Article

Urban Studies
2019, Vol. 56(12) 2480–2498
Ó Urban Studies Journal Limited 2018
Residential relocation and the Article reuse guidelines:
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remaking of socialist workers DOI: 10.1177/0042098018790724
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through state-facilitated urban
redevelopment in Chengdu, China

Qinran Yang
School of Architecture and Design, Southwest Jiaotong University, China

David Ley
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract
This article discusses the unevenness in the social effects of state-facilitated urban redevelopment in
China by examining the social transformation experienced by the housing class of socialist workers
in two inner-city redevelopment projects in Chengdu. After government compensation schemes, for-
mer public tenants and subsidised owners associated with socialist work-units are far more privi-
leged through cash compensation or relocation in new self-owned apartments than two other
housing classes – migrant tenants and homeowners of commodity or rural housing – impacted by
the same urban redevelopment. The objective and subjective transformation of socialist workers
during the process of resettlement are examined from field interviews, with their status changing
from welfare recipients in danwei compounds to proprietors in new gated communities. We con-
clude that state-facilitated urban redevelopment in the Chinese city is interdependent with, and
mutually reinforced by, state-led working-class transformation in market society, so as to balance the
two critical national objectives of economic growth and social stability. State dominance in conferring
variable opportunities via launching unequal housing trajectories among social groups determines the
significant disparity of impacts from urban redevelopment in China.

Keywords
homeownership, residential relocation, socialist workers, state-facilitated urban redevelopment,
state–society relations, status change

Corresponding author:
Qinran Yang, School of Architecture and Design,
Southwest Jiaotong University, 999 Xian Road, Pidu
District, Chengdu, Sichuan 611756, China.
Email: qinran.yang@swjtu.edu.cn
Yang and Ley 2481

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Ⲵᖡ૽൘н਼䱦ቲѻ䰤ᆈ൘ᐘབྷⲴнᒣㅹDŽ

‫ޣ‬䭞䇽
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ॆ

Received March 2016; accepted July 2018

Introduction districts of the inner city of Chengdu in west-

Between 1995 and 2005, approximately
750,000 households were displaced in
Shanghai’s older neighbourhoods (Iossifova,
2009: 102), while in Beijing more than 500,000
households were evicted and their homes were
demolished from 1990 to 2004 (Hsing, 2010:
72). The unprecedented scale of residential
relocation has attracted much criticism of
state-facilitated urban redevelopment in China.
Adverse impacts of residential relocation on
those who are displaced include unfair com-
pensation practices, long commutes after sub-
urban relocation, hardship imposed by
inadequate infrastructure, and the risk of
unemployment (He, 2010; He and Wu, 2007;
Shin and Li, 2013; Wu, 2004).
There is much truth to this portrayal, but
it is perhaps not the whole truth. Diverse
housing classes live in the older neighbour-
hoods of Chinese cities, and they experience
different housing trajectories, muddying any
simple specification of harmful dislocation as
a full account of the social impacts of urban
redevelopment. This article examines the
social dynamics of a relatively privileged class
of socialist workers in two redevelopment
ern China. These residents formerly rented or
purchased publicly-owned units from munici-
pal housing authorities or work-units (dan-
weis) at a price far below the market price.
We proceed by first noting principal themes
in the literature on the social effects of state-
facilitated urban redevelopment. Following
reference to data sources and methods in
Chengdu, we analyse government policies and
decisions for resettling and compensating resi-
dents affected by urban redevelopment proj-
ects. The next two sections draw attention to
the change in social status of the socialist
workers after compensation and relocation.
The last section summarises and discusses the
theoretical implications of this study.
State-facilitated urban
redevelopment and societies
after residential relocation
In the Western literature, state-facilitated
urban renewal is typically associated with
the post-1945 initiatives by central govern-
ments in North America and Western
Europe. The intent was economic revitalisa-
tion of the central city and poverty
2482
alleviation in the declining inner city. Yet
too often renewal resulted in displacement
penalising the urban poor (Gotham, 2001;
Halpern, 1995; Young and Willmott, 1957).
Urban redevelopment in China has been
accelerated by the fundamental transition
from a socialist redistributive economy to an
emergent market economy (He, 2007; Shin,
2009; Zhang and Fang, 2004). Yet like the
precedent in the West, literature has exposed
substantial reductions in family life chances
resulting from redevelopment-induced dislo-
cation. The suburbanisation of former
inner-city residents has caused increased
commuting costs, loss of adequate public
facilities and job loss or underemployment
(Day, 2013; He, 2010; He and Wu, 2007;
Wu, 2004). Urban village renewal could
decrease rental income for farmers whose
agricultural land was requisitioned (Shin
and Li, 2013), with requisition raising a sub-
stantial question of property violation.
Aside from economic costs, emotional
and social impacts of redevelopment-induced
dislocation have also been documented in
Western studies (Fried, 1967; Young and
Willmott, 1957). Chinese researchers have
shown that social interaction decreases with
redevelopment of older neighbourhoods
(Wu and He, 2005). Residents relocated by
urban redevelopment were neither motivated
nor financially able to participate in social
activities in the new neighbourhoods (Huang
et al., 2017). Social conflict within families
was sharpened (Forrest, 2011; Zhang, 2017).
