In China, civic life tends to unfold beneath the watchful eye of a state wary of independent organization. And yet, in cities like Shanghai and Beijing, one of the most vibrant arenas for democratic participation—complete with elections, protests, and the occasional legal showdown—has emerged not from traditional dissident circles, but from homeowners’ associations.
In his new book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China, Shitong Qiao explores this unlikely democratic experiment: how millions of middle-class Chinese citizens have been, in effect, “forced to associate” in order to take control of their own neighborhoods, learning the mechanics of self-governance and sometimes even developing a deeper sense of civic identity in the process. In this interview, Jed Britton-Purdy asks Professor Qiao about how these associations form, why the government tolerates them, and whether they vindicate modernization theory.
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Your new book takes up the following puzzle: the Chinese government wants to keep control of society and has traditionally viewed independent organizations—such as civic groups, unions, political parties, religious movements—with suspicion. Yet both the national government and municipal governments in China’s major cities have permitted, even encouraged, the rise of independent, self-governing organizations that exhibit many democratic features. Perhaps even more surprisingly, at least to an American audience, is the fact that these organizations are… homeowners associations. Tell us about these associations: how did they grow up, what do they do, why do they matter?
These associations usually form in response to management issues. When developers create a new neighborhood, they select a management company that controls the public facilities and spaces within the neighborhood, while charging the residents a fee for doing so. Yet as is typical of the principal-agent problem, neighborhoods can become chaotic in the absence of effective oversight by the principal—the homeowners.
For instance, in one neighborhood, elevators started dropping from the 20th floor to the 3rd floor. In another, residents’ daughters began facing harassment after the developer and management company rented out common space to sex workers and the neighborhood, intended as a private gated community, became a popular destination for those seeking paid sex. More mundanely, in places like Beijing, the water supply and centralized heating systems would fail during cold winters, and throughout China, management companies would often raise fees without homeowner approval. When individual homeowners complained to their respective management companies about these issues, the latter often felt no obligation to respond, given the individual’s relative lack of power.
To address these issues, under Chinese law, homeowners can establish their own associations, which have the authority to replace poorly performing management companies with ones that genuinely serve the homeowners’ interests. In this way, Chinese homeowners are “forced to associate” in order to defend their rights, property, and personal security. They must mobilize their neighbors, learn to treat each other as equals, and make decisions through democratic procedures.
This process might seem natural or straightforward to U.S. homeowners, but for Chinese homeowners, this was an almost entirely new experience. Think about it: from family to school to work, Chinese people are typically taught to follow orders and live within a hierarchical social order. That’s why, in the early 2000s, the first thing many homeowner activists had to learn was how to run a meeting of neighbors—people who didn’t know each other and were unfamiliar with democratic practices. Robert’s Rules of Order came up frequently in my interviews with Chinese homeowner activists. Moreover, to establish HOAs, they also had to learn how to bargain—and sometimes clash—with local governments, using tools ranging from legal action to public protest. Mobilization is essential in this process.
Millions of homeowners in China, many of whom are not especially passionate about politics, are thus “forced” to practice democracy on a daily basis—to experience the flavor of democracy and self-governance, and to understand when it works and when it doesn’t.
In doing so, many of them have developed a rights consciousness that extends beyond their own suffering. For example, one homeowner activist—a mid-ranked employee at a central government agency—told me that she once believed that her power, status, and resources guaranteed a good life. But after becoming involved in the HOA movement and being harassed by the management company that she and her fellow homeowners were trying to replace, she said she finally understood why some peasants would resort to suicide in Tiananmen Square: “It’s so hard to protect our rights!”
Some of these activists even saw the homeowner movement as an opportunity for big-D democratization, or at least the extension of democracy to other aspects of life. In one particularly interesting case, for instance, a group of lawyer-activists, after successfully organizing a group of homeowners, believed they could apply the same mobilization skills to rally Beijing lawyers to elect their own representatives to the board of the Beijing Bar Association. Like homeowners, lawyers are required to pay membership fees and, at least on paper, are entitled to elect their representatives.
That said, I wouldn’t exaggerate the impact of homeowner mobilization on national politics or more sensitive issues. Many other variables—especially how the government perceives the risks of such mobilization—can shape the outcomes of social movements.
