ABSTRACT
The real estate management (REM) system within the Chinese government was a key provider of urban public buildings and housing in the planning system.1 As the command economy was set up in the 1950s, buildings were taken under state control, the market for housing was scaled down, and private housing ownership and private renting of property decreased. Gradually a system was created through which public buildings and the housing of most urban dwellers were provided by the state. REM departments were set up to handle this work, and from the 1950s they constructed, distributed and maintained public buildings not according to market-determined prices, but in line with state plans and budgets. A sum was set aside for the construction of new buildings according to estimates of need and within wider budget constraints, and rents were unconnected with construction costs and location. This was possible because the public buildings provision system was closely connected with the system of state land ownership and allocation. Land markets were eliminated in the 1950s as more and more land in the cities became the property of the state. Thereafter it was allocated for use by the state in accordance with larger development plans. Tracts of land were allocated for new housing in accordance with perceived needs and contemporary thinking on urban spatial development. The absence of real estate markets meant that land in the centre of the city would have the same ‘value’ as land in the outer suburbs, or rather, no commercial value at all. Rents were calculated simply according to floor space and were kept low.
