2010; Mercille and Murphy 2016).

Z. Zhang (*) Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_6

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Shifting the attention to mainland China, over the past five to ten years or so, some urban-centered research has adopted neoliberalism as a ­paradigm to address controversies and inconsistencies between the national state and the local state, and between the state and society, during the processes of China’s urban redevelopment (for example, He 2012; He and Wu 2009), while acknowledging the establishment of market-based housing provision. Several studies have critically interrogated property rights infringements and speculative urbanism in Chinese cities but do not explicitly define these as by-products of a neoliberal transformation, while conversely accentuating the strong presence of the Party State (for example, Hsing 2010; Shin 2014). Over the past few years, economic geographers have offered a geo-historical approach to reassess China’s economic reform beyond the debate of neoliberalism and its application to the authoritarian Chinese state, by recommending that China’s neoliberal reform should be observed as a spatial experiment in variegated forms designed to meet periodic politico-economic requirements rather than as an absolute or fundamental ideological transformation (for example, Lim 2014a; Peck and Zhang 2013; Zhang 2013). Since the 1980s, China’s housing provision trajectory has undergone dramatic oscillations between boom and downturn many times (Wang et al. 2012; Wu 2015). Previous critical examinations of housing issues in the Chinese context have largely focused on exchange value aspects, such as property rights and civil participation conflicts pertinent to displacement (for example, He 2012; Hsing 2010; Shin 2013), as these housing rights-related contestations are largely intertwined with post-displacement materialistic compensation packages. Some researchers have interrogated inequitable socioeconomic outcomes and unaffordability associated with the radical housing reforms that occurred in 1998 (for example, Huang and Li 2014). However, the decreasing use value of housing (for example, disinvestment in dilapidated neighborhoods), a shortage of public housing in suitable locations and contradictions between pro-homeownership propaganda and the reality of housing as a basic human need have not been well documented. More importantly, a lacuna still exists in taking ever-changing and variegated housing policies to resonate with China’s neoliberal transformation. Nanjing’s historic core demonstrates features that are typical of China’s dilapidated inner-city neighborhoods, and includes a variety of housing tenure types and enclaves reflecting different stages of (re)development. A multitude of issues are normally associated with these types of neighbor-

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hoods. These include disinvestment, exclusionary displacement, inheritance/property rights conflicts and disputes related to compensation paid in relation to resettlement. In this sense, the case study of Nanjing serves as a key example through which to investigate the variegated and contested scenarios associated with neoliberal housing reform in China. Forced displacement, damaging historical architecture and long-lasting grassroots resistance in this part of Nanjing have garnered particularly strong attention among both academic researchers and the mass media (for example, Yao and Han 2016). This chapter draws upon empirical findings based on my fieldwork conducted through a pilot study in the summer of 2011 as well as in-depth fieldwork from October 2012 to April 2013 in the remaining dilapidated enclaves of Nanjing’s historic core (surface area ca. 5.56 km2). In order to guarantee both the intensiveness and extensiveness of this research, a mixed methods approach was adopted. First, stratified purposeful sampling was utilized. The case study area was categorized into four sub-areas based on their redevelopment stage and neighborhood environment— namely, the traditional sub-area, the deteriorating sub-area, the transitional sub-area and the renovated sub-area. One hundred long-term residents inhabiting these four sub-areas were interviewed using a researcher-administered survey based on their enthusiasm about community affairs and willingness to communicate. Each interview with long-­ term residents included both a series of close-ended questions and 12 semi-structured open-ended questions. Apart from residents, semi-­ structured interviews were also undertaken with other relevant stakeholders, such as activists, resistance leaders and a mid-ranking urban planner. The interviews were digitally recorded and fully transcribed. In particular, this research involved a lengthy period of time in the Nanbuting Phase IV Project area (surface area circa 130,000  m2) and traced more obvious resistance and housing struggles, while further elaborating on how neoliberal housing policies in urban China are epitomized and adjusted over time.

Neoliberal Urban Governance and Pro-Growth Unevenness Although the application of neoliberalism in the Chinese context has been questioned due to their limited economic liberalization (Nonini 2008), China’s neoliberal turn can be conceptualized from the perspective of variegated capitalism (Brenner et al. 2010; Peck and Theodore 2007), which

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underlines a more inclusive and relational analysis between the state and the market (also see Peck 2013). The state selectively chooses to tightly control some highly profitable, strategic and capital-intensive industries, such as energy, rail transport and military manufacturing. These industries are similar to a coordinated market economy model. However, in other sectors, such as education, health services, urban transportation and so on (Zhang and Ong 2008), more liberal market economy elements can be identified, with active private-capital engagement. This phenomenon is interpreted as ‘grasping the large and letting go of the small’ (Lin and Hu 2011, p. 728) by the Party State. Capitalism in post-reform China is represented through embedded marketization in concert with authoritarian governance (Zhang 2012). It is a constantly interlocking process between the Party State and the market, rather than reflecting liberal economies that utilize highly decentralized governance (Zhang 2013). At the same time, given the vast size and geographic differences among regions, it is much more difficult to rapidly upgrade domestic industries to the very competitive levels displayed by the ‘Four Asian Tigers’ (Park et al. 2012). These apparent regional and urban–rural dichotomies have led to the country’s nuanced growth trajectory, in which regional and urban growth has been given priority (Lim 2014b; Wen 2013). Consequently, economic reform in China has been very asymmetrical from region to region, from sector to sector and from central to local government. For instance, through bolstering export-oriented industries, coastal cities are selected to provide ‘window effects’ in order to attract more foreign investment in joint ventures (see Zhang 2012, p. 2861). Meanwhile, the northern and northeastern provinces have been experiencing slower growth, accompanied by relatively higher unemployment rates since the 1990s (Fan 1995; Lee 2000). At the local level, local government/cadres have found it more appealing to boost homeownership and urban redevelopment as a way of seeking higher tax revenue returns from state-owned land (see Yang and Chang 2007), while agricultural development and the interests of peasants have often been undermined by relentless urban expansion and land acquisition (Hsing 2010; see also Shin 2016a; Shin and Zhao 2018). As China is positioned at the lower end of globalized capital circulation as the ‘world’s factory’, their overall tax revenue and economic growth still rely heavily on manufacturing sectors and on land-based fiscal income (Lin and Zhang 2015). Harvey (2005, 2012) and Shin (2014) contend that the Chinese domestic economy systematically entails rapid urbanization in order to absorb surplus value generated from manufacturing sectors and a

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surplus labor force from rural areas. Likewise, as coined by Wu (2010, p. 621), neoliberalism in China is ‘not a process whereby the state serves a new bourgeois class, but rather one whereby it maintains its legitimacy’. Being a highly populated country with an apparent uneven spatiality, urbanization plays an important role in facilitating primitive accumulation and of balancing the political economy of the country as a whole. In general, neoliberal policies, especially urban governance in China in the 2000s, are paving the way for the state’s increased fiscal capabilities, while lessening their responsibilities in social welfare (re)distribution, and by intentionally ‘racing to the bottom’ by keeping competitiveness as a key variable in an investment-fueled growth model (Chan 2003).

Crisis-Led Housing Reform and Social Inequalities in the Urban Space Since the outbreak of the global recession, scholars have begun to question the existence of an orthodox paradigm to label neoliberalism across regions, while calling for more heterodox interpretations such as ‘hybridity, incompleteness, unevenness and dysfunctionality in neoliberal state forms’ (Brenner et  al. 2010, p.  216). By following this suggestion, it is important to first recognize the endogenous and crisis-laden features of China’s governance restructuring in the early 1990s. During the period when Zhu Rongji served as a senior member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (1992–2002), this Chinese ‘economic tsar’ promoted a series of fiscal and financial reforms as well as privatization as a way to strengthen the fiscal capabilities of the central state and reduce nonperforming loans borne by numerous stateowned enterprises (SOEs) (Zheng 2013). Although China’s urban housing reform can be dated back to the late 1970s in the form of ‘experiments with the sale of new housing to urban residents at construction cost’ (Wang and Murie 2000, p. 403), a more widely influential transformation actually took place in 1988, with the turning of pilot tests into overall implementation activities in Chinese cities. Subsequently, more comprehensive reform took place after the enactment of The Decision on Deepening the Urban Housing Reform by the State Council in 1994, including standardizing public-sector housing privatization and introducing the Housing Provision Fund (Shin 2010a; Wang and Murie 2000). By 1995, the privately owned housing rate in China increased to 35.7 percent (NSBC 2001), compared with less than 20 percent in the late 1980s (see Wu 1996, p. 1604).

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From 1997 onwards, negatively affected by the Asian financial crisis and subsequent economic deflation, the ‘troika’ of the Chinese economy— namely, investment, exports and consumption—were adversely dragged down by depressed neighboring markets. In order to cope with this negative downturn, the Chinese central government initiated a suite of rapid privatization plans rather than inflating its currency, so as to achieve a ‘soft landing’. Between 1997 and 1998, privatization had expanded to various public sectors, including medical services (for example, Duckett and Langer 2013), public utilities (for example, Lee 2007) and radical urban housing reform, as a crisis management tool or as a ‘shock therapy’ in Chinese form. In 1998, the Chinese State Council again used its administrative legislative power to promulgate the epoch-starting Circular of the State Council on Further Deepening Urban Housing System Reform and Accelerating Housing Construction, and abolished the public housing provision system, launching a more thorough form of public housing privatization and encouraging the establishment of a monetized commercial housing provision system. The abolition of public housing provision and increased general living costs due to such neoliberal policies has significantly influenced urban dwellers. The privately owned housing rate in China increased to at least 77 percent at the end of 2000 (see Wang 2004, pp. 71–72) and 89.3 percent by the end of 2010 (NSBC 2011). In the year 2000, 88 percent of urban housing in China was sold to individuals (see Shin 2007, p. 164). Owing to the coexistence of state ownership of urban land and local fiscal difficulties evoked by fiscal reform since 1994, the land leases generated from the processes of urban (re)development can contribute enormously to local fiscal incomes (Lin and Yi 2011). Very strong local authority-­ backed real estate (re)development has been witnessed across the country (Hsing 2006). Apart from these institutional triggers, the Party State strategically makes good use of preexisting cultural values stemming from rural China to overemphasize the importance of homeownership for marriage and starting a family (Sum 2013). By 2012, in major Chinese megacities, private housing accounted for 74.7 percent of total urban family assets (Caixin 2014). Widespread ‘nail households’ (see Hess 2010) and other examples of radical staying-put resistance were not solely provoked by problematically protected property rights or unfair compensation packages. More essentially, given the disappearing ‘safety net’ caused by highly privatized public services and continuing high inflation since the ­mid-­2000s, many

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displacees have been forced to be shrewd, and at times, employ extreme measures (for example, self-immolation suicide) as threats in order to seek better financial compensation packages during their displacement (see Shin 2013). Besides property rights-related issues, spatial segregation, disinvestment and housing accessibility for urban sojourners have also been getting worse as a result of the marketization of housing provision and the speculative urbanism agenda in urban China (Huang and Li 2014; Shin 2016a; Wu and Webster 2010).

Reinterpreting Housing Reform and Neoliberal Governance from Nanjing’s Historic Core Forced Housing Privatization and the Residualization of Public Housing In the case of Nanjing City, most public housing tenants bought privately at a subsidized price of less than 1000 RMB/m2 before 2002. However, this public housing privatization did not cover all properties regulated by municipal housing bureaus. Due to the rundown status of low-rise dwellings, the residents did not welcome housing privatization in Nanjing’s historical neighborhoods. Also, restrictive local policies and future planned redevelopment made the tenure change of most historic low-rise houses in the inner city of Nanjing unrealistic and uneconomical. Consequently, the redevelopment plans for several enclaves had long been put aside while public housing within these areas did not experience privatization but were, instead, left badly maintained. According to the data from my survey conducted for this study in Nanjing’s inner-city neighborhoods from December 2012 to April 2013, 30 out of 100 long-term informants still lived in houses under public ownership, which was far higher than the overall non-private tenure rate (10.7 percent) of Chinese cities at the time (NSBC 2011). Public housing in the case study area was normally sourced from vacant bungalows left after the Nationalists’ retreat to Taiwan in 1949, and from confiscated private assets taken during the political movements of the Mao era. These properties were divided into many small compartments and allocated to households employed by state-owned and collectively owned enterprises through a municipal housing management bureau and through other public entities. According to my own survey

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with informants in this study, the average gross living area for municipal housing management bureau-regulated housing was 29.9  m2, and 33.3 m2 for other types of public housing. Based on their lease contracts with public entities, these families paid less than 100 RMB per month in rent to sustain their tenancy. However, given the ongoing forced displacement (threat) and residualization of public housing provision (Forrest and Murie 1988), existing public housing tenants have been exposed to a very difficult situation. Despite these tenants being compensated for an estimated 90 percent of the value of their demolished residence on state-owned land as part of a compromise made by the municipal government, compensation unit prices based on obsolescent assets and pre-capitalized ground rent apparently made it impossible for these households to be adequately compensated and afford any commercial apartments after the demolition, let alone those luxury dwellings currently being constructed in the inner city. Shin (2007) also discusses the similar findings about underestimated demolition compensations for Beijing’s inner-city neighborhoods due to the unreasonable evaluation criteria. More importantly, potential land value appreciation raised by commercial redevelopment and high-rise buildings is not counted in the compensation prices. At the same time, the average housing price in Nanjing in 2014 was almost three times more expensive than in 2002 (see Table 6.1). Taking the Nanbuting Phase IV Project area as an example, the actual unit compensation price was around 10,000 RMB/m2 in the first wave of  forced evictions in 2009. In spite of major resistance, nominal Table 6.1  Housing cost comparison between different tenure types in Nanjing across different years

Highest rent for public housing regulated by bureau of housing management Subsidized sale price for public housing regulated by bureau of housing management Average housing price

2002

2008

2014

2.3 RMB/m2

2.3 RMB/m2

2.3 RMB/m2

880 RMB/m2

880 RMB/m2

880 RMB/m2

2780 RMB/m2

4808 RMB/m2

10,964 RMB/m2

Source: Compiled by the author from Notice on Rent and Price of Public Housing in 2002 from Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Commodity Prices and Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Housing Management and Chinese Real Estate Statistical Yearbooks (2005–2006, 2009, 2015)

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c­ ompensations still remained similar in the second wave of displacement in 2013. Most public housing tenants were eventually compensated less than RMB 350,000 per house in total, which was hardly enough to afford an apartment in Nanjing. The average annual disposable income in 2014 for Nanjing locals was RMB 37,283 (Yangtse Evening Post 2015), while the average house price in Nanjing was RMB 10,964/m2 (see Table 6.1). This meant that an average person’s annual income could only buy circa three square meters without considering any other spending. Trapped in this paradoxical situation, in order to avoid sub-standard living conditions, or where consent-giving to allow the eviction were considered ‘false choices’ (see Lees 2014), the only ‘feasible’ outlet for public housing tenants was to accept coercive displacement and relocation arrangements imposed by the local authority—perhaps ‘the best choice within limited choices’. In this regard, most of these tenants lost their ability to negotiate with the local authority in terms of rehousing locations, floors and so on, and were displaced to homeownership-oriented affordable housing, which could be as far as 15 km away from their previous homes and short on public amenities. Shin (2007) also discusses ‘suburbanization of displaced residents’ in Beijing due to insufficient monetized compensations for displacees from the inner-city neighborhood rejuvenation. Although homeownership is regarded as positive transformation by some scholars and policymakers (for example, De Soto 2003), repercussions evidenced from the survey in this study indicated that all middle-­ aged and elderly tenants preferred the more suitable locations and higher use values of public housing in the inner city. It is argued that forced housing privatization through displacement has actually undermined tenants’ interests and ‘free choices’, especially the rights of the elderly to have access to affordable housing in convenient locations. According to one pensioner, whose family residential living space was only 22 m2, in the supposed rehousing compensation process, her family might need to pay extra in order to avail of the least expensive homeownership-oriented affordable housing in accordance with regulations: We have very low pensions. We can only afford ‘low-rent housing’1 rather than the ‘affordable housing’. We are not able to pay an extra 200,000–300,000  RMB.  If we could be relocated to ‘low-rent housing’, our family budget, including medical expenses, would not be affected after the rent is deducted from our incomes. I have paid rent all my life, so I will not have a problem continuing to do so. (A retired female school teacher in her 60s interviewed in January 2013)

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Another resident expressed her concerns not only about prices but also about the high use value of current public housing: We are living in public housing. It is not large, but it has a good location. I don’t have many expectations regarding luxury or comfort. As long as I can have a bed, watch TV and do some cooking, that is enough! I don’t require more than that. (A laid-off female industrial worker in her 50s interviewed in February 2013)

The few remaining public housing units located in the inner city for these relatively impoverished tenants are being encroached upon, and their families’ financial situations are being jeopardized by this displacement-­induced form of privatization. As a result, for public housing tenants, one drawback was that they were not ‘impoverished’ enough to reapply for public housing (for example, low-rent housing) under current criteria (also see Zhang et al. 2018); on top of that, their rehousing compensations were normally far from enough to recompense them for the use value that they had lost. This frustrating situation has ignited discontent among public housing tenants, especially those from displacement-­ targeted areas, where evictees chose ‘staying put’ as a resistance tactic to combat against the negative impacts produced by displacement policies. China’s housing reform has not been simply on a linear trajectory toward privatization, nor has it been about offering people with free housing choices through marketization. On the contrary, it has restrained people’s choices and forced them to accept housing arrangements and withstand outcomes caused by policy adjustments. Given the vested interests embedded in the high-end commercial housing market, from the perspective of institutional design, the municipal government of Nanjing has unburdened themselves of their responsibilities to further provide public housing for elderly residents whose houses were not privatized in the 1990s and 2000s. Under the current criteria for accessing low-rent ­housing, only approximately two percent of the locally registered population of Nanjing is eligible to apply, and these people will be placed on a long waiting list for this municipal government-subsidized public housing. This radical housing privatization has paved the way for the proliferation of a high-end housing market and has tipped in favor of exchange value over use value. This is actually the more fundamental side effect of China’s neoliberal transformation, which commodifies social welfare, engenders spatial unevenness and creates an advantageous milieu to boost accumulation through a secondary circuit of capital.