These displacement costs have evoked the
conceptual significance of gentrification. In
capitalist cities, while classical gentrification
during the 1970s and 1980s featured straight-
forward market competition for inner-city
residence, state-led gentrification involves
greater stimulation and direction of the free
market, including the development of state-
divested properties (Hackworth and Smith,
2001; Lees and Ley, 2008). In China, the the-
oretical perspective of state-led gentrification
Urban Studies 56(12)
has deepened an understanding of the poli-
tics of socio-spatial upgrading that accentu-
ates unequal rights among urban groups.
Converging with current literature about
global gentrification (Lees et al., 2015, 2016),
a dominant explanation sees state-led gentri-
fication in China as driven by the political-
economic force of capital accumulation via
real estate development (He, 2007; Shin,
2009; Song and Wu, 2010; Zhang and Fang,
2004). Following socio-spatial upgrading,
direct and exclusionary displacement pro-
ceeds not only through a market process of
competitive bidding (Wu and Wang, 2016)
but also through coordinated dispossession
(Shin, 2016) and relocation of existing resi-
dents (Liu and Wong, 2018).
A theoretical task of this article is to com-
plicate the narrative of state-led gentrifica-
tion in China by pointing to the diversity of
outcomes for different residential groups in
old neighbourhoods, with winners as well as
losers in the redevelopment process.
Residential relocation in China is regulated
by government policies addressing housing
losses among affected residents. Those gov-
ernment policies, together with strategies
used by families in the negotiation with state
actors, can impact the gains and losses of
community members (Forrest, 2011; Lin,
2015; Shih, 2010). Consequently, groupings
of current residents may be confronted with
different socio-economic circumstances dur-
ing and after urban redevelopment (Hu
et al., 2015; Shin and Li, 2013). In this play
of opportunity and penalty, high compensa-
tion rates by local governments might even
create a ‘propertied’ housing class among
dislocated residents (Liu and Wong, 2018:
166).
A second and major theoretical objective
is to relate the diverse social outcomes of
urban redevelopment with the distinctive,
yet also changing state–society relations in
the post-reform cities of China. Changing
urbanism represents a transformation of
Yang and Ley
state–society relations and, more specifically,
of state–society–capital relations at the polit-
ical, ideological and institutional levels (He
and Lin, 2015; Lin, 2007). According to Lin
(2007: 17), the Chinese reformist state, fol-
lowed by the emerging new urbanism, has
abandoned its parental role while moving
towards a more ‘relaxed and more flexible
state–society relation’. In this transition, the
egalitarian, working-class politics of Mao
Zedong are being replaced by a reformist
state that endorses individual entrepreneur-
ship and encourages profit-making by indi-
viduals with market capabilities.
This transition has been described in the
literature on the changing state strategies of
social development in Chinese cities, empha-
sising the trajectory of an affluent segment
in society rather than the fate of lower-
income groups. Anagnost (2008: 497), for
example, sees the liberation of individual
consumption to be a type of ‘national proj-
ect on a cultural form’, which conforms to
the Chinese Communist Party’s social engi-
neering with the aim to expand the middle
class and construct new social norms. The
promotion of personal consumption trans-
fers the economic responsibility of the state
to individuals. It meanwhile empowers and
disempowers individual consumers by
embedding entrepreneurship in society and
by entering economic risk into the everyday
life of buyers and speculators (Ren, 2013).
Newly built residential and commercial
spaces have flourished in Chinese cities
along with the rising middle-class consumers
(Davis, 2005; Tomba, 2005).
This study aims to associate the dynamic
relations between the reformist state and
lower-income groups with the social out-
comes of state-facilitated urban redevelop-
ment and residential relocation in China.
For the two theoretical tasks, this article
examines a distinctive process of social
transformation initiated by state-led residen-
tial relocation. We narrate the status change
2483
for a working-class group experiencing resi-
dential relocation through inner-city redeve-
lopment, as state-led social engineering
grants households housing possession and
membership of a self-governing gated com-
munity. This specifically urban and social
process is itself nested in a broader national
project of economic development through
urbanisation, wherein state actors and
danwei employers negotiate the changing
state–danwei–workers relations in order to
support the grander imperative of economic
marketisation with social order in large
Chinese cities.
Our focus is upon long-established public
tenants and subsidised homeowners in the
old inner-city neighbourhoods, a housing
class of socialist workers. Public tenants
have rented dwellings from municipal
authorities and socialist danweis, while subsi-
dised homeowners have purchased collective
or public housing using government or dan-
wei subsidies. This group are mostly retired
or laid-off workers in state-owned produc-
tion enterprises, which flourished at an
earlier stage of the evolution of the People’s
Republic of China. They own urban hukou
and are low-income citizens born in the first
and second generations of post-1949 China.
Socialist workers form a major group
impacted by redevelopment, for danwei com-
pounds are a principal feature in Chinese
inner cities (Zhang and Fang, 2004).
Moreover, socialist workers embody the
pre-reform social formation of an industrial
working class, a class historically made and
distinguished by the political advantages
granted by the state bureaucracy in the
socialist era (Walder, 1984). These political
advantages have continued to influence state
intervention in urban redevelopment.
However, there are other groups also occu-
pying these old inner-city neighbourhoods.
Often, the largest single resident group com-
prises migrant workers from the countryside
without an urban hukou who are private
2484
tenants renting from individual landlords. A
third and smaller group of households are
private homeowners and urbanised villagers
in self-built housing, impacted when redeve-
lopment demolishes commercial apartments
and former villages enveloped by
urbanisation.
