ABSTRACT

The new regime immediately inaugurated vast programmes of slum clearance and housing construction, especially in the large coastal metropolises. As a component of state welfare, housing provision was to follow the broad principle of equity in supply. This chapter considers the crisis in housing supply which was the legacy of the Mao years, and which has occasioned radical measures in the housing field. It describes the revolution in the housing supply picture. Largely because of its limited impact in the face of extraordinary urban population growth, new, more market-oriented policies began to appear in the early 1980s, with their inevitable ideological trimmings. By 1980, the ideological climate had veered further towards the concepts of market guidance and market regulation in the planned economy. The chapter focuses on the future for housing policy, and for the basic provision of urban shelter in a period of development which promises enormous expansion of China's non-agricultural population.