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The Dilemma Between Sociocultural Traditions and Current Housing Policies Besides the aforementioned extra payments required by public housing tenants to settle into new apartments, property inheritance is another issue confounding many private homeowners. Of the 100 interviewees in this study, 33 lived in inherited private houses. Before the implementation of the one-child policy, China experienced a baby boom from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Consequently, many residents in their 50s or 60s normally have several siblings. If the assets of their parents have not been legally divided, displacement and compensation can become a strongly contested domestic issue (see Shin 2010a). As compensation packages can be ‘inherited equally by successors of the first order: spouse, children, parents’ (Huang 2015, p. 11), all siblings may be involved in the property division process and obtain their own share. However, their share may not be enough for de facto residents to rehouse themselves, which thus reinforces their staying-put mentality—they clearly know that once they sign the demolition and compensation contracts, they may not be able to afford a separate apartment. Meanwhile, they may not qualify to have access to any types of indemnificatory housing (baozhangxing zhufang in Chinese). Indemnificatory housing is an umbrella term constituting: (1) ownership-oriented affordable housing, (2) public rental housing and (2) low-rent housing (Yao and Gu 2011; Zhang et al. 2018). As stated by one resident from a displacement-targeted area, who has six siblings: I hope the government can deal with the compensation on a case by case basis. Otherwise, how can they displace miserable families like us? If they can provide us [my wife, my child and me] with 20 m2 per person, I will be very satisfied. At least we can live and work in peace. How can they force us to sleep on the street? If it is disseminated [by the media] that someone becomes homeless because of displacement, how can the Nanjing municipal government possibly withstand this humiliation? (A laid-off male industrial worker in his 50s interviewed in August 2011)

Under the influence of Confucian culture in East Asian countries, offsprings are expected to take responsibility for their parents and take care of them in their family home as part of filial piety commitments (Li 2013). However, this traditional custom conflicts with several modern legal rights, such as property rights and inheritance rights. In the case earlier, this interviewee was looking after and co-residing with his mother, albeit

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that he was married and had a child. As such, he had to fight for any means to be compensated with a home for his own small family, simply because the house he was living in did not de jure belong to him, but to his mother. As a result, his inherited share of the compensation package may not be enough to allow him to access any type of apartment in Nanjing. There is no doubt that filial piety is a precious virtue, but when such a traditional ethos meets a commoditized housing market, especially monetized and pro-homeownership housing provision, these embedded social-cultural institutions turn out to be incompatible and cause conflicts in many households. Moreover, youth housing difficulties have become a global phenomenon alongside the boom of speculative private housing markets (Forrest and Yip 2013). In the Chinese context, house purchase behavior is quite gendered (Davis 2010). The mentality of and peer pressure placed upon young people, especially males, to own a fixed property has been internalized and ingrained as a ‘social norm’ (see Fig. 6.1), which can be

Fig. 6.1  An advertisement promoting real estate assets by referencing the concept ‘naked marriage’. Photographed by the author

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interpreted as ‘institutionalized property mind’ (Haila 2017). Ironically, so-called social norms and marriage traditions in China are largely detached from reality and severely push the younger generation into a mire of mortgages rather than improving their quality of life. As a result, intergenerational housing support has become very prevalent in China (Li and Shin 2013). Given the presence of cultural traditions and this peer pressure, the older generation in families has been very active in assisting their children to purchase property (also see Izuhara and Forrest 2013) in preparation for marriage. According to one interviewee: We might only be compensated with one house after the demolition. It will be far from enough. My son is the same age as you [the researcher]. He needs to get married. He will need a house, won’t he? We [the interviewee and her husband] also need a house to live in. (A self-employed female resident in her 50s interviewed in January 2013)

An invisible pro-homeownership housing culture as a consequence of housing reform and commodification, fueled by the state, actually buttresses speculative investment and a consumption culture. Amidst the transition from a traditional and rural society to a modern and urbanized society, social values have been hijacked by the state, the media and the market through exaggerating the necessity to own property. This coalition also creates panic and utilitarian social values, which can be construed and communicated as ‘no private house, no marriage’ or ‘marriage without a private house is disgraceful’ (also see Sum 2013). In this sense, all spectrums across the nouveau riches, the ‘middle classes’ and marginalized groups are tempted by the consumerist dream of private housing (Ngai 2003). In this vein, China’s housing reform is directly linked to displacees’ wishes to solve the housing difficulties of their offspring through compensation packages. The overall family financial burden of purchasing private housing in the future for marriage can thus be significantly soothed. There is no doubt that many residents bring social-cultural patterns of housing consumption into their reactions to neoliberal housing reform and urban redevelopment. Their ‘greed’ and complaints are merely reflective of how the housing regime exerts pressure on people involved in filial piety and how the residual ‘safety net’ fails to cover urban youth, instead turning them into ‘mortgage slaves’ (fangnu in Chinese). Both of these phenomena contribute to the different forms of resistance utilized by residents trying to strategically cope with diminishing social welfare in housing provision, by ‘asking for more’ through displacement.

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Toward a Strengthened State-Led Neoliberal Housing Regime From 2010 onwards, state-led features have been manifest in Chinese housing policy, which is distinct from the urban redevelopment and gentrification occurring in some first-tier cities since the 2000s (see He and Wu 2005; Shin 2010b). This manifestation is evidenced by strict ‘house purchase restriction orders’ and top-down imperatives on indemnificatory housing construction. The Chinese central government planned to erect 36  million units of indemnificatory housing between 2011 and 2015 (Huang 2012). Chen et al. (2014) read this ambitious construction plan as an effort to offset the negative impacts of the global recession, which began in 2008. Taking Nanjing as an example, circa 80,000 units of indemnificatory housing were planned for construction from 2010 to 2015 at four major indemnificatory housing sites, which was sufficient to accommodate approximately four percent of the long-term residents of the Greater Nanjing Area.2 Meanwhile, through enactment of the Several Opinions of the State Council on Encouraging and Guiding the Healthy Development of Private Investment by the State Council in 2010, more Public-Private-­ Partnerships (PPPs) and innovative financing vehicles (for example, trust/ entrust loans, Real Estate Investment Trusts, corporate bonds) in the urban built environment have been significantly encouraged to replace ‘land-based finance’ and heavy public debt through traditional bank loans. Between 2010 and 2015, at least three billion RMB in a Social Security Fund and one billion RMB in a Housing Provident Fund were utilized by the state-owned Nanjing Affordable Housing Group in the form of trust/ entrust loans to finance indemnificatory housing construction (Nanjing Daily 2013). Meanwhile, 9.7  billion RMB in corporate bonds were launched in 2013 and 2014 by the same group to further accelerate low-­ end housing construction and to lower the overall financing cost through the use of innovative financial tools (NAFMII 2013, 2014). These policy innovations take advantage of preexisting unfair resettlement compensation packages and obsolescent housing conditions to create ‘spatial egalitarianism’ under an entrepreneurial paradigm (Lim 2014a), yet not necessarily to reverse major housing problems. More specifically, notwithstanding an ambitious plan to build indemnificatory housing, at least 75 percent of indemnificatory housing was allocated to urban and rural displacees, rather than to households with immediate

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housing requirements (Renminwang 2012). As a result, indemnificatory housing in Nanjing has been inappropriately designated as a displacement resettlement site for residents, rather than to substantially increase affordability and accessibility for urban dwellers. In the meantime, the active engagement of private capital and financial interests through PPPs and other innovative financial products linked with banks and institutional investors have required that the low-end housing strategy guarantees sufficient profits, while minimizing the risks for investors and homebuilders. Thus, forced displacement in collaboration with remote resettlement has turned out to be the most feasible option to lower (re)development risks, while efficiently raising potential ground rents for both the urban core and for peripheral land. Rather than discerning recent housing provision restructuring as a counter-neoliberalism movement, it is seen as a disguised form of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2003; Shin 2016a). The strong presence of the central state in indemnificatory housing construction aimed at transferring a high-end commercial housing market to a low-end market alongside the injection of financialized capital. This is in parallel with the state transformations that occurred in Taiwan (Hsu 2009) and Turkey (C̨avuşoğlu and Strutz 2014) in the 2000s, in which political parties strategically created a populist atmosphere to rearrange state policy and deploy urban/regional development. Post-2010 housing policies in China elucidate how neoliberalism has been reworking itself to find a new direction in order to cope with increasing social contestations associated with skyrocketing housing prices and multiple housing rights infringements.

Reduced Anti-Displacement Resistance The combination of indemnificatory housing construction and shantytown renovation schemes creates a rhetoric that legitimizes displacement and housing consumption through a populist gesture. This is corroborated by the allocation of over 70 percent of indemnificatory housing to urban/ rural displacees in Nanjing. A considerable number of these rehousing units were designated to households evicted through shantytown renovation schemes. In the meantime, the involvement of private and financial capital has eased the liquidity of low-end housing (re)investment process. In Nanjing, resettlement waiting times have been notably reduced, despite the remote and hard-to-access locations of most newly built indemnificatory housing. Furthermore, problems with living conditions have generally

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been ameliorated through the introduction of larger residential areas and improved hygiene standards (for example, private kitchens and toilets). As pointed out by Hsing (2010), the Chinese urban contestations are still closely linked to the residents’ pressing atomized economic interests. The immediate basic needs of households living in the devalued and disinvested neighborhoods can be met by accepting the resettlement plans arranged by the local authority. This contrasts sharply with the shabby bungalows and temporary status by desperately waiting for redevelopment and rehousing plans (Sakızlıoğlu 2014). With the ample supply of rehousing units from 2012 onwards, resistance to resettlement and organized collective actions against displacement in the case study area of Nanjing has apparently been lower than in the 2000s. One interviewee, who lodged numerous petitions about her disputed property deeds, had the following to say: Although there are still some people petitioning, the overall number has significantly dropped. It seems the government concerns the livelihood of ordinary people more than before […] especially this year. (A female shop assistant working at a privately-owned enterprise interviewed in April 2013)

Another long-term resident witnessing ‘domicide’ (Shao 2013) that took place in her neighborhood in 2009 expressed the similar opinion: Now it seems the staff members working for the Demolition and Relocation Office have become more considerate and less aggressive than before. Their attitudes are changing and they can understand us better. (A retired female SOE worker interviewed in March 2013)

In this sense, the recent state-led housing provision restructuring under the ‘egalitarian’ banner of ‘indemnification’ or ‘shantytown renovation’ has been strategically tailored to the practical expectations of residents living in a deteriorating environment. In practice, this has served to speed up the forced displacement and resettlement of residents without evoking a new wave of social contestations. As one of the most ‘stubborn’ areas among Nanjing’s anti-displacement resistance, since the resume of displacement for the Nanbuting Phase IV Project in early 2013, over 1000 out of 1350 households signed the compensation contracts and were resettled soon after (JSCHINA 2013).

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Similar to state rescaling underway in South Korea (Park 2008), recent housing provision restructuring reflects with timeliness the variegated form of Chinese capital and its translocal and supranational strategies to deal with crises and contestations. Since the global recession, profits from export-oriented industries in China have plummeted significantly, and overproduction has endangered the country’s economy (Zhang 2014). Financialized capital has been largely encouraged to increase capital liquidity in order to sustain growth in traditional labor-/capital-intensive sectors. In the meantime, alongside the promotion of more technology-intensive products both domestically and overseas (for example, the high-speed railway system), there are clear signs that the Party State is trying to switch their previous extensive investment- and ‘deficit financing’-led industrial model (Harvey 2005) to a more efficient growth model, with less nonperforming public loans after grasping the high risk of default (Pan et  al. 2016). That is why ‘supply-side structural reform’ and ‘mixed ownership reform of SOEs’ were addressed in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (Naughton 2016). However, whether it is through housing provision restructuring or financial reform at the local and domestic level, or tremendous investment in Africa (Lee 2014) and proposed ‘one belt, one road’ initiatives at a global scale, the Chinese Party State is making use of its geopolitical power and preexisting omnipresent uneven development worldwide in order to sustain its growth in line with incremental private and financialized capital. In this aspect, the recent transformations in the Chinese urban and h ­ ousing systems actually herald strategic resource redistribution in order to cater to a new global politico-economic environment.

Conclusion Based on the empirical findings so far, it could be asserted that the logic behind pro-homeownership and gigantic nationwide urban redevelopment has played a more destructive role than unfair monetized compensations. Through state-controlled propaganda and the inducement of hegemonic neoliberal discourses (Holborow 2007), a pro-­homeownership culture has hijacked urban dwellers’ understandings of housing as a basic human need and has legitimized the offloading of state responsibilities in offering sufficient affordable and public housing. Entrepreneurial rhetoric has reshaped people’s expectations in terms of taking advantage of displacement to compensate for the overall increased living costs and inflation encountered since the mid-2000s. Monetized and progressively market-based housing

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provision since the radical housing reform of 1998 has been internalized, with innumerable urban dwellers beginning to seek a depoliticized solution within a neoliberal paradigm (Shin 2007). As housing becomes a commodity rather than a distribution of social welfare, the exchange value of housing has been wholly prioritized over its use value, and people have been victimized by a crisis-laden transformation, paying the price in subsequent socio-spatial inequalities. Forced housing privatization and displacement did not receive a wholehearted welcome from many tenants, especially elderly residents. This also explains why arguments from staying-put ‘nail households’ concentrate on economically framed interests or the ‘right to appropriation’ (Purcell 2002), but seldom noticeably challenge gentrification or pick up on declined use values as a reason to question these redevelopment projects (see also Shin and Zhao 2018). Several factors have demonstrated that the housing reform provoked by the 1997 Asian financial crisis has not only triggered radical privatization, housing rights deprivations and unaffordability for less wealthy groups, but also lacks a long-term vision to assess the negative effects it has had on people’s well-being. Housing difficulties have not been properly dealt with and the previous, relatively egalitarian living environment has been dramatically replaced by spatial segregation. Speculative urbanism in the 2000s largely accommodated the politico-economic environment of that time, when China had an urgent politico-economic requirement to foster capital accumulation through the lowering of social welfare provision for the labor force and chasing high economic returns from the built environment, while leaving severe social inequalities, which are clearly reflected in the housing market unaddressed (see Shin 2014, 2016a). The path dependency of investment-laden growth in the absence of high added value has reached its limits by exhausting all available land resources via speculative investment and ‘land-based finance’. From 2010 onwards, through initiating more construction of supposed indemnificatory housing, and through ‘shantytown renovation’ schemes, the Party State is trying to spatially fix its domestic economy, rather than return to a Fordist state or revolutionize its market-based housing provision (Chen et al. 2014). These transformations echo the (post)-neoliberalism debate voiced since the global recession. Similar to increased state intervention and further neoliberalization in liberal economies (Peck et al. 2010), alongside the intensification of the global recession and sluggish domestic economic performance since 2008, deepening private and financial capital involvement has proactively switched gears in the urban and housing (re)development arenas from a

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purely traditional secondary circuit of capital accumulation with tremendous public debt (see Shin 2016b) to intensified massive construction with increased private/financialized capital in corporate forms such as corporate bonds and PPPs (for example, Peck and Whiteside 2016). Although the Chinese central government has lately stepped up property market regulation to curb real estate bubbles while redirecting the construction and consumption to rental housing market, it is still too early to predict the consequences (China Daily 2017). Historically, China has also upheld a strong state-led progressive ideology since the late nineteenth century. A series of social reforms in the late Qing dynasty tried to copy Japan and Prussia through the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and by militarizing the citizen, which once was believed to be the only effective way to accelerate the modernization process of states (Shan 2011). In contemporary times, with regard to developmental models and regional similarities among East Asian countries, it is very useful to analyze policy mobility across the region (for example, Zhang 2012) and the strong relationships between the urban built environment, authoritarian state legitimacy-building (Shin 2016b) and populist political inclination (Hsu 2009). At the same time, we should also remain open to broader geographical spaces by questioning the uniqueness of the urbanization process in East Asia and comparing it to similar nation-building, mega-event hosting and massive constructions beyond East Asia, such as that in Kazakhstan and Turkey (Koch 2013; C̨avuşoğlu and Strutz 2014). Even between China and the ‘Four Asian Tigers’, the starting points for neoliberal and housing strategies in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the more recent global recession are quite different, accompanied by endogenous drivers. As contended by Brenner et al. (2010, p. 209): ‘policy failure is central to the exploratory and experimental modus operandi of neoliberalization processes’. Given China’s territorial size and significant uneven spatiality, it can be restrictive to solely define China’s economic and housing reforms as developmental capitalism or state-sponsored neoliberalism. However, it is proposed that a more embracing and evolutionary stance is employed to gauge the ongoing neoliberal mutations and relationships between the state and the market. In this sense, ‘crossing the river by feeling for stones’ (Zhang and Peck 2016, p. 65) could be a more illuminating metaphor to describe the entangled relationship between the state, market and civil society under the long-term processes of neoliberalization in China.

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Acknowledgments  The author is deeply indebted to Dr. Niamh Moore-Cherry’s highly engaged supervision during his PhD and Áine Rickard’s valuable comments on an early version of this chapter. His sincere gratitude also goes to two editors, especially Prof. Hyun Bang Shin for his warm invitation and very insightful editorial suggestions to facilitate the improvement of this chapter. This research is sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 18CSH012).

Notes 1. Low-rent housing is now only provided for extremely impoverished individuals and households after China’s radical and thorough housing provision reform in 1998, rather than covering the majority of the working class as previous public housing allocated by danwei, municipal housing bureaus and other public sectors. The farthest low-rent housing site is almost 40 km away from Nanjing City Centre. 2. According to Statistical Yearbook of Nanjing, by the end of 2014, the population in Greater Nanjing Area reached approximately 8.22 million.

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Peck, J., & Zhang, J.  (2013). A Variety of Capitalism … With Chinese Characteristics? Journal of Economic Geography, 13(3), 357–396. Peck, J., Theodore, N., & Brenner, N. (2010). Postneoliberalism and Its Malcontents. Antipode, 41(s1), 94–116. Purcell, M. (2002). Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant. GeoJournal, 58(2), 99–108. Renminwang. (2012, June 2). 75 Per cent Indemnificatory Housing Belong to Resettlement Housing in Nanjing. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://js.people.com.cn/html/2012/06/02/114032.html (in Chinese). Rolnik, R. (2013). Late Neoliberalism: The Financialization of Homeownership and Housing Rights. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3), 1058–1066. Sakızlıoğlu, B. (2014). Inserting Temporality into the Analysis of Displacement: Living Under the Threat of Displacement. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 105(2), 206–220. Shan, S. (2011). China’s Modernisation and German Culture. Shanghai: Shangai People Press. Shao, Q. (2013). Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Shin, H. B. (2007). Residential Redevelopment and Social Impacts in Beijing. In F.  Wu (Ed.), China’s Emerging Cities: The Making of New Urbanism (pp. 163–184). London: Routledge. Shin, H.  B. (2010a). Empowerment or Marginalisation: Land, Housing and Property Rights in Poor Neighbourhoods. In F.  Wu & C.  Webster (Eds.), Marginalization in Urban China: Comparative Perspectives (pp.  112–130). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shin, H.  B. (2010b). Urban Conservation and Revalorisation of Dilapidated Historic Quarters: The Case of Nanluoguxiang in Beijing. Cities, 27(S1), S43–S54. Shin, H.  B. (2013). The Right to the City and Critical Reflections on China’s Property Rights Activism. Antipode, 45(5), 1167–1189. Shin, H.  B. (2014). Contesting Speculative Urbanisation and Strategising Discontents. City, 18(4–5), 509–516. Shin, H. B. (2016a). Economic Transition and Speculative Urbanisation in China: Gentrification Versus Dispossession. Urban Studies, 53(3), 471–489. Shin, H.  B. (2016b). China Meets Korea: The Asian Games, Entrepreneurial Local States and Debt-Driven Development. In R. Gruneau & J. Horne (Eds.), Mega Events and Globalization: Capital and Spectacle in a Changing World Order (pp. 186–205). Abingdon: Routledge. Shin, H.  B., & Kim, S.-H. (2016). The Developmental State, Speculative Urbanisation and the Politics of Displacement in Gentrifying Seoul. Urban Studies, 53(3), 540–559.

