Housing reform in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China

It has been widely suggested that housing reforms in China face many obstacles, such as the entrenchment of the work unit system and low affordability of households. Housing policy development is now an important area for research, resulting in a large number of publications inside China. Most of these, however, are related to Beijing and Shanghai only. The objective of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of housing reforms in Southern China by examining the two wealthiest cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The study is based on an analysis of the literature, government legislation documents, interviews with government officials and press articles.