It is the diversity of their housing careers
preceding and following displacement from
old neighbourhoods that raises the utility of
reviving the concept of housing class (Rex
and Moore, 1967) to characterise resident
groups holding both different economic
resources and also divergent legal and politi-
cal status in urban society. Rex and Moore
argued that housing tenure and housing
location articulated with the political actions
of households in the English city, and could
not be easily or completely reducible to eco-
nomic status. Although the concept of hous-
ing class attracted some criticism (see
Saunders, 1984), we find it useful in differen-
tiating opportunities and disadvantages as
residents confront involuntary relocation
that will shape their collective life chances.
The Chengdu case studies
Since 2000, Chengdu, in south-west China,
has experienced rapid growth in response to
national directives encouraging urban devel-
opment in western China. With great ambi-
tions to compete with the first-tier cities of
China, the municipal government is active in
promoting urban transformation through
investing in the built environment. Three
waves of large-scale renewal programmes
were launched by the municipal government
in 2002, 2009 and 2012. The city provides an
appropriate lens for illuminating the charac-
teristics of urban redevelopment in the
prefecture-level cities in China that are stra-
tegically manoeuvring for radical
transformation.
The two case studies are the Caojia Alley
(CJA) and Jinniu Wanda (JW) projects
Urban Studies 56(12)
(Figure 1), both under the administrative jur-
isdiction of the Jinniu District of Chengdu.
The physical and social fabrics of the two
districts are fairly representative of many
dilapidated danwei neighbourhoods in the
inner cities of China. The CJA project
(2012–2016) is located north-east of the com-
mercial and business centre of Chengdu. A
13.2 ha area included 2654 public rental
housing units and 880 subsidised units
owned by a state-owned enterprise, the No.
3 Construction Company of Sichuan prov-
ince, and the Jinniu District Housing
Department, while another 128 units were
commercial apartments. The JW project
(2009–2012) is situated along the north side
of the First Ring Road and proximate to
wholesale clothing and houseware markets.
The 13.6 ha area once contained public
rental and subsidised units owned by the
Jinniu Housing Department and some public
institutions.
The concentration of public rental hous-
ing is a direct result of the underinvestment
by danweis in housing their employees after
enterprise reform. Demographic change
since the 1980s, reflecting the arrival of
migrant workers, the outmigration of weal-
thier households and the immobility of
underemployed, indigenous households, has
magnified the difficulties of property reno-
vation and accelerated the abandonment of
collective-owned properties by danweis. In
the meantime, public tenants and subsidised
owners began to sublease the whole or part
of their units to migrant tenants. Some pub-
lic tenants and subsidised owners who
moved out then became absentee renters
and owners. We were informed by local offi-
cials that before redevelopment both districts
accommodated approximately one-third
socialist workers in public rental units and
subsidised units, two-thirds migrants in the
sublets of public rental and subsidised hous-
ing and a few homeowners who had pur-
chased housing in the market.
Yang and Ley
Figure 1. The locations of the case studies.
Source: Map drawn by authors based on materials provided by Chengdu Urban–Rural Housing Department.
Another important reason to select the two
cases is because the two projects were built
during a period when the central and local
governments made substantial revisions to rel-
evant policies to tighten the regulation of
demolition and relocation. As the pilot proj-
ect of the North Chengdu Redevelopment
Programme established by Chengdu munici-
pal government in 2012, the CJA project later
became a showcase of Chengdu’s achievement
in urban redevelopment and won attention
from the central government. As a result, the
district government in some degree increased
the compensation for affected households in
the CJA project more than in the other proj-
ects in Chengdu. But the two cases reveal
some essential ideas of state actors in the
trade-off between economic performance and
social welfare.
In the CJA project, the government and a
financing company were primary actors in
property expropriation and land consolida-
tion; Evergrande, a large corporate builder,
2485
led real estate development. As for the
results of resettlement and compensation,
migrant tenants as usual were expelled with-
out compensation; 3756 households were
deemed as eligible for compensation, includ-
ing existing public tenants and owner-
occupants and some absentee renters and
owners who were actually living outside the
redeveloped neighbourhoods when the proj-
ect was established. Approximately 2400
opted for the offer of on-site relocation,
while approximately 600 households were
relocated off-site in three districts outside
the Third Ring Road (Figure 1). More than
700 households opted for monetary compen-
sation. The JW area was redeveloped by
Dalian Wanda, then China’s largest private
property developer. Excepting the disadvan-
taged migrant tenants, 2100 households
chose on-site resettlement, whereas 900
households opted for monetary compensa-
tion and 162 households selected off-site
relocation.
2486
After redevelopment, both project dis-
tricts were subdivided into a much more
densely built-up neighbourhood of resettled
households, with additional residential and
commercial properties for new consumers
and investors. While the JW resettlement
neighbourhood contains eight new high-rise
buildings on a 2.2 ha land parcel, another 13
towers for new consumers occupy 5.7 ha of
land. The CJA project provided 15 resettle-
ment buildings on a site of less than 5 ha
and nine high-rises for new residents on the
other 4.4 ha of land.
