Implementation and improvisation of policies by the lowest level of the state

Chongqing in comparison
with the other cities
Fieldwork completed this year in 5 juweihui
territories
May 28, 2014
Stephan Feuchtwang
Luo Pan
Zhang Hui

228 May 2014l Chongqing l WP2
The implementation of policy
In this report I will focus on the lowest levels of
state and how they work with other institutions
to implement and improvise policy

Thomas Heberer and Christian Goebel’s previous study
• In their studies of juweihui (Residents’ committees –
RCs) and other low-level city government agencies in
2 Chongqing RCs and others in 2 other cities
(Shenzhen and Shenyang) concluded RC staff
overloaded and unsuccessful in achieving
participation of most residents
• 10 years later the same, but no legitimation crisis as
predicted by them

Special developments in Chongqing in the last 10 years
• Urbanising villagers, integrating ex-farmers, providing
affordable housing to the relatively poor
• Land requisitioning and house-land ticketing auctions
• Public rental housing projects

• DY is a newly formed urban shequ (community) added to
what was a thriving township market and industrial town
integrated into northern CQ. It was studied by ZH for the work
programme. The land expropriated to construct DY was
requisitioned in 2008 and the two 6-storey blocks where most
of the resettled farmers live were fully occupied in 2011.
• Much of the village land is still farmland, even though the first
land requisition from it was in the late 1980s. The village is
composed of two natural villages, consisting of ten production
teams and in 2013 had over 2,900 agricultural hukou
remaining, a further 400 of which were about to be
transformed to urban hukou.
A partly integrated village

• if a certain percentage of a household’s agricultural land is being taken, it
must shift its hukou; if the whole production team’s land is taken, then the
whole team needs to shift their household registration
• 80% of the compensation for agricultural land has to be spent on an urban
social insurance scheme, part of which is to be paid by employers. The
remaining 20% goes back to the village collective, usually in fact divided
into payments per person in the production team.
• a standard fee per person is paid for resettlement costs, a portion of which
depending on age goes toward a pension scheme. If transitional housing is
needed government pays in addition a standard amount per person per
month.
Land requisition official 1

• house land (zhaijidi) is first requisitioned from the village along with agricultural
land and only then, through the village, is it offered in auction to property
developers through the local Tudi Jiaoyu Suo (Land Exchange Office) whose maps
show the balance between agricultural land and land under urban construction.
The urbanised household is actually paid a standardised amount for the house
land, through the village committee, after the auction.
• regulations were never detailed enough to deal with particulars, such as the
quality of the materials of a requisitioned house or the actual as distinct from the
registered composition of a household. Central directives cannot be met, despite
the announcements that say everyone is to be treated equally and soon.
• sympathetic to the resettled farmers and try to get them the best deal; in addition,
they are concerned that for lack of job training and therefore jobs the
employer/employee insurance scheme the farmers have to join will not be of
much use.
Land requisition official 2

Nick Smith’s (2014)research in Hualing village
• As the requisition official found, villagers are not willing to
urbanise. They prefer their own risks of failure and low
income to the greater risks of arbitrary decisions and
inadequate compensation under multiple city agencies
• Prefer their own connections for borrowing to build or set up
small businesses, retaining some agricultural land and their
own urbanisation, including urban employment in diversified
household economies

• DH had completed transformation from village to city xiaoqu
in Jan 2014, when LP studied it. But land requisitioning, which
started many years earlier was continuing there too,
administered by the Street office, in the creation of a very
mixed and highly differentiated complex of housing estates.
Integrating villagers in DH

• Resettlement of villagers, displaced by the building of a
highway, began in 1999. Compensation was not by size of
original dwelling but by number of persons in the household,
with extra space above that having to be paid for. The ex-
villagers are still neighbours in their resettlement blocks but
the blocks are high rises.
DH ex-farmers

