Residential Redevelopment and the Entrepreneurial Local State: The Implications of Beijing’s Shifting Emphasis on Urban Redevelopment Policies

Abstract

The entrepreneurial nature of local government activities has significantly influenced socioeconomic and spatial changes in urban China. It is against this backdrop that property-led redevelopment projects were implemented in Beijing after 1990, guided by a programme whose very success depended on the participation of real estate capital for financial contributions. In 2000, however, a new policy was put in practice, which aimed at supplying affordable housing on government-provided land to increase the rehousing rate. This paper analyses the implications of this shifting emphasis on Beijing’s redevelopment policy and examines whether the local government has become less entrepreneurial and more socially inclusive in its redevelopment approach. Based on the case study of two redevelopment projects, the paper argues that the local state’s entrepreneurial nature has persisted and that this is largely due to its power to dispose of urban land use rights, effectively making local governments de facto landlords.