Fieldwork was conducted between
December 2014 and April 2015 and from
December 2015 to January 2016. The pri-
mary data were generated through semi-
structured interviews with organisational
leaders involved in decision-making and
implementation, and socialist workers from
the two projects. Considerable use was also
made of planning and policy documents. We
approached relevant organisational leaders
via the recommendations of different inter-
mediaries, while the sampling of resident
informants combined recommendations by
Residents’ Committees and snowball sam-
pling. In total, nine organisational represen-
tatives accepted interviews, including six
public officials from the Housing Department,
the district Urban Redevelopment Task Force
and Residents’ Committees; two danwei man-
agers; and one manager of the CJA state-
owned development company. Resident
respondents comprised 20 on-site relocated res-
idents (14 former public tenants, six former
subsidised owners) and 20 off-site relocated
residents (16 public tenants, four subsidised
owners). A majority of residents were over 50
years old and had lived in the old neighbour-
hoods for over 25 years. In the following text,
each interviewee is given a classification code –
O for organisational members and R for resi-
dents – followed by an interview number.
Interviews with relocated socialist work-
ers lasted up to two hours and generated
Urban Studies 56(12)
data on relations between changing housing
conditions and life opportunities, lifestyles
and self-identification. Residents were
encouraged to share their work and housing
experiences and critical life events.
Informants were asked about their percep-
tions of the redevelopment projects and
interactions with other stakeholders.
Interviews with officials often exceeded three
hours and covered four main areas: basic
information about the two redevelopment
projects; government redevelopment policies
and policy implementation; information on
the officials’ participation in decision-
making and social governance; and their
overall assessment of the projects.
Homeownership for socialist
workers in state-facilitated urban
redevelopment
The state housing agenda in urban
redevelopment post-1990
In China, an early regulation on housing
demolition, issued in 1991, limited property
owners of both public and private rental
housing to in-kind compensation (State
Council, 1991). Moreover, the policy clearly
prevented forced evictions of private tenants
by property owners and required stabilisa-
tion of the private rental price before and
after property exchange. In 2001, the 1991
Regulation was amended to eliminate con-
trol over rental prices (State Council, 2001).
It also tended to leave decisions on main-
taining public and private leasehold relations
to property owners. Since this change, no
formal policies have protected the rental sta-
tus of private tenants, most applying to rural
migrants working in unskilled jobs in the
city. For socialist workers, compensation
methods varied by city and project. During
the 2000s, purchase and monetary compen-
sation were typically encouraged (Day,
2013; Shih, 2010). This policy shift was
Yang and Ley
based on the intensive marketisation of real
estate during the 2000s after the comprehen-
sive and nationwide housing reform in 1998.
The displacement risk was increased due to
the difficulty for affected residents to
rehouse in the inner city with existing mone-
tary compensation.
The central government made attempts to
establish a new affordable housing system. In
2007, national funds were issued for low-cost
rental housing and price-controlled housing
construction (State Council, 2007). In 2010,
the crucial New Ten Articles pioneered hous-
ing provision dominated by social security
dwellings and affordable commodity units
(State Council, 2010). Nevertheless, it has
been argued that these policies failed to have
the expected results. The low-cost housing is
rented by government at discounted rates and
targets low-income families, whose eligibility
is tied to income level, sustaining the mini-
mum living standard set by sub-national gov-
ernments in different regions in China. Huang
(2012) found that 0.95 million units of low-
cost rental housing were built nationally by
2007, but four million households were still
receiving Minimum Living Standard
Assistance. In Chengdu, from 1999 to 2001,
the price-controlled housing construction of
one million square metres represented approx-
imately double the commodity housing pro-
duction, but in 2002, the total volume of
price-controlled housing decreased to less
than one-third that of new commodity hous-
ing (Chengdu Municipal Government, 2000–
2003). By 2010, only 3.2% of households in
the central urban areas of Chengdu lived in
low-cost rental housing (Population Census
Office of Chengdu Municipality, 2010).
The failure of national policies derives
from an ideological duality in the central
government, pursuing both welfare provi-
sion and economic liberalism (Huang, 2012).
Such competing objectives produced contra-
dictions between the advocacy of affordable
housing construction and other systemic
2487
reforms such as fiscal, tax and land reforms.
These systemic reforms strongly encouraged
local states to embrace their roles as urban
landlords, as land revenues were sought to
meet the economic responsibilities of local
state actors (Lin and Yi, 2011).
Since 2011, the national government has
increasingly brought social stability concerns
to the forefront of urban redevelopment
(Lin, 2015). A number of self-immolation
incidents, resisting forcible demolition and
removal, in the late 2000s prompted an
intensive review of housing demolition pol-
icy in 2011. The No. 590 Regulation on
Conveyance of Buildings on State-owned
Land and Compensation shifted the agents of
demolition from profit-orientated develo-
pers/demolition companies to government
sectors or non-profit institutions with a gov-
ernment mandate (State Council, 2011). The
regulation also abrogated the right of local
governments to exert forcible demolition
and removal while assigning the task to the
municipal legal, rather than political,
system.
Simultaneously, the Chinese government
promoted urban redevelopment as a strat-
egy leading to housing improvement for the
urban poor as well as market boosterism.