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Shin, H.  B., & Zhao, Y. (2018). Urbanism as a State Project: Lessons from Beijing’s Green Belts. In M.  Jayne (Ed.), Chinese Urbanism: New Critical Perspectives (pp. 30–46). Abingdon: Routledge. Smith, N. (2002). New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy. Antipode, 34(3), 427–450. Sum, N.-L. (2013). A Cultural Political Economy of Crisis Recovery: (Trans-) National Imaginaries of “BRIC” and Subaltern Groups in China. Economy and Society, 42(4), 543–570. Swyngedouw, E., Moulaert, F., & Rodriguez, A. (2002). Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy. Antipode, 34(3), 542–577. Wang, Y.  P. (2004). Urban Poverty, Housing and Social Change in China. New York: Psychology Press. Wang, Y.  P., & Murie, A. (2000). Social and Spatial Implications of Housing Reform in China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(2), 397–417. Wang, Y. P., Shao, L., Murie, A., & Cheng, J. (2012). The Maturation of the Neo-­ Liberal Housing Market in Urban China. Housing Studies, 27(3), 343–359. Wen, T. (2013). Eight Crises: Lessons from China, 1949–2009. Beijing: Dongfang Press. Wu, F. (1996). Changes in the Structure of Public Housing Provision in Urban China. Urban Studies, 33(9), 1601–1627. Wu, F. (2010). How Neoliberal Is China’s Reform? The Origins of Change during Transition. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 51(5), 619–631. Wu, F. (2015). Commodification and Housing Market Cycles in Chinese Cities. International Journal of Housing Policy, 15(1), 6–26. Wu, F., & Webster, C. (Eds.). (2010). Marginalization in Urban China: Comparative Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Yang, Y. R., & Chang, C. (2007). An Urban Regeneration Regime in China: A Case Study of Urban Redevelopment in Shanghai’s Taipingqiao Area. Urban Studies, 44(9), 1809–1826. Yangtse Evening Post. (2015, February 10). Calculate Your Annual Income and See If It Has Increased by 9 Per cent. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://epaper.yzwb.net/html_t/2015-02/10/content_215021.htm (in Chinese). Yao, L., & Gu, Y. (2011). Urban China’s Low-Income Housing “Indemnification” System. Asia-Pacific Housing Journal, 5, 59–68. Yao, Y., & Han, R. (2016). Challenging, but not Trouble-Making: Cultural Elites in China’s Urban Heritage Preservation. Journal of Contemporary China, 25(98), 292–306. Zhang, J.  (2012). From Hong Kong’s Capitalist Fundamentals to Singapore’s Authoritarian Governance: The Policy Mobility of Neo-Liberalising Shenzhen, China. Urban Studies, 49(13), 2853–2871.

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CHAPTER 7

Development and Inequality in Urban China: The Privatization of Homeownership and the Transformation of Everyday Practice Sarah Tynen

Introduction China’s “opening up and reform” (gaige kaifang) in 1978 marked the beginning of a major political-economic shift from ‘socialism’ to ‘stateled capitalism’ that resulted in far-reaching material and cultural changes (Anagnost 2008; Yan 2008; Ong and Zhang 2008).1 For example, state policies transitioned from providing work-unit (danwei) housing to profiting from commercialized housing (Bray 2005; Wu 2005). As a result, housing inequality increased  (Chen 2011, 2012; Miao 2003). The move from a theoretically ‘classless’ society to a ‘market-driven’ society is ­manifested in uneven housing development. Indeed, the rise of the middle classes alongside soaring real estate development was one of the most striking outcomes of economic reform in urban China during the last 40 years (He 2013; Lee and Zhu 2006; Ren 2013; Tomba 2004; Zhang 2010).

S. Tynen (*) University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_7

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This chapter investigates the relationship between the formation of the middle classes and the spatial production of uneven housing development in gated communities (see also Zhang 2010). Class is defined here in a functional sense as a social group that reflects not only income and occupation but also culture and practice. Following Zhang (2010), I use the term ‘middle classes’ instead of ‘middle class’ because the social groups comprising the middle classes encompass a wide variety of heterogeneous actors, practices, and activities. Two fundamental aspects of class intertwine in mainland China: (1) social and cultural positioning discernable in cultural differences displayed in tastes and lifestyles, and (2) capital accumulation evident in socioeconomic inequality (see also Anagnost 2008; Goodman 2008; Hanser 2008; Ren 2013; Shin 2014a; Sun 2009; Zhang 2010). For example, the middle classes in China may be marked by buying a home in a new gated community, obtaining a Western education abroad, or driving a foreign car: activities that require disposable income and display a distinct lifestyle. Nevertheless, class in contemporary urban China is composed of highly contested, dynamic, and cultural practices communicated through values, taste, and behavior (Bourdieu 1984).2 Therefore, this chapter aims to highlight the instability of class itself by illustrating the diversity, ambiguity, and contestation within the middle classes. The privatization of daily life and the cultivation of the ‘private self’ (see Ong and Zhang 2008, p. 3) are aspects of establishing new housing preferences of the Chinese middle classes. Not only does the spatial production of new housing allow for the coalescence of the new middle classes in defined social and physical spaces, but also the growing demand for new material comforts and aspiring upward class mobility fuel the spatial production of individual apartment units and new gated communities (Zhang 2010). To put it another way, the proliferation of high-rise apartment buildings comprising single-family condos was catalyzed by state actors and capital interests in commodifying land and housing markets, which encouraged more private and individual lifestyles. Meanwhile, the built environment was constructed to accommodate the demands of growing middle classes for separate lifestyles (Pow 2009; Ren 2013; Zhang 2010). The purpose of this chapter is not to create a singular narrative of a causal relationship between the formation of the middle classes and the built environment, but rather to emphasize the multiplicity of the contested and intertwined relationships between rapid economic development, rising inequality, housing transformations, and daily life practices.

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Inspired by the existing body of literature drawing on Lefebvre (1991 [1974]) that argues for the mutual constitution of physical, mental, and social space, my research questions ask the following: How has the built environment and everyday life changed in the past 40 years? How has social life changed along with notions of individualism and private homeownership in the post-Mao economy? Most scholars of urban China emphasize the state’s role in the housing market as a top-down relationship (Chien 2010; He 2007; Lin 2007; Liu and Wu 2006; Ma and Wu 2005; Zhou and Ma 2010). Through the use of ethnographic research methods, my findings suggest that changing conceptions of ownership, individuality, and responsibility are mutually constituted with economic development in the transformation of housing and everyday practices. The objective of this chapter is to focus on the bottom-up processes of the citizen–state relationship by linking the dynamic interplay between the broader political-economic context, individual lived experience, and the built environment of housing. In doing so, I show the everyday contestations of the role of the welfare state, class formations, and occupation of urban space.

Neoliberalism and Gated Communities: Housing Spaces and Notions of Individuality The contentious application of the term ‘neoliberalism’ to the Chinese case exemplifies an important debate regarding the extent to which the central and local governments intervene in the Chinese marketplace.3 Many scholars argue that the Chinese government has adopted neoliberal approaches to governance and development, while still emphasizing the role of the state in regulating the land property market (He and Wu 2009; Lin and Zhang 2014; Wu 2006). Some scholars specifically attribute uneven housing development in Chinese cities to the adoption of neoliberalism and capitalism to China (for example, see  Lee and Zhu 2006). Others explore the connection between neoliberalism, privatization, and individualism in China (Rofel 2007; Zhang and Ong 2008). The debates regarding the applicability of neoliberalism to the Chinese context highlight the ambiguity of the state/market divide as a false dichotomy. I contend that the term ‘neoliberalism’ can obscure the highly complex forms of governance and state–market–society relationship in China today. In this chapter, I aim to emphasize the false dichotomy between

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the public and the private by drawing attention to the obscurity between different types of housing, where the state and market intersect and interact in different ways. In exploring the complexities of the state–market–society relationship in China, I argue that a geographical approach employing concepts of the production of space and territoriality is most useful to understanding the complexities of multiscalar forms of hierarchical governance in China, the inter-city competition for investment under urban entrepreneurialism, and the contestation over urban space between rural migrants and urbanites (Chien and Wu 2011; Shin 2009, 2016; Wu 2003). Cities compete for national and global recognition and capital investment that illuminates various forms of privatization, sovereignty, and territoriality, existing in multiple forms of urban governance within a broader multiscalar and hierarchical structure of national sovereignty (Cartier 2015; Lin 2011; Ren 2008; Shin 2014b). Evidence in the gated community literature in China points to increased socio-spatial segregation, as class-based interests in privacy and freedom are mutually constituted through property (Miao 2003; Wu 2010; Xu 2008; Yip 2012). Pow (2009) investigates the territoriality of middle-class interests, especially privacy, freedom, and private property established in gated communities.4 Territoriality is the spatial manifestation of social power and the interrelation of society and space, wherein social power is secured through the control of space. In other words, territoriality is defined as the ‘spatial strategies to consolidate power in a given place and time’ (Hsing 2010, p. 8). For example, the middle classes may legitimize their demand for gated communities in order to maintain their ideals of ‘civilized modernity’ by excluding or ‘othering’ rural migrants (Pow 2009). These discourses and practices will be further explored in the ethnographic section. The local state in urban China plays a key role in controlling land-lease sales. The local state profits politically and economically from land commodification and large-scale urban construction projects (Hsing 2010; see also Shin and Zhao 2018). As such, the social space of the middle classes reinforces state power, as it encourages private homeownership and construction of new apartment complexes (Tomba 2014). The spatial order and enclosed design of the xiaoqu as part of the spatial production of the middle class may indicate the emergence of a neoliberal discipline of self-­ governance (Bray 2008). The spatial order of the xiaoqu and discourses of self-responsibility help maintain state power (Bray 2008; Huang 2006; Xu 2008). The Chinese state thus depends on the social space of the middle

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classes to maintain its legitimacy, while protecting the middle classes’ interests in private property and wealth accumulation (Tomba 2014). While these scholars employ the Foucauldian governmentality analytic, my aim is to illuminate the mutual constitution of spatial production and social formation through ethnographic methods that illustrate the individual experience of everyday life. I further build on Zhang’s (2010) Lefebvrian approach to the ‘spatialization of class’ to understand the emerging middle classes in the context of socioeconomic disparity as manifested in the built environment: ‘the production of commodity housing […] provides the physical and social ground on which the making of the new middle classes becomes possible […]. Emerging places offer a tangible location of a new class to materialize itself through spatial exclusion’ (Zhang 2010, pp.  3–4). The middle classes’ interest in private property, social order, and consumption is thus mutually constituted through certain housing production based on values of individualism and freedom. Lefebvre (1991 [1974]) elaborates on the mutually constitutive relationship between spatial production (for example, construction of buildings and meanings in a space) and social formation (for example, creation of new social classes based on housing inequality). The trialectical ­relationship of space that concerns Lefebvre is the triad between physical space (spatial practice, or ‘the perceived’; for example, roads and gates), mental space (representations of space, or ‘the conceived’; for example, maps), and social space (representational spaces, or ‘the lived’; for example, the military, nation-state, or nature) (see Lefebvre 1991 [1974]; Elden 2004). Lefebvre (1991 [1974], p. 131) argues that the built environment (that is, ‘physical space’) and its symbolic forms (that is, ‘mental space’) must be analyzed together in a mutually constitutive relationship, which he calls social space. Lefebvre helps show how in post-reform China, transforming notions of private property relations are changing social space in the city. In China, capital accumulation in the built environment accounts for most of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP)  and provides political legitimacy for local governments (Hsing 2010). For example, Zhang (2010, pp. 3–4) builds on Lefebvre to develop the analytic of the ‘spatialization of class’ that integrates culture and economy: the production of commodity housing (as it is known in China), gated communities, and private living provides the physical and social ground on which the making of the new middle classes becomes possible […] Emerging

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places offer a tangible location of a new class to materialize itself through spatial exclusion, cultural differentiation, and lifestyle practices. The new spatial and social formation has also compelled novel modes of governing that are distinctly different from those of the socialist era.

The formation of the middle class in China is thus established through private property relations and the spatial production of gated communities. Lefebvre’s theories of the trialectic between mental, physical, and social space emphasize the creation of new social groups through the production of space—not only the physical construction of a socio-spatial segregation, but also in the ways in which the state, businesses, and people imbue spaces with meaning. The everyday practices of the people, who inhabit space and bestow it with meaning, contribute to the production of social space. In other words, the production of space is inherently political and always contested. In conclusion, the analytic of the production of space helps illuminate the relationship between broader political-economic transformations and everyday life experiences. This chapter explores these relationships through the contestation of the role of the state in service provision, class identity, and negotiation over the use of urban space by rural migrants.

Research Methods My ethnographic methods for this chapter were participant observation and interviews during the course of 15 months of fieldwork in Nanjing, China (fall 2011 through summer 2012, summer 2013, summer 2014). I conducted formal and informal interviews with more than 61 people (37 females and 24 males) while living in five different field sites. My five different field sites were as follows: I lived in two different privately managed (wuye guanli5 in Chinese) apartments in gated communities for a total of two months (rent was 5000 RMB or US$820 per month). I lived in two different publicly managed and subsidized work-unit (danwei in Chinese) apartments for seven months (rent was 1000 RMB or US$164 per month). I lived in a two-story house (laofangzi in Chinese) in the old city, a low-­ income neighborhood in Nanjing for six months (rent was 500 RMB or US$82 per month). I also visited over 15 other sites (that is, various housing compounds for interviews, meals, and tutoring). I collected and took pictures of documents I found around the city, such as letters, notices, and banners. All of my informants were people I met through mutual friends, colleagues at Nanjing University, or during my daily life through initial interactions on the street

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or in restaurants, shops, and homes in the neighborhood I was living (which later developed into closer familiarity). In other words, I utilized snowball sampling with multiple starting points and random interactions on the street during my daily life, which sought out a diverse demographic sample between locals and migrants living in different types of apartment buildings. Rather than conduct a case study of a single neighborhood, I specifically strove to interview people living in different types of neighborhoods in order to highlight the diversity of the middle classes and the multiplicity of experiences and urban landscapes in the variety of different housing types. I divided my research participants roughly into three socioeconomic groups. I interviewed 20 middle-income Nanjing residents living in an apartment complex termed xiaoqu in Chinese, earning around 3000–10,000 RMB (US$490–1600) per month. Ten of the interviewees lived in different xiaoqu that were gated communities with private or semi-private management companies (wuye guanli) and ten were various subsidized middle- and low-income danwei apartments, largely without secure gates. However, they are grouped together in the analysis because they were all located in apartment buildings within a xiaoqu, though not necessarily with a wuye guanli. I also interviewed 21 low-income locals living in one- or two-story houses in the old city of Old Nanjing earning 1000–5000 RMB (US$160–820) per month and 20 migrant workers living or doing business in Old Nanjing earning 1000–3000  RMB (US$160–490) per month. I divided the research participants into these groups because these three different social strata have significantly different historical and current relationships to housing property. These interviews are meant to serve not as a representative sample, but rather as an in-depth insight into the diverse experiences of select Nanjing residents for the purpose of highlighting the diversity across the middle classes and emphasize the ambiguity and contestation in the intertwined relationships between state/market, economic development, and everyday life.

Urban Landscape Transformations: From Danwei Housing to Homeownership The following sections present an  illustration of the emerging social spaces and cultural practices of the middle classes as they engage with the production and consumption of the housing market. Transforming everyday practices that reinforce, and are affected by, new political-economic

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structures and policies are illustrated through the following ethnographic descriptions: first, the changing role of the state in service provision; second, the deterioration of social life in the neighborhood and conflicts between urbanites and rural migrants; and third, the burden of high housing prices. In following Henri Lefebvre (1991 [1974], 2009 [1978]), the mutually constituted relationship between space–state–market–society produces contested social space. The transforming social space of urban China mutually constitutes changing class relations as based on the new private property regime (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]; Pow 2007, 2009). For example, the use of security devices serves to reinforce middle-class interests in individuality, privacy, and ownership. Changing conceptions of the state and market in urban China profoundly influence social relations on an individual level in everyday life (Anagnost 2004; Rofel 2007; Yan 2008). This chapter explores new conceptions of homeownership, self-responsibility, and individuality in the context of changing socio-spatial relationships. All of the interviewees from the middle classes lived in some form of a xiaoqu apartment building complex. In a move consistent with how the participants used the words ‘wuye guanli’ in colloquial Mandarin Chinese to describe the differences between types of apartment complexes, I use the term ‘wuye guanli’ in this chapter to describe communities managed by private or semi-private companies (that is, not state-owned companies) that provided services normally supplied by the local government, such as mail, trash collection, and security. There remains a complex and contradictory relationship between wuye guanli companies, the state, and the residents, which varies from neighborhood to neighborhood (Duckett 2006; Yip and Jiang 2011). Therefore, instead of defining wuye guanli as a homogenous condition, this chapter highlights the contestation between and within classes through differences in the built environment, such as those manifested through conditions of services provided by the wuye guanli. There also exists a complex relationship between former danwei housing and danwei-subsidized housing, with different relationships between the residents, owners, state, and companies in the sale and usage of housing. Danwei-subsidized housing was described colloquially during the interviews as ‘danwei fenpeide’ (单位分配的). This descriptive term was used by respondents to indicate that they or their parents had obtained their current apartment at a low price through their work units. In this chapter, I use the term ‘danwei-subsidized housing’ to describe the experiences

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of people living in housing obtained during the 1980s with help from subsidies from their or their parents’ work units. The aim is not to create clear and discrete categories, but rather to tease out and illustrate the everyday experiences of different residents negotiating some of these contradictory and overlapping relationships. As noted in the methods section, these interviews and interviewees are not meant to make generalizations about a type of housing or people ­living there, nor imply the characteristics of an entire population or city. These interviews do not serve as a representative sample of a particular social group. Rather, the interviews are meant to highlight the diversity, ambiguity, and contradictions found within and between subjects and places. Each interviewee embodied a unique circumstance and subjectivity that reflected an amalgamation of histories and experiences that cannot be reduced to a single quote or chapter. Rather, this chapter provides a snapshot into the various experiences of individual urban residents to engage in a debate about the relationship between spatial production and social formation, rather than generalize or provide conclusions or causal relationships about certain people or groups. For example, the people in the middle classes that I interviewed encompassed a wide variety of heterogeneous social identities and practices divided by gender, income, occupation, age, and place of origin. Thus, the interviews are not meant to provide a picture of the middle classes, but rather to argue that social formation is mutually constituted with spatial production in contradictory, complex, and contested ways. It is also important to note that this chapter does not attempt to define a dichotomy between the public and the private, but rather to highlight the mutual constitution of the two terms, not as distinct but as intertwined phenomena. In this way, the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ do not represent a pure separation or connection to the state, but rather the inherently intertwined, messy, and contested nature of the state and the market in China. The Changing Role of the State in Service Provision The Maoist state (1949–1976) sought to create an egalitarian society by eliminating private property and distributing comparable public housing in cities by way of utilizing each urban citizen’s work unit (danwei). Danwei housing provided by the state was designed and implemented with the intention of fostering equality and a collective social life (Bray 2005). In the 1990s, the Chinese government slowly began transitioning

