Property Ownership and Neighborhood Governance: Civic Engagement or Social Control?

AbstractWith the advancement of property rights legislation, homeowners in China areempowered by law to exercise their constitutional rights in governing theirneighborhood via their homeowners’ associations. This triggers optimism, basically fromthe west, towards the gradually building up of democratic capacity at the grassrootswhich may foster the development of a democratic political system in China. However,this may not work in practice. Yet, not only do property ownership, civic engagementand neighborhood governance work not in the same way in China as they do in the west,collective action dilemma in the neighborhood has also generated complex dynamicwithin homeowners as well as between them and other stakeholders. On the one hand,the general objective of grassroots government institutions is to place homeowners’associations within their span of control whereas on the other hand, homeowners arealso increasingly dependent on state intervention in solving problems of theirneighborhood. This paper attempts to examine the struggle between civic engagementand social control among homeowners with data from Shenzhen, Guangzhou andShanghai. It argues that whilst it is premature to conclude on a definitely positivecontribution of property ownership to democracy, neighborhood governance byhomeowners may still be the institution which is the mostly likely in offering meaningfulcivic engagement in China.