In June 2013, Premier Li Keqiang intro-
duced the urban redevelopment of dilapi-
dated neighbourhoods (penghuqu gaizao) as
a priority for contemporary strategies of
social and economic development. It was
intended to improve quality of life by lead-
ing disadvantaged people into new housing
while also supporting economic growth by
promoting domestic demand and consump-
tion (State Council, 2013). A primary strat-
egy proposed by the central government
targeting the twofold goals is to mobilise
the consumption of private housing by low-
income residents through in-kind or mone-
tary compensation in redevelopment proj-
ects. This strategy also fills the commodity-
housing inventory, given the high vacancy
2488
rate in many cities. In 2015, a new central
policy encouraged monetary compensation
(huobihua anzhi) for existing households in
dilapidated areas (State Council, 2015).
The Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural
Development and the China Development
Bank (2014) urged local governments to
establish agencies and standards to support
transactions between former residents of rede-
veloped neighbourhoods and developers of
unsold housing stock.
Homeownership inducements for socialist
workers
Based on the CJA and JW redevelopment
projects, we can now discuss the decision-
making by municipal government and dan-
wei employers to promote homeownership
for socialist workers within inner-city projects.
Facing redevelopment and following the 2001
and 2011 State Council Regulations, private
owners and subsidised owners in the two proj-
ects could select either monetary compensa-
tion or property exchange. Since 2008, this
stipulation has applied to public tenants,
conditioned by the significant process of
public–private tenure conversion (Chengdu
Municipal Government, 2008, 2012). They
are obliged to pay a tenure conversion fee to
the property’s previous owners, but at a heav-
ily discounted rate. Practically, the payment is
directly deducted from the compensation bill
for public tenants once they become private
owners. Private tenants, who are almost
always unentitled rural–urban migrants, are
excluded from any compensation.
Consequently, compensation has become
a market transaction, wherein an equivalent
exchange should occur between property
owners and the state. However, state actors
have selectively supported the public tenants
and subsidised owners by granting them the
full entitlement of property owners. Taking
the in-kind compensation as an example, the
Urban Studies 56(12)
subsidisation to each household contains
two parts: one is the new apartment in
exchange for the old one and the other is a
cash allowance for the household’s housing
costs during the transitional period. The
new apartment is provided by developers at
a discounted price, due to policy concessions
in land taxation and land use offered by the
local government to developers.
Public–private tenure conversion reflects
the retreat of both danwei employers and the
local government from responsibilities for
housing danwei employees. For danwei hous-
ing, a change of tenancy means the loss of
valuable assets from the work-unit. But,
paradoxically, old properties have long been
a burden to the work-unit due to annual
expenditures on housing maintenance fees
and housing-related welfare for residents,
who were mostly retired or laid off. Housing
privatisation in new self-owned units is an
effective way to quieten protests from resi-
dents and completely unload those responsi-
bilities from the danwei employers, but at the
cost of losing collective property ownership:
This is the dilemma of the old neighbour-
hoods. They are things of little value and yet
not bad enough to be thrown away (sizhiwu-
wei, qizhikexi). However, when urban redeve-
lopment is happening, the only choice you
have is to give up property ownership. For if
you did not, you would continue to have costs.
It is impossible for the danwei to provide the
money; actually, it cannot even afford it. If
you provided compensation for the danwei,
the residents would simply reject removal.
Then, nobody could gain any profit. Thus, it
is the top priority to ensure that the project
successfully proceeds and then to maintain
social stability. All of these objectives finally
mean you have to offer profits to people (ran-
gli yumin). (O25, danwei manager)
Local officials and danwei employers
might recognise that housing demolition and
compensation could be a potential trigger to
Yang and Ley
incite an uprising of residents. So housing
privatisation, according to one official,
becomes ‘the best way to both satisfy the
housing demands of residents and terminate
historical problems’ (O21, official from the
District Housing Department). Ironically,
the increased compensation sum for the
poor would be finally transferred to the
exchange value of the land. According to
local officials, the National Special Subsidy
for the Renewal of Dilapidated Areas
assigned a mere 600 Chinese yuan per
square metre of renewal construction to the
district. The costs of compensation and con-
struction were largely dependent on loans
issued by the China Development Bank,
which would be repaid by the land transac-
tion fees (O20, official from the District
Housing Department). In this case, the ele-
vation of compensation costs would increase
the basic price for land at auction, which is
evaluated by the local land resource man-
agement department by factoring in the cost
of land consolidation. Soaring land prices
would then encourage developers to extend
spatial commodification in the redeveloped
areas, through enlarging the area of redeve-
lopment, increasing the plot ratio of devel-
opment and producing more commercial
real estate and high-grade residences. These
activities lead to inflation of housing prices.
The status change of socialist
workers
Considering a market economy, Weber
(2009) separated the concepts of social status
from economic class when analysing social
stratification. While class is determined by
the economic resources a social group can
muster in the market, status takes shape in
the social sphere and is embodied in an
assumed style of life. To attain an elevated
status invokes a specific honour or achieve-
ment and impacts social networks of interac-
tion and exclusion. The possession of
2489
domestic property announces the social
transformation of socialist workers, embo-
died in a change of status and a sense of
upward social mobility, through the very
fact of possession, through a changing life-
style and through the cultivation of new pat-
terns of social interaction that include
exclusiveness as members of newly built
gated communities.
The advantages of possession
Compensation policies not only ensure
socialist workers a new and higher quality
home but also bring the anticipation of
financial benefits realisable in the market.