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away from state-provided housing to semi-privatized homeownership (Hsing 2010). Complexes built in the last 30 years with privately owned homes bear important distinctions from danwei-subsidized homes purchased during the 1980s and early 1990s. One reason is because recently purchased homes in new gated communities are often administered by management companies (wuye guanli). The wuye guanli assumes responsibilities otherwise regulated by the city government. Homes with a wuye guanli usually signify a class difference in terms of cost of living, while also signifying different (though not necessarily decreased) levels of surveillance by the state and sometimes (but not always) a culture of individuality (Bray 2005; Huang 2006; Xu 2008). In this way, the contrast between danwei-subsidized homes from the 1980s and wuye guanli homes from the late 1990s onward signifies the changing role of the state in service provision and highlights the changing and contested nature of neoliberalism realized in urban China. Within the two distinct housing types, occupation and income varied greatly, though usually respondents with a higher income lived in apartments with wuye guanli. Within both of these groups were homeowners and non-owners alike. In both cases, these communities, whether completely or partially gated or run by various management companies, may not be totally private in the sense that all are still under the regulation and supervision of the state in some manner (Bray 2008; Tomba 2014; Xu 2008) (Figs. 7.1 and 7.2). The interviews and observations illustrated a material distinction between wuye guanli communities and danwei-subsidized housing. For example, research respondents usually considered danwei housing provided by the state to display poor hygiene, unpleasant or deteriorating living conditions, and inadequate security. Many residents of danwei-­ subsidized housing reported that the buildings, their neighbors, and sometimes even they themselves were of low quality or ‘uncivilized’. Gated communities with wuye guanli, on the other hand, appear impeccably clean and orderly, have well-manicured gardens, boast of peace and quiet, and maintain reliable security guards and anti-theft systems. Many residents both inside and outside of the gates view these compounds as well as the residents as prestigious, educated, and civilized. Pow (2007, p. 1554) also notes this distinction and asserts that ‘the moral ordering of urban spaces is a key component in shaping and structuring territoriality and social-spatial exclusion in…gated communities’. The material and

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Fig. 7.1  Danwei-subsidized housing. Photographed by the author (Note: Built in the 1980s, this is a lower-income building without gates or a private management company to manage trash and security. Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in this building in Nanjing cost around 1000  RMB or US$160 per month in 2012)

social differences between the spaces of danwei-subsidized housing and compounds with wuye guanli indicate changing conceptions of property ownership since the political-economic transition. During an interview, Yang Juan,6 a 36-year-old female state-owned enterprise employee and owner of a danwei-subsidized house, explained why she was dissatisfied with the living environment: It would be better if this place had a wuye guanli, you know a normal management company. The parking lot is always full, and there is trash strewn about everywhere, it’s pretty annoying. Because there’s nobody to take responsibility for it, so people just park their cars wherever and there’s nobody to pay attention to (guan) this problem. I think if we had a wuye guanli this apartment complex would be quite nice.

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Fig. 7.2  Housing managed by independent wuye guanli. Photographed by author (Note: A high-security and upscale, gated community in the suburbs of Nanjing equipped with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, and a private management company responsible for security, mail, and trash services. A typical apartment in this community cost around 5000  RMB or US$824 per month in 2013, about five times more than a typical apartment in the city)

Yang Juan expresses common sentiments shared by the other research participants who were residents of danwei housing. The subject of her complaints highlights the retreating role of the welfare state and the increasing preference by some for privatization of public services. The reasons or causes for these descriptions are complex and contradictory, as further explored later. These differences highlight the changing role of the state in service provision and increasing the privatization of space. I argue that the material and social distinctions between the wuye guanli communities and danwei-subsidized housing reflect a broader political-economic shift mutually constituted by state and citizens in the rising demand for the spatial production of semi-privatized homeownership.

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Although few Chinese citizens would deny that material conditions have improved immensely with commercialized housing—private toilets, indoor heating and cooling, and reliable electricity, to name a few—six research participants also reported discomforts of the privatized and commercialized housing, including the isolation and loneliness of their high-­ rise apartment buildings and the immense pressure of a life-long mortgage. While some interviewees reported often yearning for privacy and material comfort, many were also nostalgic for their previous social life in danwei housing. The conflicted feelings between danwei and wuye guanli housing illustrate how new formations of material and property relations under a market economy shape everyday life. Their sentiments also illustrate that new notions of individuality, as manifested in relatively isolated new apartment buildings, have been met with mixed positive and negative reactions. An obvious trend in the shift to semi-privatized homeownership is in the social services provided by the state versus private or semi-private management companies, which reflects changing conceptions of responsibility. The services that a wuye guanli often provides includes 24/7 security guards and on-call repair service, trash, landscaping, and/or mail. Zhang (2010, pp. 187–188) describes how direct state intervention by way of the danwei social unit as provider of housing, cafeteria, and childcare has shifted to private real estate management companies: But because these agents are commonly regarded as commercial entities, their political nature is often overshadowed by their market role and commercial interests […] The rise of this privatized local governance should not be understood as a retreat of state power or the opening of civil society; rather, it signifies the emergence of a distinctive mode of post socialist governance that draws upon nonstate actors and combines neoliberal techniques of rule.

Her work reveals the convergence of socialist rhetoric and government with neoliberal governance as realized through the privatization of public services. Instead of the local state being directly involved in the coordination of daily life and social affairs (as it was with the management of danwei housing), it now instead encourages self-responsibility, increased role for private companies, and homeownership to drive its own agenda of capital accumulation through construction of the built environment. This does not exemplify a weakening on the state, but rather a re-articulation of state power on new and multiple levels (Tomba 2014). The changing

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state–market relationship has resulted in transforming discourses and practices surrounding service provision and self-responsibility, and is connected to private homeownership—a shift that affects social relations and social life. The change is witnessed through renewing conceptions of individuality and responsibility marked in the wuye guanli versus danwei-­ subsidized housing divide. The ambiguous and contested role of the state and the market in creating distinctions between wuye guanli serviced communities and danwei-subsidized housing highlights the diversity of social formations in the middle classes and the contested role of the state versus the market in service provision. Social Life Transformations: From Egalitarian Community to Competitive Individuality The following section focuses on the changes in social life for the middle classes in urban China across two main aspects: deterioration of social life in apartment buildings and fear of migrant workers. Interviewees described to me that when people moved into high-rise apartment buildings, a dramatic shift occurred in that they stopped having close relationships with their neighbors. This is not to claim that loss of contact and isolation is necessarily symptomatic of middle-class life, or even a characteristic of all classes who move into high-rise apartments. Rather, this suggests that many interviewees of the middle classes experienced dissatisfaction with social life and they connected that change to a shift in housing environs. Most respondents reported the complete lack of social life in their compound and feeling very isolated and lonely. Li Hua, a 29-year-old male homeowner reported, ‘like most of the modern Chinese urban populations: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Sometimes we see each other and say hi and that’s it and we don’t ask them about their life and they wouldn’t do so either, and personally I know very little about my neighbors’ (interview with author, July 2013). Li Qingzi, another 29-year-old female respondent living in a danwei-subsidized apartment, said, ‘I don’t have any contact whatsoever with my neighbors, we are all closed doors’ (interview with author, July 2013). Many of the other responses were the same, indicating that the social and material changes brought about by economic reforms affected a part of daily life and the culture of the street. Along with the deterioration of a communal social life that many reported feeling nostalgic about, many research participants also expressed newfound needs for privacy and freedom. After Li Xinyi, who was renting

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a home in a wuye guanli community, mentioned that she wanted to become a homeowner because she wanted privacy, I asked her what was so important about privacy to her. She replied: Privacy, [pause] I just think it’s part of the human rights, people should respect other people’s privacy. Freedom, [pause] I just always liked freedom. And security, [pause] I’m a person that always feels insecure, I need something that makes me feel secure and having a house is one thing that can make me feel secure. I just feel like it’s my house and no one can kick me out. That is the best type of security. (Interview with author, May 2013)

China’s new modes of governance through privatization have shifted the relationship between the state and the market. Li Xinyi’s words suggest that this may have had an effect on her outlook on the world, specifically in regards to personal privacy and homeownership. The shifts emphasized here go beyond shifts in political-economic ideologies or modes of governance to include an examination of in-depth and penetrating changes in social relations and everyday life. Experiences of the middle classes also indicated the intersection of class with rural–urban divisions (Anagnost 2004; Yan 2008). The wealthier owners of former danwei homes or danwei-subsidized homes reported renting their homes to migrants working in the area in order to buy wuye guanli homes. According to the interviewees of different backgrounds and demographics, these owners were described as embodying high quality (suzhi) and are usually native Nanjingese working for the government or other official work unit or company. They are compared to renters of danwei-subsidized housing exemplifying lower quality, who are usually rural migrants working as manual labor or in service jobs. But without a wuye guanli, the people who have relatively good qualifications [tiaojian] have already moved out. So most of the people that live here are renters, people who work in the downtown area. You know, outsiders [waidide]. People who own the homes here usually don’t live here; it’s very uncommon to run into a homeowner in this complex. (Yang Juan, interview with author, July 2013)

Her words mark a distinction between owners and renters of former danwei or danwei-subsidized housing. Yang Juan continues on to say during the interview that she thinks living in a ‘high-class’ apartment would be well worth the money if she could ever afford it so that her daughter

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could be raised in a more ‘civilized environment’ (wenming huanjing). Her words indicate that due to changing socio-spatial relations in urban China, social divisions between groups have also become very divisive since the middle classes define their identity in opposition to the ‘low quality’ rural migrants. Therefore, when rural migrants also inhabit the same apartment complexes as the ‘higher quality’ local members of the middle class, they feel threatened and uncomfortable. Some middle-class residents create discursive constructions of a ‘moral order’ defined as an urban lifestyle and civilized modernity that is explicitly directed at the social exclusion of rural migrants (Pow 2007). This reflects a broader division between urbanites and rural migrants connected to the post-reform political-economic shifts that transformed urban landscapes, social life, and class formation. The contestation over urban space between rural migrants and middle-class urbanites also indicates changing political-­ economic conditions that produce inequality and new housing formations. The Imperative to Buy a Home and the Burden of High Housing Prices I noticed that my research participants were highly anxious about their own economic situations as well as their children’s future prospects of employment and wealth. During my frequent interactions with various age groups of the middle classes, concern about money, especially around housing prices and potential job prospects, constantly dominated topics of conversation. I argue that these concerns about financial security are linked to the new conceptions of the relationship between the state, market, and society—namely, the privatization of homeownership, the retreat of the welfare state, and the increasing importance of discourses of self-responsibility. Many homeowners often complained about the social and economic pressures of owning a home. People with life-long mortgages deemed themselves ‘house slaves’ (fangnu in Chinese), or ‘slave to one’s mortgage’, to describe the way they felt about working to pay off a loan payment each month. Furthermore, many of the non-owners from all social groups reported immense societal and cultural pressure to buy a home and/or provide for his or her child’s home. In China today, social status is marked by homeownership, as well as the home’s value and desirability. For example, many women will not marry—or sometimes, even date—a man who does not yet own a home or at least have a mortgage on a home.

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Meanwhile, many parents, especially parents of sons, are under incredible pressure to buy a home for their child and will spend their entire life savings on it. While in Nanjing during the summer of 2013, I was riding on the back of an unofficial moped taxi when I asked the elderly female driver how she got into the job. She replied that her son wanted to get married, but could not get married without first buying a house. Though she had technically already retired and was collecting social security benefits, she had bought the moped and started taxiing people around the city to help contribute to her son’s future home. The most common topics of conversation among young people in China include skyrocketing housing prices, social pressure to succeed in school, and romantic relationship drama related to one’s homeownership situation. A common topic of inquiry when one is first introduced to another is about homeownership because the number of homes, the amount of square meters, or the value of one’s home immediately reveals one’s social status. While I wanted to talk about demolition and redevelopment, my participants talked about putting aside savings to save for their child’s future home. In other words, people were most concerned about homeownership in their life. For example, when I asked, ‘What are you most dissatisfied with in your life right now?’, the most common response was, ‘high housing prices’. One of the subtle contradictions I noticed in the interviewees of different class backgrounds was the conflict over whether or not to buy a house. One of my interview questions asked, ‘Is buying or renting a home more appropriate for you?’ Eighteen out of 20 middle-class respondents said they prefer to buy a house as opposed to rent one, though many confessed they would probably never actually be able to afford buying their own home. Only five out of 21 Old Nanjing residents hoped to own a home someday, and only two out of 20 migrant workers hoped to own a home someday, each group saying they simply would never be able to afford their own home. In other words, homeownership signifies an important part of cultural distinction for some in the middle classes. The reasons cited by the middle-class participants for wanting to own a home included cultural norms, social and parental expectations, a necessary step for marriage, and the privacy, security, and freedom of owning your own home. For the most part, middle-class participants explained to me, ‘In China, you must own a home. It’s socially unacceptable to rent, especially if you’re married. If you get married before owning your own home, you might as well have no home, and then you have no family home [meiyou jia]’. Although many

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insisted during interviews that it is a cultural and social imperative to own a home before marriage, respondents from all social groups confessed they would probably never be able to afford their own home. According to my interviewees, many decisions—from choosing a major in college (as that choice will determine future job prospects and income level) to deciding when to get married—are influenced by the burden and pressure of housing prices and the social imperative for private homeownership. Immense pressure to buy a home was related to the idea that middle-­class respondents, in particular, felt that they must own a home and that there was no other option. The following quotes exemplify new understandings of private property and desire for freedom in post-reform urban China. Fu Yang, a 30-year-old middle-class female, explains why it is so important to buy a house in China, especially before marriage (even though she told me later that by her calculation, it is actually more economical to rent than to buy a house): Chinese people would definitely choose to buy a house, because we don’t like to rent houses. If they are living somewhere long-term, and they have a family, then they would prefer to buy a house […] Because Chinese people take family very seriously, so if they buy a house they feel like they really have a family and it’s their own. But if they are just renting, then it will never be theirs, it’s always someone else’s. If I had enough money, I would definitely choose to buy a house. But if my economic conditions don’t allow that situation, then I must rent. That’s my only option. But while I’m renting I will feel that it’s not my home. (Interview with author, July 2013)

Fu Yang’s interview reveals that new imperatives for private homeownership combined with the pressures of high housing prices have transformed daily life in urban China. One common phrase used to describe couples that get married before buying a house is ‘naked snails without shells’ to signify that the new couple has no home or family if they are only renting. Indeed, a popular soap opera on TV was titled, ‘Snail Home’ (wo ju) and chronicled the tales of several people living in Beijing struggling with high housing prices and chasing the dream to own a home. Li Xinyi also told me about her immense and passionate desire to be a good mother and provide for the things that her children need: I don’t like living under someone else’s roof. You don’t get any freedom. The landlord can come by anytime and check your place, invade your privacy, give you attitude because you are the tenants, even though you pay

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rent every month on time. I feel if I have kids I want to provide them a stable life, which means I don’t want to have to constantly move, that’s the most important thing, when I have kids I want to give them a very stable living situation. I’ll need to buy a house for that. (Interview with author, May 2013)

These examples indicate new imperatives of private homeownership as based on new private property relations under post-reform China. I do not suggest that the state discourse on neoliberalism has dominated everyday discourse and directed thoughts and actions in a unidirectional manner, but rather that the Chinese middle classes themselves accept and promote the narrative of needing to buy a home. Nevertheless, the narrative of homeownership remains a contested realm in the middle classes, wherein many respondents reported a deterioration of social life in high-­ rise apartments and rejected the imperative to homeownership. In other words, the transformations of daily life through homeownership and economic development remain a contested realm in the lives of the middle classes.

Conclusion Due to changes in the modes of production and material life in post-­ reform China, socio-spatial relations have shifted along with the commodification of land and proliferation of private homeownership. The urban landscape is thus experiencing a contradictory tension between the retreating role of the welfare state and the active role of the state in shaping space and urban life. I  argue that changing conceptions of the state and the market in urban China profoundly influence everyday social relations on an individual level. New identities in the middle classes are also enabling regime legitimacy and encouraging or demanding economic development in some ways. I illustrated here how social relations and social reproduction have been transformed with the proliferation of private homeownership in urban China. China’s economic reform has a significant impact on people’s everyday lives through the way that material and social housing space has changed with the commodification of land. Research participants exercised agency in driving or rejecting these changes. Debates in the scholarly literature on China are furthering the exploration of how social relations in China are changing as a result of the hybrid economy of free markets and state control (Chien and Wu 2011;

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Rofel 2007; Wu 2015; Zhang and Ong 2008). The state plays a very active role in regulating the real estate market, while adopting managing techniques that promote self-governing and encourage various modes of privatization and consumption (Bray 2008; Xu 2008; Zhang and Ong 2008). Lefebvre (1991 [1974], 2009 [1978]) questions the role of the state in the production of space in developing the mutually constitutive relationship between the production of space, formation of class, and everyday practice.  In China, we see the role of both the state and individuals producing and creating space, class and practice in different ways. Quasineoliberal policies may be exacerbating socioeconomic inequality by encouraging private homeownership, while local state officials play a key role in working with developers to produce space (Lefebvre 2009 [1978]). The state is embroiled in the market because it controls all land-lease exchange and profits economically and politically from large-scale urban infrastructure projects (Hsing 2010). Increasing a sociological, geographical, and anthropological understanding of the ways that broader political-­economic shifts on global and national levels influence people’s daily lives is crucial to building more sustainable lifestyles and cities in the future. Nevertheless, the role of the state and the material and cultural changes brought on by economic development, such as the importance of homeownership for the middle classes, remain a contested sphere in urbanites’ lives. Acknowledgments  Previous versions of this chapter were presented at the 2014 Urban Affairs Association annual meeting in San Antonio, TX, and the 2014 and 2015 Association of American Geographers annual meetings in Tampa, FL, and Chicago, IL. A special thank goes to Hyun Bang Shin, John O’Loughlin, Tim Oakes, Joe Bryan, and Sara Fall for commenting on previous versions of this article. Funding  This work was supported by the U.S.  Student Fulbright Program (2011–2012); National Science Foundation East Asian and Pacific Summer Institute for Graduate Students (2013) [1311118]; and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (2014–2017) [DGE 1144083].

Notes 1. I use quotes around the words ‘socialism’ and ‘state-led capitalism’ because China’s political-economic system has never been wholly one or the other, and these terms are highly contested. The ideas of the role of the state and market in China occupy a gray area of uncertainty. The political-economic relationship in China will be further discussed later in the chapter when discussing neoliberalism in China.