In a recent past that seems impossibly distant now, Western observers conjectured that as China’s economy grew more market-oriented, it would become more liberal and ultimately more democratic, because that was what a middle class would demand. Most commentators in the past decade have rushed to conclude that this gamble failed. In permitting HOAs, it seems the Chinese government’s gamble is that these associations will be invested in stability and order, because that is what a middle class wants. Are these HOA’s the secret return of the “liberal market China” theory, the victory of the “authoritarian middle class” theory, or something more complicated?
One of the key points I want to make in this book is that modernization theory—the idea that free markets lead to demands for democracy and the rule of law—has some merit. The example of Chinese homeowners, who begin by seeking to protect their property rights but ultimately push for self-governance in their neighborhoods (with spillover effects across neighborhoods and beyond the narrow issue of property management), illustrates this dynamic. It also shows how the boundaries between economic rights and political rights can blur, and even collapse. This is not unprecedented: Rick Brooks and Timothy Guinnane have described how, in Prussia, the historical German state, the regime permitted business associations but not political associations—so many political groups registered as business associations.
What I find interesting is that people often see an authoritarian state as inherently opposed to democratization, implying that only a revolution could bring about change. But for institutional transformation to occur, you typically need both a pull from outside and a push from within. Think of Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution. Or consider the Qing dynasty, China’s last imperial regime. In David Stasavage’s recent book, The Decline and Rise of Democracy, he argues that democracy often arises from the ruler’s need for information and resources from the governed. When there is no alternative way to extract these, democracy becomes the most effective tool of governance. In this sense, homeowner self-governance in China constitutes a basic form of democracy—collective self-government—without a commitment to conventional liberal values.
The Chinese government understands that effective homeowner self-governance can serve its interests, but it has also been aware of the risks from the very beginning. When the Ministry of Housing first proposed legalizing HOAs in 2003, the Ministry of Civil Affairs—responsible for grassroots party-state organizations—opposed the move. They argued that HOAs, even if limited to property management, could displace grassroots party-state organizations in neighborhood governance.
This is the authoritarian dilemma that my book explores: HOAs can relieve the party-state of the burden of governing hundreds of thousands of complex neighborhoods—neighborhoods that, if poorly managed, could undermine the regime’s legitimacy simply through administrative failure. On the other hand, independent civic organizations could pose a threat to party leadership, both within and beyond residential neighborhoods. Despite national-level legalization, different city governments have adopted divergent approaches to HOAs. In Beijing, for example, only 12% of neighborhoods have successfully established HOAs.
Since 2017, the Chinese government has tried to “have its cake and eat it too”—promoting the establishment of HOAs while also seeking to control them. It has, for instance, required that a certain percentage of HOA board members be members of the Chinese Communist Party. However, this effort has not been particularly successful, due to resistance from homeowner activists and practical implementation challenges.
Whether or not this neighborhood democratization effort could succeed on a larger scale depends on many other factors, such as elite politics, yet there is no doubt that the free market has made people more aware of their rights—both economic and political—and has generated demand for democratic practices. More broadly, I want to emphasize that American engagement with China, much of which has been premised on the modernization theory, has not been a failure. Chinese society has been fundamentally transformed, with widespread awareness of and consciousness about individual rights and freedoms. Such awareness is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for broader systemic change.
Are the sites of these associations *new* cities and neighborhoods? Do the residents have any prior relationships or ties, or do they come in as strangers and need a way of relating? How different is this from life in China’s villages or older neighborhoods?
These are neighborhoods of strangers. Residents generally don’t have prior relationships or social ties. They need a way to relate to one another and, more importantly, a shared interest around which to associate and fight for their property rights. This is quite a new situation in China. Some activists even call it a revolution of living and a hotbed for new citizens.
This contrasts sharply with villages in rural China. As one leading homeowner in Beijing told me:“‘One person, one vote’ is really implemented in only two situations [in China]: villagers’ committees and homeowners’ associations. In rural China, conventional authority and [clan-like] organizations are still powerful and might control the villages. The best hope to develop a civil society is through homeowners’ associations of the urban middle class.”
Another challenge in rural China is urbanization: as people move from rural to urban areas, many villages are essentially hollowed out, with only elders and children left behind. There simply isn’t much going on in these villages—hence, there is little demand for democratization or enthusiasm for participation. Moreover, the drive for village elections in the 1990s was largely motivated by issues of collective land management and rural taxes and fees. But those taxes and fees were abolished in 2003. Today, rural collectives no longer manage much land, as rural households have gained more secure rights to their contracted land, which is no longer subject to regular reallocation.