• To qualify for ECH, residents must not have an income above a set level
and no other residence in CQ. They cannot resell within the first five years
of residence, though they can in fact informally, only formally transferring
registration after the requisite 5 years. The price per square metre had
already risen from 2800 rmb to 3000 rmb in two years.
• Some of the apartments were bought by villagers from nearby, at their
own cost, because they already have jobs in the district and are looking
forward to further income and wealth from the compensation of
requisitioning their village and house land. Other residents are migrants
from further away. Yet others rent flats in a rental tower block as a
transition, waiting for their resettlement blocks to be built. The former
villagers are no longer neighbours with fellow villagers, but usually know
where those to whom they were close live and keep up contact with them.
ECH housing

• The RC covers a very large population, of which ex-farmers are
a minority, but its funding and number of staff are as small as
for a much smaller area and population while its workload is
huge. As the staff said: “The RC is a basket, anything can be
thrown into it” (juweihui shi ge kuang, shenmo dou wangli
zhuang).
RC – the usual story

• The office of the committee of the village whose land has
been requisitioned is only a few blocks away from the RC
office in both DY and DH. The ex-farmers with urban
household registration still go to it in preference to the RC for
mediation and they are still allowed to take part in elections
for the village committee. The VC has been responsible for
their urban transfer and helps the illiterate among them to fill
out the forms they must complete as urban registered
residents, including those that need pension or other welfare
payments.
Continuing functions of the Village Committee

• As we have found in all four cities, in all the lowest offices of municipal
government, the land requisition office, RC and its service centre, and the
Property Management Company, staff are overworked, underpaid, and
expected to use their own initiative.
• they have some room to do so because the regulations are unrealistic or
not detailed enough
• They are blamed, while higher levels are made to look good by the
promises they seem to offer by their announcements
• they are said to be corrupt, which is a charge that can also be levelled
higher up.
• They have to be coercive, while often sympathising with the victims of
coercion and regret their falling short of the ideals of what their job could
and should be, serving the local residents.
Improvisation in policy implementation

Chongqing’s main low-cost housing provision is to be publicly
owned estates of tower blocks of apartments for rent; the rest is
ECH.
This initiative follows a series of regulations instructing cities to
include migrant workers and not send them home, but only if
they can show they have at least a six-month steady
employment, among other qualifications
Public rental housing (gongzufang)

The land on which the projects are built was already in municipal
‘storage’, accumulated in previous years, starting in 2003, by one
of the 8 large municipal corporations. Accumulation will be
continued in preparation for subsequent projects of public rental
estates and possibly also for sale, which will be at a higher price
than the original cost of requisition.
Donation of the land is part of the city government’s financing of
these projects. Construction and management are open to
bidding by private companies, their architects, and property
management companies.
Public rental housing land

• The Interest on the loans is to be paid by the rents from residents and commercial
outlets on site, while the capital loan will be paid by the funds created by residents
who take the option after 5 years of residence to buy their apartments. But they
may not then sell them in the open market. They have to sell them back to the city.
Neither the purchase nor the sale-back prices had yet been announced at the time
of our study.
• payment back of the capital loan from banks is still an issue since it depends on
how many residents will want to buy and how many of those will stay and not sell
back.
• There is also a questionof how the running and repair costs for the building fabric
and the public spaces would be met.
• Even the interest payments remain an issue after construction because they
depend on full occupation and therefore that there will be the requisite number of
qualified applicants for the apartments built.
Public rental housing finances

• Rent is at 60% of the average market rate in the area.
• open to all, from new college graduates to migrant
workers, and there is special provision at 10% of
market rent for those on welfare payments, including
ex-prisoners and those receiving treatment for drug
abuse.
Public rental housing – tenants

• MX public rental housing project is the first of the
over 20 planned projects in Chongqing. Public rental
housing exists in every one of our four cities, but in
none on this scale.
• When ZH studied it in 2013, MX was the only one
fully occupied, after starting construction in February
2010 and being completed in one year.
Public rental housing – MX project