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2. The use of ‘middle classes’ in identifying interviewees will be further discussed in the methods section. 3. Neoliberalism refers to policies that encourage free trade, privatization, deregulation, and enhancement of the private sector. When defining neoliberalism in this way, an important distinction to make is that between ‘ideological neoliberalism’ and ‘existing neoliberalism’. Whereas ideological neoliberalism refers to that defined earlier as free-market policies, ‘existing neoliberalism’ is defined as the increased role of the state in regulating the market and ensuring the market to function (Harvey 2005). 4. The difference between work-unit (danwei) apartment complexes built during the socialist Mao era, which are also often gated, and the gated communities of semi-privatized homeownership of gated communities (xiaoqu) in contemporary urban China will be further discussed, with photos and description in the ethnographic empirical section. 5. The Chinese term ‘wuye guanli’ 物业管理 is often translated into English as ‘property management’. The character 物 ‘wu’ means ‘thing’ or ‘substance’ and the character 业 ‘ye’ means ‘profession’ or ‘business’. The characters together as 物业 ‘wuye’ are usually translated into English as ‘property’ or ‘real estate’. The characters 管理 ‘guanli’ means to supervise, manage, or administer. The term ‘wuye guanli’ has come to mean in recent years in colloquial Chinese as the organization within a set of apartment complexes that is responsible to general management of the property, such as trash, mail, ground landscaping, security guards, electricity, plumbing and other issues related to the homes, including the buying, renting, and selling of individual units. Sometimes, the wuye guanli involves participation by the homeowners, which is a different body of literature and topic outside the scope of this chapter (see, for example, Read 2008). 6. All names used in this chapter are pseudonyms. All research was conducted under best practices for protection of research subjects using anthropological guidelines. The research was conducted with IRB approval from the University of Colorado under IRB protocol #13-0149.

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CHAPTER 8

Weaving the Common in the Financialized City: A Case of Urban Cohousing Experience in South Korea Didi K. Han

Introduction Bin-Zib is a network of collective houses in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea (hereafter, Korea). This cohousing community was born after three former student activists had the idea of sharing a house with strangers. The name, coined at the opening party of the first house, is a pun, simultaneously meaning empty house and guests’ house. Although residents started to use the term Binmaeul [Bin village] after establishing the third house, the name Bin-Zib remained. It is still used frequently by visitors to refer to a single house in the community or the whole community. Since there were no rules for membership in Bin-Zib, people could come and leave any time they wanted. The number of residents as well as houses included in the community has constantly fluctuated. Since the establishment of the first Bin-Zib in 2008, over 20 other Bin-Zibs have been established and subsequently disbanded over the past seven years. As of the end

D. K. Han (*) London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_8

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of 2015, Bin-Zib accommodated approximately 50 people distributed across seven houses, with a collective bank and a cooperative café. Focusing on practices and discourses of the cohousing community, this chapter investigates how people produce and expand the common1—that is both the form of production and the source of new social relations (Hardt 2009; Hardt and Negri 2009)—in the middle of a city where homeownership has more to do with commodity investment than residency. After explaining the methodology and the participants of the study, I describe the socioeconomic background against which Bin-Zib was formed. I subsequently examine how Bin-Zib residents have expanded upon their experiment of communing by devising and improvising new practices and discourses.2 Finally, I discuss Bin-Zib’s significance, which distinguishes itself from public or commercialized cohousing projects.

Remarks on Methods and Research Participants For this study, I conducted an in-depth ethnographic fieldwork from late August 2013 to early January 2014, combined with archival research. Living in the community was necessary to gain a vantage point to understand and analyze Bin-Zib from the inside. This was necessary if I was to follow the trajectory and dynamics of the community, rather than simply imposing outside values upon it. After much difficulty in establishing proper distance from the research subject, I decided to immerse myself in the workings of the community, engaging constructively in the urban communing movement, rather than trying to remain a detached researcher. I attended meetings and organized seminars. I even became part of heated discussions. Approaching the community in this way, I was able to realize that I was not the only one who was conducting the study. The residents themselves analyzed their own situations reflexively to deal with issues they faced in the community. Some of the residents held study groups to read texts relevant to the communal experiment. They invited socially engaged scholars to their projects. They also tried to experiment with what they learned from collective studies in their life, producing reflective articles. In addition, as my research went on, the more intensive the quality of everyday conversations I shared with the residents became. Some residents whom I had interviewed earlier would give me their comments or opinions on matters related to my research in regular everyday interactions, sometimes reflecting on their everyday life in critical ways. Such i­nclination for study

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or research on their part convinced me that this methodology—that consisted of engagement, reflection, and mutual investigation—was conducive in gaining the understanding of the community. In Bin-Zib’s inclination for thought experiment, I find echoes of what Roggero (2014, p.  515) calls ‘co-research’. I believe that this collective reflective process constitutes a significant part of Bin-Zib’s communicative style—a style through which they compose the common. This process is always collective. Thus, I became involved in the collective process of co-research while, at the same time, trying to catalyze the process. Data was collected in the form of field notes, transcripts of meeting records, and transcripts of audio recordings of conversations from various events, spontaneous gatherings, and everyday conversations. I also conducted in-depth interviews with 28 residents who were deeply involved in community activities, as well as 4 former residents. Other sources of data included public articles, academic writings, articles written by residents, and the accumulated Internet posts of community members spanning seven years. The digital sphere was an especially valuable source of data on the community. Along with volumes of meeting records, there were also numerous online posts written by residents seeking to theorize about the multiple dimensions of the community while making sense of its everyday life as an important part of the movement. During the period of my field research, there were 42 jangtu [long-­ term guests] living in seven houses.3 Among them, there were three teenage residents. One of the teenagers had left school and was working part-time. The other two teenage residents were de-schooled kids who chose not to attend state-endorsed schools. There were four residents in their late 40s or early 50s. One was a documentary film director, another a member of a non-governmental organization, one a co-organizer for a cooperative restaurant, and another was a former internee of the Hyungje Welfare Center.4 Most of the residents were in their 20s and 30s, living on a small income, and working part-time jobs. Residents who were regular workers were mostly involved in non-profit organizations, while six of the residents worked at the community café. For the most part, it was only singles and childless couples who lived in the Bin-Zibs throughout the period of my field research, although I was told that there had been a mother with her newborn baby living in one Bin-Zib approximately for a year in 2010. Although residents differed in terms of their financial status, these differences were not significant. In terms of residents’ cultural and e­ ducational

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background, however, there was considerable diversity. Some Bin-Zib residents had taken the life course most Koreans would consider quite normative and attended highly regarded universities. Other residents indicated having been home-schooled or having attended alternative education programs. There were also those who had been deprived of the opportunity for a proper education altogether.

Forming a House as Space of Communism in the Financialized City According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government (2013), more than 120,000 people live in insecure and inadequate housing arrangements in Seoul, as they are unable to afford the rent required for standard housing with proper facilities. This situation is mainly a result of the fact that homeownership is primarily a means of investment rather than a place of residence in Korea. While financialization of urban housing is observed across the world (Aalbers 2008; Smart and Lee 2003; Rossi 2013), Korea offers an interesting case in which people started to experience real estate speculation a good deal earlier than the arrival of ‘neoliberalism’ intensified by the intervention of the International Monetary Fund following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In this section, I situate Bin-Zib in the context of Korean society, where a house is regarded as the most effective financial commodity in both name and practice (Ha 2002; Renaud 1989; Shin 2008). The project of urbanization in the country was first brought about by the military dictatorship in the 1960s. The military government ‘provided various incentives for export industries’ under an aggressive policy of export growth (Ihm 1988, p. 166). While the influx of migrant rural populations supplied cheap labor power, creating expansive shantytowns in Seoul, the chaebol-driven [family-controlled large conglomerate] economy ‘gave birth to a monster of Korean society, namely the astronomical price of land’, according to Yi (2011, p. 88). Backed by the central government, chaebols had raised funds using land as a guarantee for their loans, meaning that the Korean economy ‘was risk-free economy as long as land price was secured’ (Pak and Jo 2002, p. 14). Analyzing how land speculation was connected with the collusive links between business and politics in Korean society, Yi (2011, p. 88) argues that the miraculous and acclaimed economic growth during the dictatorship period was actually ‘the very hotbed of a bubble economy’. According to Kang (2006), from 1974 to 1987, on

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average, businesses that invested in land gained 1004 percent profits, while businesses that invested in production gained 331 percent profits. Conglomerates tended to invest in land rather than production. ‘It was like a gambling’, says Kim, a researcher of chaebol. ‘Once the government made a plan for building infrastructure such as highways, the price went up more than tenfold overnight’ (cited in Yi 2011, p. 84). This real estate speculation continued in the 1980s, fueled by a redevelopment project known as the Joint Redevelopment Program (hereafter, JRP). Introduced by the Korean government in 1984, the JRP essentially allowed private developers to lead urban redevelopment. While large-scale apartment projects provided housing to the emerging middle class, the bulldozing of the slums that made this construction possible exposed the brutal realities of Korea society. With demolition and redevelopment as its main methods, the project privatized most state-owned land. By doing so, according to Shin (2009, p. 916), the JRP provided ‘material conditions for implementing property-based redevelopment’, closing the rent gap between dilapidated neighborhoods and other areas. In this way, as far as development of the city is concerned, working class and proletarian neighborhoods were eliminated, providing modern housing for an emerging middle-class population. While the authoritarian government played a crucial role in the country’s distinct path of ‘speculative urban development’ (Shin and Kim 2016), people’s traditional and informal financial practices such as chonse (a specific rental housing system of Korea based on a lump sum key money) and gye (rotating credit association) formed what Song (2014, p. 41) calls ‘sedimented financialization’. Real estate speculation had not been an extraordinary practice even to ordinary people in the country. As Song (ibid.) points out, sedimented financialization propelled ‘the new financialization’, which came with the global chanting of neoliberalism, with ‘accelerated speed, intensity, and effect’. The so-called budongsan bulpaesinhwa (the lore of real estate investment as no-loss absolute investment) had eventually hit its ceiling, affected by the global financial crisis in late 2008 (Ha 2010). However, practices surrounding urban housing in the country became increasingly complex. Financial institutions started to participate directly in the process of redevelopment, catalyzing the process of the financialization of land and housing (Hong 2009). According to Hong (2009, p. 15), between 1999 and 2009, the contribution made by real estate development to Korea’s gross national product was 19.2 percent, the highest of any Organisation for

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Economic Co-operation and Development country. This reality was mainly due to the Project-Financing (PF) policy adopted in Korea in 2000. This policy enabled financial institutions to participate more directly in the process of redevelopment, issuing various derivative securities. Various financial practices, including real estate investment, were promoted as a critical technology of life, if not a moral virtue, under the new name jae-tekeu [financial technology] (Jang 2010; Song 2014). Without doubt, this process has entailed the ‘dispossession of the urban masses of any right to the city’ (Harvey 2012, p. 22). According to Sohn (2008, p. 25), the author of The Real Estate Class Society, from 1963 to 2007, land prices in Seoul rose by a factor of 1176, while the rate of inflation rose by a factor of 43, and the average worker’s income increased only by a factor of 15. In such a social context, residents of Bin-Zib declared that a ‘[h]ouse should be a place for living, not for buying’ (Bin-Zib 2010a). Three people in their early 30s started a communal living experiment in 2008, with a rented three-bedroom apartment. They collected 40,000,000 won (approximately US$35,000 as of April 2016) out of their pockets and took out a loan for the remaining 80,000,000 won (US$70,000) to raise 120,000,000 won (US$105,000) to rent the place based on a chonse contract. Then, the founders proclaimed that the house had no owner. All residents including initiators themselves, irrespective of their length of stay, were regarded as guests. Chonse is a rental contract, which is unique in Korea. A tenant rents a house for a year or two, making a lump sum deposit of key money, which is typically from 40 to 70 percent of the property value (Kim 2013, p. 338). While the tenant does not pay any monthly rent, the key money deposit is fully returned to the tenant when she moves out. Conventionally, the deposited key money has been calculated at 12 percent interest per year in lieu of a monthly payment. Tenants favor this system over other rental systems, but the one who gets the biggest profit from the system is landlord. As the financial suppression controls interest rates in favor of the industrial sector, ‘housing has been regarded as a superior investment compared to financial savings’ (Kim 2013, p. 339). While the key money is ‘usually invested by landlords in formal and informal financial market … the tenants relinquish the opportunity to make any interest on the income’ (Shin 2008, p. 413). And living conditions for those who did not have key money were extremely degraded.

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In this context, residents of Bin-Zib intended to communize the key money, and, by doing so, turn a house, certainly the most valued form of urban property, into common resources. The following quote is from a short guide of Bin-Zib on its website (Bin-Zib 2008): Bin-Zib is a guests’ house. Like a ‘guest house’, it’s a place you can come by, eat, drink, hang out, rest and sleep in. Unlike a ‘guest house’, there is no juin [owner/host] who will serve you.5 Alternately, we would say, there are lots of juins in this house of guests. All of the people who passed through, the people who are here at present, and the people who will come in the future are the juins. You are also one of the juins. So, help yourself and enjoy the place as much as you like. … This guests’ house is an empty place. Since it is empty, anyone can come anytime. Regardless how many people live here, Bin-Zib should have room for the others to come. Therefore, living in Bin-Zib means to expand it. The house can be filled with anything. Even the name of the place is Bin [empty]. You can give a name to this place as you want. It’s so nice of you to come.

Three more Bin-Zibs were set up within a year in the same manner. People contributed as much money as they could or wanted in order to rent new houses, and lived in Bin-Zib together, paying the same bundamgeum [shared expenses] equally for the monthly interest of the loan, utility bills, basic foods, and daily necessities, regardless of how much or whether they had contributed to funding the initial deposit for the house.6 Of course, the declaration that ‘Bin-Zib has no owner’ was neither binding nor effective in the legal sense. However, based on the above-­ cited declaration, residents of Bin-Zib have formed a culture that reminds us of the Karl Marx’s famous description of communism: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ (Marx 1938 [1875]).7 In the following section, I explore how Bin-Zib residents have devised practices and discourses of housing as the common while cultivating communistic relations in their everyday life.

Inventing Practices and Discourses of Housing as the Common Bin-Zib’s history has been a process of trial and error. The community has changed through solving specific problems residents have encountered, and the ways of solving problems were, in many cases, spontaneous. At the

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same time, the experiment has always been guided by a will or a hope for living differently than in the ways that are prescribed under capitalism—a desire that has vaguely guided this spontaneous experiment. Whenever residents have confronted specific difficulties, they have strived to devise and improvise the system through which they could overcome the issues while engaging more people in the process of urban communing. The first communing system the residents devised is Bin-Zib [The Empty/Guests’ house] itself. The founders of Bin-Zib decided to turn private property into the common simply by opening their housing space to others. In doing so, they sought, in particular, to create a different meaning for housing. In an article introducing the idea of Bin-Zib, Jium (2010), one of the co-founders, wrote that ‘a house seems like the most valuable property for a person in capitalist society, but a house is a space of sharing in its ab initio meaning’. He further writes (Jium 2010): Family members connected by blood do not quibble over the ownership of stuffs in their house. Regardless of the legal ownership, all members call the place ‘my house’. Even when a member puts more money into buying or renting the place, they would not require that others pay them back. While each member owns specific things, they would let other members use them when they need it. These facts reveal the intrinsic characteristic of a house and its very reason for existence. It is the space of sharing.

In this article, Jium posits the notion of house as a place where people share things without calculation. However, he argues that ‘this relationship of sharing has been destroyed in capitalist society’ because people began to consider homes as property rather than a space for living. Pointing out how this perception has even destroyed families in the society, he suggests that ‘we can change the negative reality by acting conversely’, asserting that ‘[b]y sharing a house, we can live with anyone and become family even if we have just met each other’ (Jium 2010). What Jium called ‘becoming-family’ can be understood as ‘making communistic relations’ in Graeber’s (2010) sense. With the aim of expanding communistic relations, residents of Bin-Zib have attempted to turn a house into a freely available and collectively administered resource. But, how many people could reside in a three-bedroom apartment? When residents confronted the obvious physical limitations of their experiment, they endeavored to overcome the dominant notions of housing and family. In practice, these contemplations were reflected in the special structure of the first Bin-Zib,

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where there was no private room but common guests’ rooms, and all the rooms were used in multiple ways. As the number of residents increased, so did the number of Bin-Zibs. People who could and wanted to co-fund the key money rented a place and invited others to live together. Under the circumstances, however, each Bin-Zib depended on a few people who co-funded a relatively large amount of key money. Bin-Zib residents hoped to solve this situation by establishing a collective bank. After over a year of extensive discussion, in 2010, they set up a collective bank named Bin-Go, through which everyone holds the same rights, regardless of the amount of funding they are able to contribute. The basic system of Bin-Go functioned in the following way: Bin-Go received funds from individuals, no matter whether they lived in Bin-Zib or not. Then, Bin-Go granted loans with a six percent interest to each Bin-Zib and other alternative communities that needed key money for space. Since the key money was valued at 12 percent interest, Bin-Go clients were able to save this burden imposed by the landlord. Instead, the Bin-Go clients paid 6 percent interest to Bin-Go, sharing the equivalent of 6 percent interest with Bin-Go and its network. This shared payment to Bin-Go was then redistributed. This redistribution was made in three ways. First, a person who put her money in Bin-Go received a three percent interest (which Bin-Go members call a ‘share for co-funds’) in her account—the same rate as that given by the major banks. Second, a portion of the surplus was collected as ‘Bin-Zib collected money’, which is used to give loans to other communities when they are making a new rental contract or facing other emergency circumstances. The final portion of the surplus was allocated to a ‘share for the planet earth’, through which members support various social movements they support (Bin-Go 2013). Having put significant collective effort into setting up Bin-Go, residents also tried to find an alternative way to deal with capital. They aimed to turn house(s) from exchange value into use value by socializing its profit through Bin-Go, thus impeding exchange value of housing to take prominence. Residents argued that key money functions as capital when houses are means of investment. The article ‘Bin-Zib and Anti-Capitalism’ paid attention to the meaning of chonse deposit in the Korean real estate rental contract (Bin-Zib 2010b): Even though a person does not have any desire to generate profit or any idea they are participating in an investment, what she is doing is investment in the real estate market. By renting houses with her key money, she is turning

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money into capital and getting profit from that. In so doing, she becomes a participant in the movement of capital in the capitalist system without recognizing what she is doing.

Based on this awareness, Bin-Go suggested that the way of excluding capital was by sharing the profit with others (Bin-Go 2011): If a person shares the 12 per cent profit generated from his key money with all people in the world, the profit will become infinitely closer to zero. The praxis will turn key money from the capital into the common. Bin-Go aims to share each member’s profit with people in the world by multiplying Bin-­ Zib … All profits will be used for expanding the common and networking different flows of money. Investors cannot get any interest from their co-­ fund, at least in money-form, but it can be said that our interest from the investment/praxis will be the common and friends.

