China's Economic Challenge: Smashing the Iron Rice Bowl by Hughes Neil C.;

Author:Hughes, Neil C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Housing in Transition

In 1949, after decades of war and dislocation, housing was in a dreadful state. More than one-half of the nation’s housing stock was said to have deteriorated badly. In Shanghai one-fifth of the people lived in slum conditions, packed into shacks or dilapidated structures with no water or sewage. In Changsha three-fourths of residential areas were classified as slums, and in Chengdu per capita living space in its slums averaged 1.6 square meters.61 A 1955 survey of 166 cities revealed that one-half of all residential housing was too old or unsafe to be occupied, and in 1956, 580,000 square meters of housing collapsed in 175 cities.62 One approach was to demolish old housing, and in some cities one-fifth of the total stock was demolished. The government soon found that for every square meter demolished, two square meters of new space were required to resettle the displaced individuals. Thus greater efforts were made to upgrade existing housing. The state assumed major responsibility for providing urban housing through central government budget allocations to municipal housing bureaus or to state enterprises for building rental units. By keeping wages low, the government collected an implicit income tax from civil servants and workers, and in return these individuals received housing, medical care, food subsidies, and other benefits through their work units. Rents were really token payments fixed at less than one percent of the recipient’s annual wage.63

With most investment going into industrial production and very little into urban infrastructure from 1950 onward, the condition of most housing can only be imagined. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward in 1959, housing was removed as a separate item from the state planning system. Ironically, the subsequent dislocations and massive transfers of young people to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution raised average per capita living space nationally to five square meters.64

During the Cultural Revolution, local planning and housing bureaus were shut down, and the former farmers, who often became responsible for running urban centers, brought a strong antiurban bias from their own experience. It was not only almost impossible to obtain any materials to repair or maintain buildings, but anyone who did so would have run the risk of being labeled “bourgeois.” The housing stock continued to deteriorate, although in the latter part of the Cultural Revolution new housing had to be built for returnees from the countryside, and more resources were devoted to this task. These trends are illustrated in the amount of housing built during each of China’s first four five-year plans, spanning most of the Maoist period. It ranged from a low of 10.8 million square meters in the Third Plan (1966–1970) to a high of 25.2 million square meters in the Fourth Plan (1971–1975).65

At the end of Mao Zedong’s regime, thirty-eight cities with more than 500,000 people contained the majority of the nation’s medium and large industrial enterprises, accounting for two-thirds of China’s industrial output. Most workers lived with their families within walking or cycling distance of their employment. The work unit was the economic, social, and political center of their lives.

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