Before redevelopment, the old CJA neigh-
bourhood was the most densely occupied
section of the city. Built by the No. 3
Construction Company of Sichuan province
in 1956, the danwei housing in CJA is typi-
cally characterised by two- to three-storey
red-brick blocks of a minimalist and stan-
dardised design (Figure 2). The structure,
referred to as barrel buildings (tongzilou),
resembles studio apartments but is of far les-
ser quality. The basic housing unit is a single
room of an average 16 m2, which, in extreme
cases, accommodates two generations with
four to five members. Rooms are positioned
along corridors, and residents must cook
within these corridors and share public
toilets.
In the CJA redevelopment project, social-
ist workers were compensated for their pub-
lic/subsidised housing with an average offer
of 8000 Chinese yuan (approximately
US$1231) per square metre of the old prop-
erty. The government offered discounted
prices of 4500 Chinese yuan per square
metre (US$692) for off-site, and 7000
Chinese yuan (US$1077) for on-site resettle-
ment units as a concession to residents
selecting new properties (O2, official from
the CJA Residents’ Committee). Factoring
in other subsidies, a two-generation family
previously living in a two-room unit of 58
2490
Figure 2. Danwei housing in Caojia Alley before redevelopment.
Source: Photographs taken by authors in 2013.
m2 could exchange it for a nearby home of
90 m2 priced on the open market in 2013 at
approximately one million Chinese yuan
(US$153,846) by paying less than 20,000
Chinese yuan (US$3077) in a tenure conver-
sion fee (R4, CJA resident relocated on-site).
The off-site rebuilt apartment could be 1.5
times larger than the on-site option because
of the difference in housing prices.
Aside from investment potential, infor-
mants also treasured the high level of indi-
vidual autonomy following resettlement. In
personal narratives, they regarded Mao’s
China as frustrating their road to success
and keeping them impoverished: frequently
mentioned topics were the plight of families
due to political suppression during the
Cultural Revolution; the unfairness of the
bureaucratic system in the danwei for career
changes and housing welfare; and barriers to
personal development, such as schooling
and employment, due to political favourit-
ism. Against all these daunting experiences,
informants anticipated transcending their
pasts by embracing a new identity as self-
governing, home-owning citizens.
Urban Studies 56(12)
Membership of a gated community sig-
nifies the termination of the state–danwei–
workers relationship and a corresponding
enhancement in individual freedoms in orga-
nising personal working and social life. As
argued by Pow (2007: 830), living in the new
gated communities means not only a retreat
to privately developed spaces but also an
enhancement of ‘household autonomy and
personal freedom’, in contrast to ‘the hege-
monic control of the Communist Party
state’.
Now we have a sense of autonomy. This is
(due to) what they called ‘returning the power
to the people’ [huanquan yumin]. If you have
nothing, where is the power? Now you are the
property owner. You gain discursive power.
Now the Street Office, rather than danwei,
keeps my archive. Nobody can watch it and
change it informally. (R10, CJA resident relo-
cated off-site)
So too, homeownership raises self-
satisfaction and standing in a market society
(Ley and Teo, 2014). For instance, the new
apartment may enable a young man in a
Yang and Ley
relocated family to enter marriage or a
young couple to start a family after resettle-
ment. The older generation expects to leave
a valuable legacy, which will help their chil-
dren’s families to break the poverty cycle:
Indeed, this will be my son’s house, his capital
to develop his family after we all have gone.
This makes me select on-site relocation. The
off-site option could win me one more apart-
ment, where we could live separately, but the
on-site apartment will leave them more wealth
in the near future. (R4, CJA resident relocated
on-site)
Ultimately, perceiving these status advan-
tages, nearly all of the on-site resettled resi-
dents and a share of those resettled off-site
indicated a sense of upward mobility in
social status in the resettlement communities.
Subjectively, the term ‘propertied stratum’
(youchan jieceng) is commonly invoked by
informants to draw a contrast with their for-
mer proletariat status. Based on a sober view
of the economic transition and regime shift
in the city, a former public tenant from the
CJA neighbourhood described the change
before and after local redevelopment:
Here was once the fanciest residence of the
city. In the 1950s, our danwei founded the first
brickyard in the city and used bricks they pro-
duced to build those red brick buildings. They
invited the Soviet designers to do the architec-
tural design. Now they abandoned them; they
have abandoned us for a long time.
Evergrande [the developer] will become its
master. We are thrown into the housing mar-
ket, finally. It’s time to leave the place we have
lived for a half century. But we are now prop-
erty owners. The best part is to have our own
assets. (R3, CJA resident relocated on-site)
Compared with public tenants, the former
owner-occupants of subsidised housing expe-
rienced relatively stronger prior recognition
as homeowners. They tended to consider the
compensation available to them as less
2491
satisfactory than did the tenants, as property
exchange without tenure change brings a
smaller value-added effect. However, having
formerly been subject to the work-unit sys-
tem with relatively low incomes, the owner-
occupants still value the larger size of their
new subsidised housing both functionally
and as an enhanced asset.