From this perspective, the purpose of investment in Bin-Go was resistance to the capitalist system. In other words, if a person invests her money in Bin-Go, she does so not to generate profit, but in order to contribute to the composition of the common. Her investment becomes a form of practice to eliminate capital by sharing the profit generated from that capital with others. On the other hand, Bin-Zib residents opened a co-op café, Il-noriteo Bingage [The Empty/Guests’ shop, the Work-Playground] in 2010. The most significant aim of the café was to facilitate, as its name implies, earning money by doing what residents enjoyed. In other words, the café was established as a space where Bin-Zib residents could interact with each other through activities and could guarantee them a minimum income outside the capitalist wage labor relations. I would like to note two things regarding the way Bin-Zib has expanded its experiment over the years. First, practices and systems were devised and improvised along with new discourses and languages. Bin-Zib residents have tried to analyze their own situations reflexively to deal with problems while, at the same time, striving to produce strategic discourses. Collective study has thus been a significant part of community life, and the theme of these inquiries has reflected what they have been trying to deal with at the time. Trying out what they read in their studies, applying a spirit of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss 1974) in a constant process of trial and error, residents produced and published articles, both individually and collectively, on the

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Bin-Zib website, personal blogs, or alternative media. Such activities correspond to what Osterweil (2013, p. 600) calls ‘experimental, reflexive, critical knowledge-practices’. Second, while Bin-Zib residents have tried to invent a system of communing, they do not attempt to establish a totalizing system. On the contrary, they have tried to rely on spontaneity and voluntary motivation as much as possible. For example, while all residents reside in Bin-Zib, courtesy of the co-funded money (now, through the communal bank Bin-Go), the practice of co-funding (or joining Bin-Go) is up to each resident’s inclination. Even when residents established the rule of bundamgeum, which looks most normal from the standpoint of reciprocity, residents inserted a certain ambiguity in it, by stipulating it as ‘more than 2000 won (US$ 1.7)’. They have also tried to insert some contingent or game-like elements whenever the community encountered serious difficulties or were faced with big decisions. Kim (2014), who has researched cooperative and social economy, published a paper on Bin-Go, examining Bin-Go as an example of social enterprise for alternative economy. She pays attention to the fact that ‘Bin-Go has no official articles of association, maintaining a flexible structure in which everything can be decided through discussion’ (Kim 2014, p. 165). By inserting ambiguity, they tried to prevent the community from reverting to relations based on the capitalist logics of reciprocity or hierarchy caused by each resident’s different level of contribution. At Bin-Zib, communism has always been rooted in the pleasure of sharing foods and activities. In the top picture in Fig. 8.1, residents are playing the board game Bin-Go, which was developed by Bin-Go activists. The bottom left picture in Fig. 8.1 is a captured image of Bin-Zib chat room using a smartphone text message application, where more than 60 people have joined in. Using the service, typically residents would circulate enticing messages such as ‘Here we are having a BBQ party in Salim-Zib, join us!’ or ‘I am making a kimchi stew right now, anyone wanna join me?’ In this context, it is crucial to note that the name of the community BinZib [The Empty/Guests’ house] was itself an invention of the residents. While the community professed, ‘[r]egardless how many people are already here, Bin-Zib should be vacated for the others to come’, as a physical place, it has faced inevitable spatial limitations. Consequently, the question arises as to how Bin-Zib residents in practice have made the original idea of Bin-Zib [The Empty/Guests’ house] available for newcomers.

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Fig. 8.1  Residents at Bin-Zib. Photographed by Bin-Zib residents in 2015 and edited by the author

This is a question that the residents themselves have had to address on a number of occasions in response to internal pressures, with their response being to consistently reinforce the idea of openness as implied in the very name of the community, Bin-Zib. The name of the community requires one to become engaged in the practice of multiplying Bin-Zib. On the other hand, by calling every resident in Bin-Zib a ‘guest’, the community has pursued a spirit of egalitarianism and strived to preserve openness to heterogeneity. Not only letting people in without common ground, residents also have tried to avoid setting any totalizing rule.8 It was not that the name had any absolute power that prevented the community from becoming a closed community, or residents from having hierarchical relations. On the contrary, as the community grew, more people wanted to develop a screening system for newcomers, because the openness of the community caused increasingly complicated problems. Also, many residents wanted forms of mutual aid to circulate exclusively or predominantly among those who actually were living at Bin-Zib, and

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aimed to set up an official qualification on standard for using the collected fund of Bin-Zib. In such circumstances, the name Bin-Zib became a potential obstacle that limited those who wanted to keep the community closed off from the exterior. Although it is impossible to fully actualize the idea of Bin-Zib, the name has functioned as a regulative idea, repelling desires of reciprocity and hierarchy. While the name has created a dynamic space where different moral economies and sensibilities collide each other (see Table  8.1), residents could not help but constantly reconsider the meaning of Bin-Zib.

Weaving the Common In and Against the State and Capital Bin-Zib is, in all probability, the first case of a cohousing experiment in Korea. Currently, Bin-Go with a net asset of US$240,000, collected from over 200 members, supports Bin-Zibs, the co-op café, and other six communities across the country with similar orientations toward sharing a house as the common.9 Bin-Go members have also developed informal, vibrant relationships with members of other alternative communities, holding public lectures and other communal events together. Consequently, not only have Bin-Zibs been able to thrive in the neighborhood, they have expanded to include networks with communities and movements in other cities and regions without the centralizing effects of an overt political ideology, program, or bureaucratic structure. Notwithstanding these, Bin-­ Zib’s achievements appear pale in comparison to the enormous power of the state and capital. One might also reasonably question whether Bin-Zib makes any real difference when residents still pay rent to house owners. What if the housing area becomes subject to gentrification? In what sense does the whole experiment find its meaning as a movement of forming a different life within and against the state and capital? Around 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Government took notice of the Bin-Zib community in the course of exploring public cohousing models as a way to solve the city’s housing problems. This suggests that Bin-Zib was, in some sense, assuming the functions of the state welfare system, potentially innovating a new form of neoliberal welfare system. Conversely, the private sector tried to capitalize on Bin-Zib as a new business model targeting youth. The social enterprise Woozoo, one of the leading commercialized ‘social housing’ corporations, is a case in point. Officially recognized

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Table 8.1  The main conflicts and issues in Bin-Zib Category of the common

Conflicting values

Money

• How to share money? • How to create different flows of money? • How to earn money by autonomous activities? • How to share house chores? • Who should do the common work for the community? • How to valorize the community works?

Activities

Space

What is Bin-Zib, as a core question

Moral base for sharing How to communicate physical resources ideas (egalitarianism; (communism; hierarchy; authoritarianism) capitalism)

Openness (open community; closed community)

• How to set fiscal • To what extent principles? should Bin-Zib • Should all residents share its monetary join Bin-Go? resources? • How to encourage residents to join the sharing culture of Bin-Zib? • How to share house • Is any qualification chores without needed for instituting accepting new authoritarian rules? residents? • Are residents obliged to join community activities? • How to promote autonomous activities? • How to make room • How to establish • How to negotiate for newcomers? rights or ethics, between different • Do long-term around space? desires regarding residents have a right • How to negotiate making boundaries to occupy space between different of the community? without making a desires over using space for newcomers? space? • How to deal with the problems that arise with old residents’ privileges? • What is the role of juin [owner/host] in Bin-Zib? What is the role of guests in Bin-Zib? • What is the meaning of Bin-Zib? Should it be open to new members?

Note: All these issues lie in the everyday life in Bin-Zib. The intensity of tensions might vary in terms of existing residents’ characteristics and given circumstances. However, when existing houses become too congested to receive newcomers, residents cannot help but confront the strain on the matter of if and how they establish a new Bin-Zib. Regarding how ongoing conflicts in the community have generated process of subjectivations, see Han (2015)

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and subsidized by the government as a sahoejeog gieop [social enterprise], it rents places based on the chonse contract system and remodels the spaces with various concepts, such as ‘a house for baseball fans’ or ‘a house of future finance specialists’ (Woozoo 2014). To be sure, we need to recognize that these dangers are real. On the one hand, the economy of reciprocal exchange and the effects of a closed community may resurface within the Bin-Zib scheme. Bin-Zib has also tried to find its own place in relation to the society at large, while the mainstream discourse of maeul mandeulgi [village community development] has turned out to be yet another excuse for maintaining the capitalist status quo.10 However, when we compare these newly formed communities by capital and the state with Bin-Zib, there are several glaring differences in how residents arrange their communal life. First of all, the state fails to understand how Bin-Zib operates. When the Seoul Metropolitan Government visited Bin-Zib and another autonomous cohousing project, Sohaengju (formed in Seongmisan village), to gather information, the government chose Sohaengju for the public cohousing model.11 Sohaengju is an abbreviation of three Korean words, sotong [communication], haengbok [happiness], and jutaek [housing], thus implying that it is a housing of happiness based on communication. It consists of eight to nine housing units and common spaces, such as a community room, a common garage, and so on, in a three–four-story building. Considering the parcel price per household for the second Sohaengju was around US$212,500, the Sohaengju model was clearly intended for middle-class families looking for a form of community lifestyle. Basically, Sohaengju relied on an established, well-articulated system of reciprocity, private property, and division of labor. Each family paid according to the private area they lived in. Moreover, Sohaengju had clear divisions between private and public spaces. While each family kept their private space, residents hired professional housekeepers to manage the public space ‘because each resident has different standards regarding cleanness and it can be a source of conflict’ (Jo 2013). As such, the ambiguity characteristic of Bin-Zib was nonexistent. Consequently, the government officially started the public cohousing project with Sohaengju. Second, Bin-Zib promotes the production of desires, which are at odds with those produced by capital. The ultimate aim of the commercialized cohousing companies is to make a profit. For this purpose, they produce various concepts of community life as commodities. For the right amount of money, customers can buy a designed community lifestyle. As such,

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customers expect not only a customized living space, but also ideal housemates. This is why the social enterprise Woozoo conducts a ‘two-level interview in recruiting residents’ (Woozoo 2014). To reduce potential conflicts, additional options might include housekeeping, food catering, even mentoring. While consuming the idea of a romanticized community life, residents individually pursue success and prosperity for their own future. In contrast, in a Bin-Zib, the community exists ex-post facto, brought into existence through the act of the residents. Unless residents do ‘more than’ putting bundamgeum into community life, Bin-Zib cannot exist. This collective surplus is what has produced the Bin-Zib. The community encourages its residents to stop working in the capitalist wage labor relations and be ‘full time Binzibites’, while contemplating how to live outside of wage labor relations.

Conclusion Concluding this chapter, I would like to note that the Haebangchon neighborhood was facing the prospect of gentrification as of 2016. On the one hand, Bin-Zib residents witnessed emerging commercialism in the area, with nearby Gyeonglidan-gil rising as a fashionable spot where young and English-speaking hipsters hang around. On the other hand, Haebangchon was also selected as a test area for the Seoul Style Urban Regeneration Project, scheduled to be completed in 2020. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced that more than 10 billion won (US$8.7 million) would be spent ‘to conduct a specialized regeneration project’ in the old neighborhood (Byun 2015). Regarding this situation, some residents believe that they should move to the outskirts of Seoul if the rent starts to increase. Others hope that they can maintain the community in Haebangchon, where their relations and cultural assets are centered. But many wonder how the Bin-Zibs are going to survive as a community in the area in the face of gentrification pressures. Regarding the sustainability of the community in Haebangchon, I asked some residents of their thoughts. One resident, who was active in the co-op café, suggested active engagement with the local area to cultivate a sustainable local economy and create jobs (personal conversation with Namaste, 17 April 2016). Since 2011, Bin-Zib residents put considerable effort into forming a desirable local economy, revitalizing the local market by networking with various local actors, from individual artists to religious groups, and the local merchants’ committee. They also issued an alternative local

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currency. Also, some Bin-Zib residents joined the committee for the regeneration project launched by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to promote the contents and process of their version of community revitalization, maeul mandeulgi [village community development]. By creating and circulating common resources within neighborhoods, in conjunction with improvising upon the unique culture of sharing that had been developed in the Bin-Zib, participants strived to form a sustainable life in Binmaeul [The Empty/Guests’ village] (see Han 2015). Another response to gentrification suggested by Bin-Zib residents involves securing space by collectively purchasing real estate. As a member of Bin-Go said, ‘[i]f more people join Bin-Go, Bin-Go can get more funding, then maybe we [Bin-Zib residents] can buy places rather than rent places’ (personal conversation with Jwain, 13 April 2016). Can Bin-Go de-commodify housing by collectively buying places and making it common(s)? It might be possible if they could build wider networks and engage more people. There are examples, such as the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Germany, through which people try to transform housing, ‘from a commodity to a more or less collectively owned social good’ based on experimental institutional arrangements (Horlitz 2013, p. 4). Bin-Zib residents declare: ‘we look for another way to live together … by opening a house to everyone, by sharing money with others’. As such, Bin-Zib is ultimately an attempt to devise new uses for the city, creating different values and relationship through living together with others. At the same time, however, the Bin-Zibs have always been in a state of crisis. Residents have always struggled to make a new place for newcomers. When there were not sufficient residents, existing residents faced the burden of having to pay more bundamgeum. Convivial energy was easily exhausted and residents had to worry about their livelihoods. Moreover, Bin-Zib did not own any space, legally or physically. In other words, the main resources and the very products of Bin-Zib’s practice of communing have been people’s relations, in which a house is not a commodity, but the common. Bin-Zib would have all but disappeared were it not for the collective work and effort of the residents, which is to establish different kinds of relations with others because a house would be always a commodity and a means of investment in the capitalist relation. It would be impossible to turn house(s) and capital into the common unless people changed their attitude toward money. While trying to expand the scope of communing, Bin-Zib residents have struggled against the tendency of the movement to universalize its

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own original project. Rather than making the community bigger, they have diversified the community itself while expanding the network of linked communities. Instead of aiming to change the whole of society, Bin-Zib’s residents have pursued ‘slow expansions of voluntary associations’ through changing ‘microrelations as well as microstructures’, borrowing the words of Day (2005, p. 103). In doing so, as the urban poor, they have weaved a unique kind of security net, modeled neither after the closed community (the welfare state, incidentally, can be considered as a large-scale bureaucratized community) nor after the privatized model. After all, this is the age, in which the gated community, with its private guards, has become (sub)urban housing par excellence. Instead of closing the house to secure it as a private property or financial means of investment, the people of Bin-Zib have opened it to everyone. Instead of closing the community to be secured inside, they have chosen to widen the security net by weaving themselves into the net. By opening their home to the world and inviting more people to be part of network, they have strived to turn the world itself into a home for all, that is, the common.

Notes 1. The notion of the common, developed by autonomist theorists, refers to the fact that not only physical or geographic resources, but also ideas, knowledge, affection, communication, and social relations are the common wealth of humanity (Hardt and Negri 2009). Regarding how the concept of the common, rather than the commons, better grasps Bin-Zib’s practice, see Han and Imamasa (2015). 2. I use the term ‘commune-ing’ rather than ‘commoning’. The term ‘commoning’ (act/practice) is frequently used in its relation with physical commons (common resources) and communities (subject of commoning). However, following Cesare Casarino (see Casarino and Negri 2008), I view that act of commoning/communing is more related to the practice of communication. Communication is taking place between others in order to construct the common between people who do not have common grounds, rather than sharing pre-existing common(s) in established communities. In other words, the act of commoning/communing demands a community to open itself up to others, and thus, constantly to be in the process of subjectivations. The term ‘communing’, in this sense, marks what constructs the common is communication between differences. It also indicates the orientation for opening a community—and thus, becoming a commune.

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3. Since there is no owner, everybody living in Bin-Zib is considered a guest. People who stay in Bin-Zib for only a short time are called dantu [short-­ term guests] while people who plan to live there beyond a short stay are called jangtu [long-term guests]. While the number of long-term guests in each house is relatively stable, the number of short-term guests varies considerably. 4. The Hyungje Welfare Center was a welfare facility, and as located in Busan, was known for its incredibly brutal violence to inmates and severe corruption among management. During its 12 years of operation, over 500 people died in brutal circumstances. The facility was closed in 1987 without a proper investigation. 5. In Korean, the word juin not only refers to the owner of something but also refers to the host of a certain place. In many posts or articles written by Bin-­Zib residents, they used the word in a paradoxical way. 6. In 2008, the amount of bundamgeum was ‘more than 2000 won (US$ 1.7)’ per day. As of writing this chapter, it is around 4000–5000 won (US$3.4–4.3). It is a very small amount of money even compared to dosshouse accommodations for the extreme poor in Seoul. 7. Defining communism, I particularly refer to David Graeber’s (2010) discussion. 8. Being chosen by the first guests of the community through a contest, the name Bin-Zib [The Empty/Guests’ house] simultaneously expresses two latent principles of the community. Regarding how the principles of expanding communism and travelers’ communication create dynamics in the community and construct a political space, see Han (2015). 9. The cohousing communities using Bin-Go loan are Modudeul (currently running five cohousing spaces in Bucheon area), Jaljari (introducing the community as Bin-Zib in Busan), Kkeutjip (a cohousing space for media activists in Cheonju), and Bihaeng (a cooperative of teenage runaway activists). The alternative communities using Bin-Go loan are Gongyong (an alternative media community in Cheongju) and Onzigonzi (an alternative education space in Haebangchon). 10. The maeul mandeulgi project has been one of the main pledges of Park Wonsoon, who is the mayor of the Seoul Metropolitan Government since 2012 (Kim 2012b). 11. Seongmisan village was started as a cooperative childcare in the 1990s. As parents set up an alternative school as well as a cooperative café and restaurant, a village was formed. The families who form this village are of middle-­ class background. As a survey in a study demonstrates, the biggest motive for residents of the village is that of ‘giving a good education to their children’ (Kim 2012a).

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References Aalbers, M. (2008). The Financialization of Home and the Mortgage Market Crisis. Competition & Change, 12(3), 148–166. Bin-Go. (2011–2015). Bin-Go chonghoe jaryojip [Bin-Go Annual Meeting Source Book] (Pamphlet). Bin-Zib. (2008). Geseucheuhauseu binjibiran? [What Is the Guests’ House Bin-­ Zib?]. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://house.jinbo.net/wiki/ index.php. Bin-Zib. (2010a). Binjibgwa jugeoundong [Bin-Zib and Housing Movement]. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://blog.jinbo.net/house/357. Bin-Zib. (2010b). Binjibgwa banjabonundong [Bin-Zib and Anti Capitalism Movement]. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://blog.jinbo.net/ house/359. Byun, S. (2015, November 30). Seoulhyeong dosijaesaeng hwalseongwha jiyeog “Haebangchon” … juminjudo 8gae mamuljung saeobhwagfeong [Seoul Style Urban Regeneration Area … “Haebangchon” was Launched]. Urban Development Press. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://www.udp. or.kr/v2.0/bbs/board.php?bo_table=article01&wr_id=4785. Casarino, C., & Negri, A. (2008). In Praise of the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Day, R.  J. (2005). Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements. London: Pluto Press. Graeber, D. (2010). On the Moral Grounds of Economic Relations. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from http://openanthcoop.net/press/2010/11/17/ on-the-moral-grounds-of-economic-relations. Ha, S. (2002). The Urban Poor, Rental Accommodations, and Housing Policy in Korea. Cities, 19(3), 195–203. Ha, S. (2010). Housing Crises and Policy Transformations in South Korea. European Journal of Housing Policy, 10(3), 255–272. Han, D. (2015). Communicating Communes: A Case Study of Urban Communing Movement in South Korea (Master’s thesis), Simon Fraser University, Canada. Han, D., & Imamasa, H. (2015). Overcoming Privatized Housing in South Korea: Looking Through the Lens of “Commons” and “The Common”. In M.  Dellenbaugh, M.  Bieniok, M.  Kip, & M.  Schwegmann (Eds.), Urban Commons Moving Beyond State and Market. Basel: Birkhäuser. Hardt, M. (2009). Production and Distribution of the Common. The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon, 16, 20–28. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. New York: Verso.

