Assets of state capitalism: housing and de-financialization in China

Asa Roast and Yunpeng Zhang

Chapter 4 in Resisting the Financialization of Housing, 2026, pp 43-56 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines the financialization of housing in China, tracing how its state capitalist transition has produced a distinctive configuration of housing, land, and finance. Unlike Western neoliberal models, China's financialization is structured by spatial controls, capital restrictions, and a state-led urban regime. Housing serves as a savings vehicle, fiscal resource, and site of accumulation, yet remains largely insulated from global financial markets. The chapter explores state attempts at de-financialization—through public housing provision, regulatory intervention, and tightened credit controls—not as efforts to prioritize use value, but as mechanisms to manage systemic risk and recalibrate housing's financial function. Popular responses remain limited. Rather than resisting financialization, the Communist Party of China seeks to discipline and reframe it through state-led governance, within which inequality persists and housing continues to underpin capitalist accumulation.

Keywords: Housing; Financialization; China; State capitalism; Public housing; Informal housing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035379637
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