Lifestyle change
Since the 1990s, property developers have
introduced new types of dwellings to remould
an urban lifestyle distinct from that of the
socialist era, notably gated high-rise or multi-
storey dwellings with a central garden, and
also luxury suburban communities (Pow and
Kong, 2007). Concomitantly, private con-
sumption prevails; residents have moved into
new apartments that distance them from the
socialist-era communal society. These habi-
tats comprise semantic fields with new social
and cultural norms (Davis, 2006; Tomba,
2005). Lifestyles in a gated community are
characterised by diversified personal con-
sumption, an expansion of private life and
the social exclusion of other housing classes
(Figure 3) (Pow, 2007; Pow and Kong, 2007;
Zhang, 2010). The socialist workers’ sense of
social elevation may appear cosmic: ‘The
resettlement indicates our transformation, an
upgrading and a residential transformation.
Previously, we are residents, now we are pro-
prietors. The changes are from the under-
ground to the heavens’ (R29, JW resident
relocated on-site).
Relocated residents were emphatic that a
major novelty is the swelling of personal
consumption. With recreation facilities, sani-
tation and security provided by private
developers and property managers, the main
personal investment is home decoration. An
elaborately decorated apartment, which
sharply contrasts with the single room in a
danwei compound, is a popular means to
display lifestyle change. In other cases, how-
ever, relocation and compensation
2492
Figure 3. Jinniu Wanda before and after redevelopment and on-site resettlement.
Source: Photographs taken by authors between 2014 and 2015.
stimulated both unselfconscious and con-
spicuous consumption, for example of per-
sonal vehicles, in particular among the
younger generation:
Previously, the bed was one overlaying
another in the room. There was no such con-
cept of decoration. It is a public asset. Now,
this is my own apartment. You see the kitchen
is spacious; the colour is light. See my daugh-
ter’s bedroom. The purple curtain facing the
central garden, the pink wallpaper and the
white wardrobe and bedding are all colours
that she likes. We now finally can realise her
dream space. (R12, CJA resident relocated
off-site)
After resettlement, daily interactions
among residents in public spaces are greatly
reduced, with a corresponding increase in
family-centred life. Meanwhile, unlike the
old expanded social networks among neigh-
bours and danwei co-workers, social life in
resettlement communities has swiftly shrunk
to close friends (Figure 4). Residents attrib-
uted this social transition to the privacy
accompanying the separation of neighbours
in high-rise apartments:
The private space in our former compound
was too small. Most of the daytime we were
staying on the corridor, cooking and talking
Urban Studies 56(12)
with each other. We participated in the class
on Chinese calligraphy in the workers’ cultural
centre. Now, however, our connection
becomes increasingly weak, even with former
neighbours who relocated to the same commu-
nity with us. There are some changes in feel-
ings between us. Only a few close friends left.
We dance in the neighbourhood garden each
day after dinner. (R16, JW resident relocated
on-site)
New social organisation and exclusiveness
Social re-organisation takes shape in the
resettlement communities and so does the
cultivation of exclusivity among these new
proprietors. After two years of resettlement
in the JW neighbourhood, the property man-
ager urged the socialist workers to establish
a homeowners’ association. Accordingly, the
Residents’ Committee, which previously
governed the danwei habitat and undertook
tasks assigned by the local government,
has now retreated from community manage-
ment. Socialist workers have learnt to
behave like proprietors, assuming self-
government and participation as well as act-
ing for personal profit. The gated commu-
nity has also permitted relocated residents to
separate themselves from other social groups
with a different habitus. Exclusivity is
overtly manifested in the relationships
Yang and Ley
Figure 4. Life within the on-site (left) and off-site (right) resettlement communities for the CJA residents.
Notes: Open streets with retail stores were designed for the on-site resettlement community in an attempt to reproduce
the street spaces of the old CJA.
Source: Photographs taken by authors between 2015 and 2018.
between homeowners and tenants and
between local residents and migrants. In
the JW resettlement community, house-
holds who own a second property may
lease it to migrant tenants to generate extra
income, a practice known as group renting
(qunzu). In addition, tenants, as petty busi-
nesspeople, may use the apartment com-
mercially for restaurants or storage. The
group renters and their business activities
deeply frustrate homeowners, concerned
with community security, residential qual-
ity, the social environment and facility
maintenance. At the homeowners’ associa-
tion, socialist workers have mobilised to
establish measures to curb group renting to
migrant tenants and unreasonable non-
residential apartment use.
This [resettlement] community is near a large
wholesale market and the railway station.
There were about 70% who were outsiders
and renters. They used the apartment as stor-
age or a self-employed business. The city resi-
dents can hardly get along with the rural
people. They are not rational and are poorly
educated, merely expressing personal interests,
or that of their small groups. They do not
know how to participate in community man-
agement. (R15, JW resident relocated on-site)
2493
The uncertainty of social
transformation
Weber (2009: 182) defined the possession or
lack of property as ‘two basic categories of
all class situations’. The good fortune of dan-
wei workers from urban redevelopment
comes from ‘obtaining a very important
thing that originally the workers could by no
means afford’ (R35, CJA resident relocated
off-site). However, homeownership must
generate a market return to ensure a qualita-
tive change in economic class. Accordingly,
a few JW informants have converted their
apartments to mixed use as both a residence
and a self-employed business. Some CJA res-
idents purposively selected off-site relocation
to gain more than one property. The benefits
generated by renting or selling the extra
apartments were then invested into gaining
personal skills, such as learning to drive,
thereby increasing job options. These initia-
tives appear in families where the young gen-
eration is aggressively using the opportunity
of homeownership to expand personal
mobility.