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CHAPTER 9

Contesting Property Hegemony in Asian Cities Hyun Bang Shin

Introduction Asian economies covered in this volume can be broadly categorized as late-industrializing economies that have treaded the path of condensed industrialization coupled with massive investments in the built environment, though in a geographically selective way, to support their production capacities and to house the growing population, including the expanding middle classes. The condensed nature of Asian economic development (see Dunford and Yeung 2011; Chap. 1 in this volume) suggests that the detrimental impact of creative destruction as part of the urbanization of capital David Harvey (2012) referred to would have been far Hyun Bang Shin acknowledges the support from the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant, funded by the Korean Government (NRF-­ 2017S1A3A2066514) for the writing of this Conclusion chapter. H. B. Shin (*) London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6_9

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greater in Asia than in the Global North. Such industrialization and ­urbanization have taken place in the context of nation-building involving negotiations with the geopolitical order such as the Cold War and independence movements (see, for example, Doucette and Park 2019; Hsu et al. 2018). While the capitalist Asian developmental states attained their legitimacy by proving their ability to promote economic development and feed the national population (Castells 1992), their socialist counterparts in mainland China or Vietnam retained their power by recreating the Party State through a range of economic and social reforms (Huang 2008; Kim 2008). Nonetheless, these states share the common features of having maintained the existing social order that was thought to be brought about by the strong development-oriented national state. The Asian states can be said to have broadly adopted a ‘productivist welfare’ model (Holliday 2000), which subordinates social policy to economic policy and involves the state’s selective intervention in the collective consumption only to an extent that productive investments can be maximized. This book has taken ‘housing’ as an entry point to make its contributions to the debates on constructing progressive futures for Asian cities. Housing has come to occupy the central stage of urban politics because of the ways in which it was vital to the survival of urbanites as well as the economic success of the emerging middle classes through property asset accumulation. The chapters in this volume have all been engaging with housing questions by understanding them as embedded in the contested relationships between the state, the market, and the society. Throughout the analysis, each contributor has paid attention, in their own way, to the nature of the state and its transformation in response to neoliberal pressures, and to the ways in which particular housing questions have come to the fore of urban contestations. For Taiwan (Chap. 2), it was the rise of the social housing movement in the context of neoliberal transformation of the Taiwanese developmental state during the democratization era. For Hong Kong (Chap. 3), housing has become a geopolitical issue in the midst of Hong Kong’s handover to mainland China. In Hong Kong, a hybrid of developmentalism and neoliberalism has brought about the naturalization of displacement in the city. For Bangkok (Chap. 4), the contemporary evolution of pro-poor housing policies has been complicated by the changes to the nature of the Thai state that exhibits authoritarianism as well as clientelism, despite the strong trait of neoliberalism during the time of economic liberalization. For Hanoi (Chap. 5), the rise of new urban zones for housing construction reflects the noticeable influence of

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neoliberalism on Vietnam’s urban and housing policies, but the strong presence of the Party State in Vietnam means that there is a hybrid system emerging, which brings together the ideologies of socialist modernization and modernism with neoliberal logics. Urban contestations against the detrimental impact of such market-oriented transformation are thus prone to neutralization. In mainland China, housing questions are combined with the market reform of China’s economy in general, and in particular, with the commercialization of the housing sector and the state withdrawal from direct provision of welfare housing. As in Vietnam, despite the strong trait of neoliberalization of urban housing provision, the Party State remains powerful and makes use of various policy measures to reduce resistance to displacement (Chap. 6). The state promotion of private homeownership nurtures the expansion of China’s middle classes, thus helping the Party State to gain its legitimacy, but it also becomes a source of urban contestations and social tensions (Chap. 7). In Seoul (Chap. 8), the neoliberal transformation of the Korean developmental state has exacerbated detrimental housing conditions for the urban precariat, but a new radical experiment based on a network of collective houses in Seoul presents an opportunity to think about an alternative mode of housing production, (re)distribution, and consumption. Turning our attention to the future, is there any room in Asia for progressive urban movements that would bring about the right to the city for the urban majority who have little or limited access to the surplus produced by cities and appropriated by the privileged few? In this concluding chapter, after Gramsci (1971), I attempt to show the dialectical relationships between state violence and the construction of property hegemony, which have enabled the Asian states to pursue the urbanization of capital while ensuring social stability. Then, I draw attention to the rich history of urban contestations Asian economies have witnessed so as to challenge the conventional wisdom that Asia’s economic miracle is maintained by the efficient functioning of the state in the absence of political contestations. The rise of Asian developmental states and the recreation of Party States have been possible because of their need to respond to the socio-political pressure mounted by grassroots politics, including labor struggles and democratization movements. The acknowledgment of the rich history of urban contestations, I conclude, would enable us to remain optimistic when it comes to building progressive urban futures by perceiving cities as ‘commonwealth.’

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Constructing Property Hegemony in Asia Asia’s condensed industrialization and urbanization have been made possible under the strong developmental states, which made use of their often authoritarian power to realize nation-building, capital accumulation, and urban restructuring. In this process, the importance of the housing questions in urban movements is related to the ways in which the aspiration to accumulate property wealth has proliferated the mindset of not only upperand middle-class citizens who were able to take advantage of speculative housing markets, but also that of those who have insufficient financial means to climb up the housing ladder. The construction of hegemony is connected with the questions of status and identity as well, especially when housing as exchange value contributes to the formation of a particular set of identities among the middle classes, whose expansion, in turn, helps the state consolidate its legitimacy. Under these political economic circumstances, the politics of housing works in various ways that allow the state violence to enable the accumulation of capital and the imposition of the ruling elites’ urban aesthetics that conforms to their version of ‘livable city.’ We see from various research outputs (for example, Ley and Teo 2014; see also Chap. 6 in this volume) that the proliferation of a speculative property market has led to the consent of local residents to redevelopment and displacement, hoping that they will be eventually ‘entering the private ownership market’ (ibid., p. 1292). In Hong Kong, Ley and Teo (2014) contend that eligible tenants see redevelopment as a transit to improved housing conditions by moving to public housing estates. The culture of property indeed corresponds to Hong Kong’s dominant ideologies of homeownership and housing as assets, which had been promoted by the (post-)colonial state as landlord, working in conjunction with real estate developers (see also Tang 2008; Chap. 3 in this volume). Manufacturing people’s consent to redevelopment may happen in multifaceted ways, including the use of public housing as a means for the state to placate the discontented and ensure social stability. The extensive presence of public housing in Hong Kong and Singapore also helps produce property hegemony by transforming public housing residents into ‘clients of the state’ (Chua 2000). In discussing Castells’ urban questions, Pile (1997, p. 9) suggests that for Castells, ‘resistance takes place as a result of demands around three basic structural issues: collective consumption, such as housing, schools, welfare provision, and so on; the defence/expression of cultural identities; and, the workings of the state and/or local government.’ In the context

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of Asia’s property hegemony established during the course of condensed economic development and urbanization, housing brings the three structural issues together by becoming: (1) a key commodity that is subject to productive consumption, (2) housing as one’s creation of a socially recognizable identity and status, and (3) a key area of government policy that is closely linked to the legitimacy of the ruling regime. These three characteristics that help construct property hegemony were challenged briefly during the times of economic and financial crisis in recent years (for example, 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and 2007–2008 global financial crisis), when Asian housing markets collapsed momentarily, but only to bounce back with a greater degree of speculation. Ultimately, however, the construction of consent goes hand in hand with coercion. The Gramscian reading of state operations suggests that manufacturing consent also accompanies ‘the armour of coercion’ force by the state (Gramsci 1971, p. 263). Even if liberal democracy seems to reign over society, coercion by the use of state violence does not disappear altogether and is hidden or disguised, ready to reemerge when it is called upon. Take the displacement and forced eviction of people, for example. In addition to identifying the culture of property as propelling uncritical acceptance of redevelopment and displacement, it would be important to acknowledge how displacement is not only legitimized through consent (‘the cultural hegemony of property’) but also effected by coercion (domination by the use of physical oppression as well as the use of ‘rule by law’; see, for example, Kim 2010; Ong 2018; Shih 2010). Consent and coercion are often exercised concurrently and in a more nuanced way when the use of force and coercion originates from private individuals and when the state responds to justify their actions in the name of protecting private individuals’ lawful rights. In Asia, where fixed asset investment, including real estate, has been the cornerstone of economic development under developmental states, it is important to go beyond the production of cultural conventions and ideologies, and understand how the state effects, for example, displacement through both consent and coercion to drive accumulation and realize the class remaking of urban space. Also, it is imperative to understand how consensus may also take the form of people providing ‘passive consent’ as in mainland China, where ‘[t]he Party needs the masses to be as disengaged from politics as possible, and to be optimistic and positive in order to maintain business confidence and trust in the political status quo’ (Brady 2009, p. 6; see also Chaps. 6 and 7 in this volume).

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Indeed, Asian states exhibit a rich history of state domination through coercion and violence, which suppressed dissident voices. For instance, Singapore has been under decades-long domination by the People’s Action Party, exercising what is sometimes referred to as the ‘dictatorship of the middle class’ (Rodan 1992). The city-state’s political system makes it almost impossible for opposition parties to gain power through electoral democracy. Hong Kong was a British colonial territory until 1997, and since the handover, has been under the increasingly strong influence of China’s Party State. The Nationalist Party of Taiwan reigned for more than 50 years and ended martial law only in 1987, after which limited liberalization and democratization emerged with opposition politics led by the Democratic Progressive Party (Hsu 2009). The 1961 military coup in South Korea established an 18-year dictatorship, followed by another coup in 1980: only in 1997, a presidential candidate from an opposition party was elected for the first time in South Korea. Mainland China has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party since 1949. The oppressive politics is key to the Party State’s enforcement of its power to remove barriers to the state’s productive investment in the built environment, enabling the state to exercise, for instance, compulsory purchase or land resumption promptly (see Shin 2016). Such state violence is often hidden from the scrutiny of the general public or underreported due to media censorship—another inherent problem in Asia that acts as constraints on progressive urban movements. Such media censorship exercised by many Asian states is unlikely to produce detailed experiences of forced eviction and displacement other than governmentstipulated policies. The state censorship of media had been a prominent feature of the authoritarian non-democratic governments in Taiwan (Chen 1998), South Korea (Kim and Hamilton 2006), Singapore (Rodan 2003), and mainland China (Zhao 2004). Hong Kong is also characterized by increasingly undermined press freedom, despite repeated attempts to invigorate alternative media outlets. Democratization, a key feature that many contributors in this volume have identified, does not necessarily bring about an environment that helps urban social movements to blossom. For instance, even though Taiwan and South Korea have experienced a degree of media liberalization and democratization over the years, especially since the late 1980s, critics argue that the controlling mechanism has changed from direct state censorship to market censorship, that is, a greater use of the state’s invisible hands in order to prevent the rise of organized socio-political forces to contest against the state (Kim and Hamilton 2006).

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Forward to the Past: Acknowledging the History of Asia’s Progressive Urban Movements Reflecting upon the rise of Asian economies from absolute poverty to affluence guided by the developmental states, it may be argued that this was only possible by ensuring social stability under the strong leadership of the efficiently functioning state. As pointed out earlier, the expanding middle classes are thought to have been nurtured by the state, rendered as strong supporters for the state rather than becoming agents of democratic transformation (see also Chap. 4 for the ways in which the state secures support through clientelism). Such depiction of the state–society relations seems to leave little room for progressive urban movements, thus producing an inevitable sense of fatalism in terms of what can be done to overcome the deeply entrenched problems of inequality and injustice accumulated over time. In the developmental state literature, there is a tendency to think of the state in isolation, and thus, fall into ‘methodological nationalism’ (see Glassman 1999; Hwang 2015; Doucette and Park 2019, for critiques). In such literature, the developmental state is often regarded as a technocratic, centralized machine consisting of elite bureaucrats, insulated from the socio-political pressure (for example, Johnson 1982; Wade 1990) or, at best, embedded in a close working relationship with the private sector (Evans 1995; see also The World Bank 1994). However, as more recent critical literature highlights (see Park et  al. 2012; Doucette and Park 2019), it would be important to think of the multifaceted ways in which state formation has interacted with social forces of various geographical scales that extend beyond the national territorial border and deep into local and urban scales. Such an understanding also highlights the importance of seeing the state not free of class conflicts, but embedded in the socio-political relations that shape the parameters within which the state actions are determined. Viewed this way, the actions of the Asian developmental state during the times of condensed industrialization and urbanization in the second half of the twentieth century can be understood as a response to deeply entrenched socio-political pressures. It is therefore argued here that there is a need to actively acknowledge the presence and development of grassroots and radical politics in order to seek the possibility of challenging the ‘cultural hegemony of property.’ It is important to reconstruct the identity of Asian cities not simply as sites of consumption and middle-class aspiration for property asset accumulation but as sites of possibilities and progressive future (Shin 2018).

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Indeed, Asia is filled with rich histories of urban contestations historically. I would like to start by drawing attention to Hong Kong as an illustrative case, largely because Hong Kong is often seen to have exercised property hegemony and exhibits the domination of speculative aspiration among the populace to make property gains (see Ley and Teo 2014; Poon 2011; Tang 2008). It is understood that such favorable public views toward property investment and asset accumulation would have left little room for urban contestations over, for example, gentrification, displacement, and/or forced eviction. However, the city has historically witnessed its own share of progressive movements, with its politics having always experienced various forms of challenging the colonial government before 1997, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government as well as the mainland government after 1997. During the era of the colonial government, Ma (2007) points out that civil liberties were fairly restricted before the 1980s when the colonial government’s rule was supported by draconian colonial laws that enabled the government to suppress any forms of political opposition movements. Government decisions were hardly influenced by public views that did not have institutionalized channels (Lee and Chan 2011, p. 14). Despite these restrictive conditions, Lam (2004) highlights the proliferation of collective actions, especially from the 1970s, ranging from student movements, urban protests, and union activism. As Lui and Chiu (1999, p. 102) ascertain, ‘[w]hile these public actions have not shaken the social basis of political stability in Hong Kong, their significance … has gone far beyond the issues and domains of social life which gave rise to them and they have had repercussions for Hong Kong politics as a whole.’ Key events such as the 1950 strike by Hong Kong Tramway workers, the 1966 Kowloon disturbances prompted by Star Ferry fare increases, and the highly politicized 1967 urban riots can be taken as some of the best examples from Hong Kong’s colonial history (Smart and Lui 2009). Even if there is a sign of ‘political apathy’ that seems to undermine political participation among the general public, this should not be taken as an evidence of political lethargy, as political gains from previous actions might have produced a space of compliance with government policies.1 Since the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997, the view is that post-1997 Hong Kong has seen gradual erosion of civil liberties, which largely owes to the Hong Kong SAR government’s effort to prevent the civil society from challenging the (Party) State and to undermine the strengths of societal forces that might advance demands for

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reforms against government wishes (see Ma 2007). However, as seen by a number of periodic and spontaneous mass protests since the handover, Hong Kong has witnessed the proliferation of political contestations led by grassroots activists and social movement organizations. The 2003 counter-Article 23 campaign, 2014 Occupy Movement, and Umbrella Movement, all demonstrate the outburst of acute frustrations generated by widening inequalities, including those in the housing sector, and the awakening of the desire for greater civil liberty in light of mainland government’s tighter control and intervention in Hong Kong politics (Cai 2017). It is on this extension that we can begin to understand the potential and implications of urban protests and discontents as alluded to in Shu-Mei Huang’s discussions (Chap. 3 in this volume) of housing and cross-border politics. South Korea is perhaps the most noteworthy for its long history of labor movements as well as urban contestations over social injustice. Upon closer scrutiny of the South Korean politics during the last few decades, the country turns out to exhibit periodic mass democratization protests, conjoined by vibrant activism of civil society groups. Militant labor and student movements made invaluable contributions to the country’s democratization (Chun 2003; Koo 2001; Lee 2007). The persistent and often blood-shedding fights of tenants in Seoul throughout the 1980s against brutal forced eviction from their homes in the midst of the city’s commercialized property-led redevelopment compelled the central state to concede permanent rental housing as in-kind compensation measures in 1989 (see Kim 1999; KOCER 1998; Shin 2008, 2018). The state’s violent oppression of resistance against eviction of tenants has been an ongoing feature, though, which exploded in a tragic way when five protesters (small business tenants) and one policeman were killed in police SWAT team-led suppression in 2009 (Lee 2012), but this was also a testament to the mighty will of displacees to resist forced eviction when they faced dispossession of their rights to stay put. Ensuing fights by civil society organizations, housing rights activists, and progressive intellectuals enabled them to work together to add immense pressure on the central state and political parties to produce measures to improve the rights of small business tenants upon their displacement in the process of urban redevelopment and/or commercial gentrification (Park and Lee 2012; Shin 2018). Student activists, progressive/liberal party members, and other civic activists have also been key members in numerous fights against

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what came to be known as commercial gentrification in Seoul in recent years (ibid.; see also Shin 2017). Even in mainland China, social unrest is on the rapid rise. According to Göbel and Ong (2012), the number of recorded ‘mass incidents’ was 8700 in 1993, but it rapidly increased by tenfold to reach 87,000 by 2005, and was estimated to be somewhere between 180,000 and 230,000 in 2010. China’s rapid urbanization has also produced a surge of villagers’ protests against land expropriation and of urban residents’ resistance against forced eviction and what they deem as unfair compensation. The latter has led to the popular circulation of a Chinese neologism called dingzihu or nail-house/households. That is, households and individuals who embark on hold-out protests to put forward a persistent demand for fair compensation; they resist eviction until the last minute and are labeled standouts that cannot be easily hammered down, like protruding nails (see Hsing 2010; Shao 2013). Nail-house protests are often stigmatized by governments as selfish acts that aim for financial gains, that is, larger compensation money (see Shin 2013), but if we observe how these displacees face limited choices to voice out in the planning stage and how oppressive the state-enacted violence can be, it would be difficult to simply characterize protesters’ demands as purely economic claims. In this regard, Zhao Zhang in this volume (Chap. 7) states that displacees are being ‘forced to be shrewd’ to make the most out of their fateful situations. While some of the nail households take extreme measures such as risking or taking their own lives, it was only these persistent and sometimes life-threatening activist movements that forced the Party State to concede to enacting revised laws to enhance transparency, even though these new measures still bear some limitations. In light of the rich history of contestations and resistance as briefly outlined earlier, it would seem more persuasive to think of the use of violence by the authoritarian developmental states as an inevitable course of action for these states to ensure social stability. The rise of property hegemony can also be regarded as a state strategy to diversify the basis of ensuring state legitimacy by resorting to the rise of middle classes and their consumerism, the emphasis on individual responsibility for their own welfare, and the Asian version of ‘property-owning democracy’ to undermine the militant labor, student movements, and any other progressive movements by urbanites in general.