• composed of 6 gated zones of tower blocks, ranging between 20 and 33
storeys in height, fifty four blocks in all housing a population of about
45,000. The apartments range in size from studio to 3-bedroom, with full
fixtures, utilities, and interior decoration, ready to be moved into, except
for furniture. Selection from qualified applicants is by lottery and so is
allocation, so that it can happen that an elderly or infirm resident is
allotted an apartment in a high storey.
• At present the whole estate is managed by one RC and service centre,
with the prospect of two further RCs being created, by one PMC, by one
rental office of the municipal centre for housing management, by one
police station and by one office of the city management for commercial
outlets to cut down on illegal stall holders. The Street office initiated the
formation of a single Party branch combining the leadership of all these
offices except that of the city management, to aid their coordination.
Public rental housing – MX project

• The rental office encouraged the Youth League to start a Citizens’ Schools (Shimin
Xiaoxue), by finding volunteers to run them.
• Their activities include helping children left in the care of grandparents with their
homework after school, visiting disabled and elderly, infirm, tenants, classes in
singing and in English for the children of migrant worker tenants, cooking and
other household skills, a hotline for psychological counselling, and lectures on
health and on bank loans.
• The local Party branch deals with complaints that come into the responsibility of
the three offices and the police station.
• Less successful community-building activity, by the rental office and the RC jointly,
are monthly neighbourhood festivals, an initiative now copied in other public
rental housing projects, to teach habits of lining up for buses, of maintaining
hygiene and safety, dancing, painting and singing contests. These are mainly for
show, photographed with the banners advertising the festival. Free drinks provided
by a commercial company on one occasion were the main attraction, according to
residents interviewed.
MX’s community building efforts

• facilities, such as the clinic, play a large part in maintaining the
attractiveness to applicants upon which the whole huge
project depends.
• yet the financing of those public facilities was not adequately
included in the original plan, according to Professor Wang Lin
(Chongda Dept of real estate management).
• high ratio of infants to carers in the nursery schools and the
quality of teaching in the primary school are causes for
tenants’ complaints
Another necessity for improvisation of policy

• The actual quality of materials of the tower blocks is good but
construction has been somewhat compromised in its speed,
we found from residents. This might deter tenants staying or
even selling, so forcing them to stay
• The rent and costs of staying are anyway beyond the means of
those who lose their jobs. And if you don’t have access to
internet or television to find the offers of tenancy you are
already excluded
Maintenance of fabric and public spaces a major deficit

• Community spirit is high because most of the housing is ex
work-unit, partially renovated, and most residents are ex-
work unit and already know their ex-work comrades well
• Elections have exceptional turn-out; November 2014 it
reached a 92% participation rate. As one activist resident
commented: “The result of the election was obvious, but the
staff are good at social work. They are quite nice, they are
professional, and they all have a good mass base.”
NH - A deceptive model RC

• The Street funds repairs, builds new public facilities
and demands of RCs that they meet targets of
participation
• But RCs have to find their own funds, such as from
parking fees, to meet some of these targets
RC’s have to find ways to raise money

• To collect fees and to prevent the formation of a
critical Property Owners’ Association, a PMC may
resort to thugs, but except in the luxury estates, all
PMCs lack the funds for the maintenance of spaces,
buildings and security residents expect
• Forced to raise funds beyond fees, eg commercial
parking or the developer-built swimming pool lying
stagnant and unused (but that proved impossible
because it would have meant charging impossibly
high commercial fees)
PMCs are also stuck for funds

• face projects show that policy is being implemented, behind
which there are frustrations among implementers of not
having adequate support, or villagers resisting urbanisation on
the government’s terms but becoming urbanised on their own
terms, and of volunteers who merge with self-organisers
• the great majority of residents have no part in any of this
policy making or implementing.
• cannot lump all this together as ‘society’.
• But neither does it justify the assumption by Heberer and
Goebel that the consequence of persistent lack of
participation must be a crisis of legitimation for the Party and
its state.
Conclusion

Stephan Feuchtwang
Luo Pan
www.urbachina.eu
28

Implementation and improvisation of policies by the lowest level of the state

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Implementation and improvisation of policies by the lowest level of the state