In contrast, urban neighborhoods today are full of property management issues. The principal-agent problem is structural: only through neighborhood democratization—i.e., HOAs taking charge—can residents hold management companies accountable. The state simply doesn’t have the resources to supervise these companies. In that sense, this is an ongoing, pragmatic movement, driven by the needs of both homeowners and the Chinese government. It is also relatively sustainable, even amid the ups and downs of Chinese politics.
There are also urban neighborhoods, in which housing is provided by government employers such as state agencies or state-owned enterprises. In these employer-provided housing complexes, the social order often replicates the administrative or corporate order. Because the employer has the resources to directly manage neighborhood affairs, there is less demand for homeowner self-governance.
What is it like to be within one of these HOAs? Is there widespread engagement, or do a few “professional neighbors” take over? Do people like it, do they feel secure and empowered? In the United States, of course, HOAs are often portrayed as a symbol of petty authoritarianism or suburban conformity. How does this compare to the situation in China?
Homeowners in Shanghai often refer to the entire process as falling into a “pit”: once you jump in, it’s hard to get out. On the one hand, they feel inspired. It’s an opportunity for Chinese citizens to work on public affairs—an escape from the monotony of daily life, where the only meaning seems to be making money. Here, you find something beyond yourself—something bigger. Sometimes, you even feel like a hero. When it works, your neighbors may praise you. You gain prestige and experience the taste of power granted by your community.
One elderly gentleman, who brought twenty-one neighborhood-related lawsuits over eleven years—his last case ending in China’s highest court—told me he cherished the feeling of neighborhood children calling him grandpa and fellow activists from other communities coming to him for advice.
On the other hand, the classic problem of collective action—or free-riding—is pervasive. Homeowner activists are sometimes harassed by management companies or warned by local government officials for “making trouble,” and on average, fewer than ten percent of homeowners in a given neighborhood actively engage in self-governance. About thirty percent are followers and cheerleaders—what some call “keyboard revolutionaries.” The remaining sixty percent include the silent majority and, more problematically, homeowners who are connected to or co-opted by the management companies. In each neighborhood, the level of homeowner participation depends largely on how serious and visible the property management issues are.
Overall, this is quite different from the situation in many American neighborhoods, where a few “professional neighbors” may take charge—but where property management is often less contentious. In China, property management issues and tensions between HOAs, management companies, and local governments are ongoing and intense. It may be many things—even exhausting—but it’s far from the image of boring American suburban life.
How does homeownership in these new communities fit into the overall social landscape of China? There are also laborers, often from the countryside, who live in the richer municipalities but don’t have what we might think of as municipal citizenship: they are like unauthorized migrant laborers in the US but worse off in ways—they can’t legally attend local schools, for instance. What part of Chinese society are you portraying here, and how does it fit into the rest?
First, the homeownership rate in China is high. Estimates from different sources range between 80% and 90%. Even many migrant workers own a house in their home village or an apartment in a nearby town. The main issue is not the lack of housing, but a mismatch between people and homes. I address this problem—at least partially—in my first book, Chinese Small Property, which discusses how indigenous villagers in Shenzhen (now China’s fourth-largest city and widely regarded as its Silicon Valley) built housing in violation of land use laws and regulations, and provided affordable, conveniently located homes to 7–8 million migrant workers.
In other words, while there are certainly people in China who do not own homes—and while many young university graduates are priced out of the housing market in large cities—homeownership still provides a shared identity that resonates with most Chinese citizens. It is a common issue affecting perhaps the most numerous social group in China.
The exclusion of migrant workers from city schools and public services is largely the result of top-down policy, rooted in the so-called dual system of rural-urban division. In this context, I don’t think we should worry too much about the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” when it comes to Chinese HOAs. As the Beijing Homeowners Association once put it in a widely circulated statement: “We’re all on the same boat—but that boat is the Titanic.” And as I mentioned earlier, even relatively privileged homeowners have found that their struggles to establish HOAs—and to bargain and contend with local authorities—have revealed how precarious their position really is. Their material wealth or social status does not make them more secure than a peasant who had to resort to suicide to protest land expropriation.
Across the social classes, HOAs represent an opportunity for social mobilization and democratization within a political regime that is typically hostile to the development of free associations and social movements.