Nevertheless, the majority of aged and
underemployed families still live on pensions
or a government allowance. Moreover,
2494
because of the retrenchment of state welfare
in favour of housing privatisation and com-
modified redevelopment, these new home-
owners confront increasing consumption
pressure, especially those remaining in the
inner city. Living in the JW community near
an ostentatious shopping mall, the on-site
resettled residents rarely purchased daily
goods nearby, instead turning to more inex-
pensive services in old neighbourhoods.
Moreover, after losing their ability to rely
on the government and previous employers,
former welfare recipients must now bear
housing-related expenditures themselves and
may be hard pressed financially even before
the inevitable costs of home maintenance.
After fruitless requests to property managers
and the developer for repairs, helpless resi-
dents may turn to the government anew:
Many people cannot even afford the property
management fees. Some resisted paying it.
Some paid it, but they said because they paid,
the property management company should be
responsible for all maintenance costs.
However, it is indeed troublesome concerning
housing maintenance. The construction com-
pany took only half a year to finish the con-
struction of our community. The wall is
rough; the window is slanting. I have repaired
the sewer leakage four times during the past
half year. I cannot afford it if it needs to be
constantly repaired. Do you know who I
should approach? (R38, JW resident relocated
on-site)
Thus, there is no certainty that the change in
social status will ultimately advance the life
chances of all socialist workers. Indeed, con-
sumption pressures for on-site relocated resi-
dents in the inner city may even lead to
eventual out-migration. Two years after
moving to the JW resettlement community, a
voluntary mover was reassessing the choice:
Sometimes I feel it may be even better to live
in our former home. They would only repair
the sewage system, toilets and kitchens for us.
Urban Studies 56(12)
We would not feel so lonely, helpless; also in
the community there would be no troublesome
issues. People who are still expecting wealth
from demolition will one day know the situa-
tion, once they are resettled in a new place.
(R33, JW resident relocated on-site)
Conclusion
Urban transformation since the reform era
has proceeded from so-called capitalism with
Chinese characteristics (Harvey, 2005). State
restructuring, adjusting to economic transi-
tion and its interaction with market actors
in land development and management, has
been the principal perspective from which
urban transformation is understood (Lin
et al., 2015; McGee et al., 2007). Through a
micro-lens of state-facilitated neighbour-
hood redevelopment, this study examines
urban and social change associated with
state–society relations.
State-facilitated urban redevelopment in
Chengdu accompanies state-led social engi-
neering in the transitional society.
Specifically, we reveal the social transforma-
tion of socialist workers from welfare recipi-
ents in danwei compounds to proprietors in
new gated communities. The Chinese state
simultaneously aims to employ urban rede-
velopment and residential relocation as an
instrument of national economic develop-
ment, but also to consolidate social order
and its own legitimacy. These competing
objectives lead to state-assisted consumer
benefits to replace shrinking welfare services
for socialist workers. Enabling homeowner-
ship adds social legitimacy to state and
corporate actors managing urban redevelop-
ment and residential relocation. Housing
privatisation sustains market solutions and
reproduces social order, ultimately inflating
property prices in areas surrounding the
redeveloped districts. As a result, a new
housing class is in formation, distancing
Yang and Ley
itself from impoverished private tenants.
Nevertheless, the retreat of a welfare state
and the status change to proprietors may
unleash both market success and market
failure for some new homeowners, anticipat-
ing new inequalities created in the market
society.
Of course, the chance for status change
for the housing class of socialist workers
should not conceal the gaping divide in life
chances between them and migrant workers,
who suffer the unmitigated assault of displa-
cement without compensation. A third group,
owners of commodity or rural housing, face a
process of forced lifestyle change following
property rights violation. Normally, it is this
housing class that is engaged in difficult nego-
tiations with the state over appropriate com-
pensation (Shin, 2013).
This relatively panoramic view of residen-
tial relocation muddies conventional accounts
of state-led gentrification and implicates the
importance of state–society relations in distin-
guishing urban redevelopment in China. State
dominance in launching unequal housing
trajectories among social groups mobilises
either opportunity or disenfranchisement
from state projects, determining the signifi-
cant disparity of impacts from urban rede-
velopment in China. On the one hand, this
state dominance suggests the continuity of
state control over the social power of migrant
tenants (see Wu, 2016) and over the property
rights of property owners in the city (see
Shin, 2013). On the other hand, the state
dominance is followed by the relaxation of
the ties between the state, workers and dan-
weis and the encouragement of autonomy for
previous socialist danwei workers dependent
on collective services.
However, it is difficult to speak of the
autonomy gained by the socialist workers as
the emergence of civil society in China. For
the promotion of homeownership boils
down to a strategic choice by state actors to
achieve economic marketisation. And the
2495
consumer liberation for the working class
ultimately contributes to the consolidation
of urban society and the reinforcement of
state-building in the market society. The
result may bring us back to Gramsci’s (1971)
conception of cultural hegemony, upon
which the remaking of socialist workers
becomes a means for the reformist regime to
ideologically incorporate the working class
into the new urban lifestyle and the new
framework for development.
Acknowledgements
We thank the editor, Shenjing He, and the anon-
ymous reviewers of this article for their insightful
and constructive comments.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of
interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following
financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: This work was
supported by the Doctoral Scholarship of the
UBC-China Scholarship Council (201206050015)
plus the MITACS Globalink Research Award
(IT06334).
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