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Coda: Cities as ‘Commonwealth’ For Merrifield (2014), contemporary cities in the West have become a key site of generating unproductive activities that produce wealth only to be wasted for the pleasure of the ultra-small elite members of the society. Cities remain ‘parasitic,’ where ‘social wealth is consumed through conspicuously wasteful enterprises, our very own aristocracy (the 1 percent) who squander generative capacity by thriving exclusively from unproductive activities’ (ibid., p. 109). Housing has become a key commodity for the elite members of parasitic cities, who speculatively generate their wealth without contributing their sweat equity. What the experiences of Asian cities suggest is a somewhat peculiar context that partly conforms to what Merrifield has identified (for example, speculative urbanization and the increasingly wasteful production and consumption of resources), but the difference lies in that Asian cities have ensured to keep property speculation as a societal virtue from the early period of industrialization and urbanization. Real estate property becomes hegemony that keeps working classes and the precariat in despair, not because they are frustrated about their inability to change the world, but perhaps because they are asset poor and cannot emulate the practices of real estate speculators. The rapid industrialization and globalization of Asian economies have been followed by the transition of their authoritarian state-led economy to an economy that is fused with neoliberal influence. The resulting societal transformation provides each economy with a particularistic, place-specific context within which urban movements are embedded. For former planned economies such as mainland China and Vietnam, marketization in recent decades has accompanied the withdrawal of the state from previously exercised direct provision of state welfare, creating a situation that has become more akin to Asian capitalist economies under ‘productivist welfarism’ (see Holliday 2000). In this context, housing comes to the fore as the most important means of one’s survival and prosperity, and no longer gets confined to the arena of social reproduction. The field of urban struggles for social justice and the right to the city in Asia is constrained by the brutality of both the forces of neoliberalism and the remnants of heavy-handed control by capitalist developmental state or the Party State. However, as the previous section has demonstrated, Asian economies are also rich with histories of popular struggles, having offered spaces of political education across generations who fought for their rights on the streets and in their everyday space of mobilization. In Asian societ-

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ies, where homeownership and property investment have become a virtue and an aspiration for upward social mobility, the construction of progressive urban futures is in need of realizing new ways of organizing the structures of ownership and social redistribution, while challenging the existing ‘cultural hegemony of property’ from below. Property hegemony, built on the state promotion of homeownership, real estate speculation, and housing assets as key to personal welfare, creates a greater schism in the society. Having witnessed decades-long sustenance of ‘property states’ (Haila 2016), the unequal redistribution of social (property) wealth has reached a point of no return, making it near impossible for younger generations to replicate the fortunes of their parents’ generations who benefited from the economic success of the developmental statism despite constraints on political freedom. As exhibited in the Occupy Movement in Hong Kong or Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan as well as other popular protests in Asia (for example, Candle Light Revolution in 2016–2017 in South Korea), not only the urban poor but also students and precarious workers who do not enjoy the protection won by organized labor are exhibiting their anger and frustrations about intensifying socio-economic inequalities, worsening life conditions, and exacerbating social injustice. Housing as exchange value plays a key role in precipitating such anger and frustration. One of the key considerations in thinking about progressive urban futures is to build an alternative narrative of people’s existing practices of resistance and contestation, placed in a larger context of societal transformation that the region’s rich history of political mobilization for democracy and civic liberty demonstrates. Only then can we begin to come up with some credible strategies to protect our homes and neighborhoods from the exploitation by the rich and powerful. Here, perhaps there is a good reason to be mindful of the need to combine protests against displacement with those protests against other types of social injustice in both private and public domains. Displacement from home or inability to recreate what sustained familial life may seriously undermine the potential for a community to resist violence and exploitation by the state and dominant classes. As bell hooks once claimed, ‘[f ]or when a people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, we cannot build a meaningful community of resistance’ (hooks 1990, p. 47). This is another reason that this volume ascertains the need to take housing seriously. Finally, the efforts to challenge the ‘property hegemony’ would benefit from thinking of cities as ‘urban commonwealth’ (see Kohn 2016). As

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André Gorz (1980) succinctly argued, we live in a society characterized by the ‘poverty of affluence,’ that is, the production of poverty not because there is a lack of adequate supply of products to consume, but because of the ways in which goods are produced and redistributed. While he refers to the poverty of affluence in the context of industrially advanced societies of the West, such labeling can be equally applied, with some caveat, to contemporary Asia discussed in this volume. What will be important to achieve is a system of urban commons (or commune-ing; see Chap. 8 by Didi Han) that considers cities as sites of ‘commonwealth’ (Kohn 2016) or as ‘commons’ (Stavrides 2016) so that every urbanite is entitled to a share of wealth societies have amassed. Put it this way, we can think of, for instance, how gentrification can be challenged by ensuring an equitable system of production and redistribution of ground rents, a large chunk of which are currently appropriated by the few, such as landlords, without contribution to their increase. As Harvey (2012, p. 66) notes, ‘[t]he city and the urban process that produces it are … major sites of political, social, and class struggles.’ It will be important to acknowledge that contemporary capitalism produces more than it needs, and turning the unequally distributed material affluence into seeds for alternative urban futures would require progressive politics to overcome isolated political actions and establish a horizontal network that transcends one’s own existing spaces of mobilization, be they local, regional, national, transnational, or personal.

Note 1. For instance, Denis Dwyer (1965) refers to the political apathy assumed to be exhibited by squatters who are understood not to have launched political actions against their relocation. However, Smart and Lui (2009, p.  150) argue against such view, ascertaining that ‘[t]his attribution of “apathy” neglects the considerable degree of resistance to squatter clearance in the 1950s and later, and inappropriately reads back into the past the higher degree of compliance once resistance had forced the government to begin resettling rather than simply clearing, thus reducing the degree of resent that they experienced.’

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Index1

A Accumulation by dispossession, 37 Affordability, 1, 2, 22, 29, 37, 61, 63, 74, 79, 135 Affordable housing, 12, 15, 21, 48, 62, 63, 98, 129, 131 Asian financial crisis, 6, 14, 28, 126, 138, 139, 174, 197 Asset-based welfare, 10 Authoritarian regime, 71, 73, 81, 85, 86 B Bangkok, 11, 12, 71–87, 194 Bay Area Action Plan, 48, 60 Bingage (The empty/Guests’ shop), 180 Bin-Go (the communal bank Bin-Go), 179–181, 183, 187, 189n9 Binmaeul (The Empty/Guests’ village), 171, 187

Bin-Zib (The Empty/Guests’s house), 14, 15, 171–174, 176–188, 188n1, 189n3, 189n5, 189n8, 189n9 Built environment, 8, 113, 134, 138, 139, 148, 149, 151, 154, 159, 193, 198 Bundamgeum (shared expenses), 177, 181, 186, 187, 189n6 C Candle Light Revolution, 204 Capital accumulation, 23, 25, 73, 138, 139, 148, 151, 159, 196 Capitalism, 4, 6, 14, 30, 49, 52, 94, 96, 123, 124, 139, 149, 178, 205 Castells, Manuel, 3, 38, 52, 194, 196 Chen Shui-bian, 28 Chiang Ching-kuo, 28, 26

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 Y.-L. Chen, H. B. Shin (eds.), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia, The Contemporary City, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55015-6

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INDEX

Chiang Kai-Shek, 26 China, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12–14, 16n2, 24–26, 28, 29, 48, 51, 53, 54, 64, 65, 96, 97, 109, 114, 116n1, 121–140, 147–166, 194, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 203 Chonse, 175, 176, 179, 185 Ciputra, 100, 102–113, 115 Civility, 104 Class, 2, 8, 12, 14, 31, 39, 53, 54, 65, 85, 106, 114, 125, 140n1, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 156, 160–163, 166, 175, 197, 199, 203–205 Clientelism, 13, 71–87, 194, 199 Coercion, 197, 198 Cohousing, 171–188 Cold War, 194 Collective consumption, 3, 8, 38, 194, 196 Commodification, 1, 6, 7, 9, 13, 23, 31, 38, 40, 94, 106–108, 113, 133, 150, 165 Commonwealth, 15, 195, 203–205 Commune, 188n2 Communism, 174–177, 181, 189n7 Community, 14, 15, 55, 58, 80, 82, 84, 85, 104, 110–112, 123, 148, 150, 158, 160–162, 171–173, 177, 180–188, 188n2, 189n8, 189n9, 204 Compensation packages, 122, 126, 127, 131–134 Condensed industrialization, 7, 16n2, 193, 196, 199 Construction of consent, 197 Consumer choice, 10 Co-research, 173 Cultural hegemony of property, 197, 199, 204 Culture, 131, 133, 137, 148, 151, 156, 160, 177, 187 Culture of property, 10, 38, 196, 197

D Danwei-subsidized housing, 154, 156–158, 160, 161 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 28, 198 Democratization, 11, 27–30, 33, 39, 72, 79, 87, 95, 194, 195, 198, 201 Demolition, 128, 131, 133, 136, 163, 175 Deregulation, 2, 4, 9, 37, 49, 95, 167n3 Developer, 12, 13, 26, 28, 29, 31, 53, 58, 61, 74, 75, 77, 78, 86, 87, 94, 100–106, 108, 110–112, 166, 175, 196 Developmentalism, 7, 9, 12, 13, 48, 50, 85, 95, 194 Developmental neoliberalism, 7, 10, 50, 65, 96 Developmental state, 3, 7, 9, 12, 15, 23, 28, 30–32, 38, 40n1, 50, 96, 194–197, 199, 202, 203 Developmental statism, 4, 7, 51, 204 Dingzihu, 202 Displacement, 8, 12, 13, 34, 35, 47–65, 121–140, 194–198, 200, 201, 204 Doi Moi, 93, 98, 99 E Entrepreneurialism, 114, 150 Ethnography, 149–165, 167n4, 172 Everyday life, 112, 149, 151–154, 159, 161, 172, 173, 177, 184 F Financialization, 1, 7, 8, 11, 14, 31, 53, 86, 174, 175 Forced eviction, 128, 197, 198, 200–202 Free market principles, 5

 INDEX 

G Gated communities, 13, 14, 39, 104, 148–153, 156, 158, 167n4, 188 Gentrification, 8, 50, 51, 62, 121, 134, 138, 183, 186, 187, 200–202, 205 Geopolitics, 48, 59, 65 Global East, 9, 10, 16n2 Global financial crisis, 14, 175, 197 Global North, 6, 36, 194 Global South, 6, 36 Gramsci, A., 195 Grassroots politics, 195 H Hanoi, 11, 13, 93–116, 194 Harvey, David, 4, 31, 96, 124, 193, 205 Hegemony, 4, 36, 196, 203 Hegemony, property, 15 Homeownership, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16n1, 21, 23, 24, 30–32, 39, 51–53, 57, 63, 64, 72, 124, 126, 129, 147–166, 172, 174, 195, 196, 204 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), 2, 3, 9–12, 23, 34, 38, 47–65, 194, 196, 200 hooks, bell, 204 Housing, 1–16, 21–40, 47, 71–87, 93–116, 121–140, 147, 174, 194 Housing Act, 29, 35, 38, 40 Housing crisis, 12, 47–65 Housing culture, 133 Housing mobility, 48 Housing reform, 33, 98, 122, 123, 125–133, 138, 139 Housing voucher, 28

213

I Indemnificatory housing, 131, 134, 135, 138 Inequality, 1–3, 7, 9, 12–14, 31, 37, 40, 98, 121–140, 147–166, 199, 201, 204 J Jae-tekeu (financial technology), 176 Joint Redevelopment Program (JRP), 175 K Keynesian welfare state, 10 Korea, 23, 174–176, 183 Korea, South, 3, 9, 14, 23, 137, 171–188, 198, 201, 204 L Land Justice League, 57, 63 Land lease rights, 61 Leasehold system, 52 Lee Teng-hui, 28 Lees, Loretta, 8 Lefebvre, Henri, 149, 151, 152, 154, 166 Local Research Community (LRC), 64 M Ma Ying-Jeou, 29 Maeul mandeulgi [village community development], 185, 187 Marketization, 13, 23, 49, 97, 124, 127, 130, 203 Market modernism, 115 Marx, Karl, 177 Merrifield, Andy, 8, 203 Methodological nationalism, 199

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INDEX

Middle classes, 3, 81, 133, 147, 148, 150–151, 153–155, 160–163, 165, 166, 167n2, 193–196, 199, 202 Modernism, 13, 93–116, 195 Modernization, 97–99, 104, 114–116, 139, 195 Modernization, socialist, 115 Mortgage, 1, 4, 14, 27, 28, 30, 31, 36, 61, 78, 87, 133, 159, 162 Mortgage subsidies, 4 Municipal government, 128, 130, 131 N Nail-house, 202 Nail household, 126, 138, 202 Nanjing, 11, 13, 14, 122, 123, 127–136, 140n1, 140n2, 152, 153, 157, 158, 163 Nationalist Party (KMT), 24–26, 28, 29, 36, 198 NENT, 55–59, 62, 65 Neoliberal colonization, 5 Neoliberal developmentalism, 7, 12 Neoliberalism, 2, 4–14, 30, 31, 47–65, 76, 86, 87, 93–97, 109, 114–116, 122, 123, 125, 135, 149–152, 156, 165, 166n1, 167n3, 175, 194, 195, 203 actually existing neoliberalism, 5, 95, 115 Neoliberalization, 2, 4–7, 10–12, 14, 15, 23, 27–32, 39, 40, 49, 71–87, 95–97, 109, 114, 121, 138, 139, 195 Neoliberal urbanization, 2, 5, 6, 14 New Territories, 48, 49, 53, 54, 59 New town, 48, 49, 54–65, 102 New urban zone, 93–116, 194

O Occupy Movement, 201 P Party State, 2, 9, 13–15, 114, 122, 124, 126, 137, 138, 194, 195, 198, 200, 202, 203 Passive consent, 197 Pearl River Delta, 47–65 People’s Action Party, 198 Politics of property, 10 Post-developmentalism, 7 Privatization, 1, 4, 8, 9, 13, 14, 23, 30, 37, 40n2, 49, 63, 109, 121, 125–130, 138, 147–166, 167n3 Production of space, 150, 152, 166 Productivist welfare, 30, 52, 194 Progressive urban movements, 195, 198–202 Project-Financing (PF), 176 Property, 8, 10, 23, 24, 37–39, 51, 53, 59, 61–63, 78, 97, 126, 127, 131–133, 136, 139, 149–153, 155, 159, 164, 165, 167n5, 176–178, 185, 188, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200, 203, 204 Property-based welfare, 23, 24, 50, 64, 66n1 Property hegemony, 15, 193–205 Property-led redevelopment, 201 Property ownership, 37, 157 Property-owning democracy, 202 Property rights, 4, 5, 37, 121–140 Property state, 204 Property tax, 23, 35, 40, 61 Public, 4, 5, 11, 14, 22, 24–26, 30–33, 35–37, 39, 50, 52, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 72, 75, 80–85, 87, 94, 101, 102, 104–105, 107–109, 112–114, 126, 127, 129, 134, 137, 139, 140n1, 150,

 INDEX 

155, 158, 159, 172, 173, 183, 185, 198, 200, 204 Public and private partnership (PPPs), 30, 37, 134, 135, 139 Public housing, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11–13, 22–24, 26–29, 34, 38, 40n2, 47–49, 51–53, 57, 58, 62–65, 66n1, 72–74, 78–81, 84–87, 88n2, 105, 122, 126–131, 137, 140n1, 155, 196 Public rental housing, 12, 13, 29, 32, 33, 52, 53, 57, 61, 62, 131 R Real estate, 8–10, 12, 23, 26, 29, 34–37, 40, 61, 62, 84, 102, 112, 126, 132, 139, 147, 159, 166, 167n5, 175, 176, 179, 187, 196, 197, 203 Real estate speculation, 14, 174, 175, 204 Rental housing, 9, 16n1, 22, 32, 35, 38, 73, 139, 175, 201 Rent control, 9, 53–54 Resettlement, 123, 134–136 Resistance, 7, 15, 39, 40, 95, 116, 123, 126, 128, 130, 133, 135–137, 180, 195, 196, 201, 202, 204, 205n1 Rolnik, Raquel, 2, 8, 31 Rule by law, 197 S Sedimented financialization, 175 Seoul, 11, 14, 34, 171, 174, 176, 186, 189n6, 195, 201, 202 Seoul Style Urban Regeneration Project, 186 Shantytown renovation, 135, 136, 138 Shin, Hyun Bang, 16n2, 124, 128–129, 175

215

Singapore, 3, 6, 9, 10, 23, 34, 38, 47, 198 Slum, 52, 74, 81–83, 87, 175 Social engineering, 36, 97–100, 102, 104 Social equity, 23, 104 Social housing, 8, 11, 12, 21–40, 165, 183, 194 Social Housing Advocacy Consortium (SHAC), 21, 22, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40n3 Socialist modernism, 13, 93–116 Socialist Party State, 2 Social justice, 37, 203 Social space, 149–154 Social welfare, 29, 39, 83, 125, 130, 133, 138 Space, 5, 6, 8, 13, 14, 37, 53, 71, 78, 94, 95, 110–112, 129, 139, 148–152, 157, 158, 165, 166, 174–180, 183, 185–187, 189n8, 189n9, 200, 203–205 Spatial fix, 14 Spatial production, 14, 148, 150–152, 155, 158 Speculation, 12, 14, 16n1, 23, 26, 31, 32, 34, 37–39, 174, 175, 197, 203, 204 Speculative investment, 9, 16n1, 133, 138 Squatter, 24, 35, 71–73, 81–85, 205n1 State control, 102, 108–109, 114, 165 State-sponsored neoliberalism, 14, 139 Sunflower Student Movement, 204 T Taipei City, 22, 33, 34, 39 Taiwan, 3, 4, 9–12, 21–40, 127, 135, 198, 204 Tenants Purchase Scheme, 53 Thailand, 12, 13, 71–74, 78, 79, 84, 87 Three Principles of the People, 25

216 

INDEX

Transaction taxes, 28, 31 Transition economy, 114 Tsai Ing-Wen, 33 U Umbrella Movement, 12, 65, 201 Urban China, 123, 127, 147–166, 167n4 Urban form, 5, 109, 112, 115 Urbanization, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 16n2, 36, 53, 97, 98, 105, 112, 124, 125, 139, 174, 194, 196, 197, 199, 202, 203

Urbanization of capital, 193, 195 Urban planning, 25, 27, 49, 73, 97, 113 Urban redevelopment, 8, 35, 50, 62, 122, 124, 133, 134, 137, 175, 201 Urban Renewal Authority, 50, 55 Urban space, 7, 8, 14, 98, 104, 108, 110, 112, 125–127, 149, 150, 152, 156, 162, 197 V Vietnam, 13, 93–116, 194, 195, 203