关于中国城市住房改革路径的研究

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the features of Chinese housing reform process and remodeling during the market transition. In early 1980s, in order to resolve the contradictions in the housing area and the heavy financial pressure, the government embarked on the traditional socialistic public housing system. The main strategy was to implement commercialization and privatization of the public houses, and development of real estate market. This article reviews the adjusting and remodeling process of the socialistic housing system, and expanded on the gradual reform features of the housing system changes. The essence of China’s gradual reforms of public housing is incremental reform. It would be quite a long time that the two-track system of public housing units and commercial housing lasts. Gradual approach to reform can avoid social unrest the turn of the old and new interests led to through the two-track system. At the same time, the two-track system provides the old structure factors with living conditions. Consequently, the impact of housing welfare system doesn’t weaken, though the reform is deepened. Instead the housing welfare system becomes an institutional obstacle that constrains the transition to a new system. The institutional change process embodies the path dependent characteristic. In 1998, in order to break the stalemate situation of the housing reform, the government adopted a radical policy to stop the welfare-oriented public housing distribution system. It was the financial crisis in East Asia that suddenly changed the external environment, and this prompted China to move quickly to the housing reform. In short, housing is a field in which the political, economic and social factors of each country play interactively. There is a close link among China’s housing reform process and the China’s reform logic of restructuring, or China’s arrangements of political and economic systems.