To Choose a House Means to Choose a Lifestyle. The Consumption of Housing and Class-Structuration in Urban China

The introduction of land prices and a real estate market in the reform period have led to residential differentiations in previously largely homogenous Chinese cities. Based on qualitative data from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in an upscale Beijing suburb, in this paper I draw attention to the agency of urban residents in this process. I argue that housing choices in China today are deeply embedded in and related to a larger socio-cultural and spatial reconfiguration of Chinese society. The new urban middle class has developed specific ideas about their living environment and life-style. They aspire to have green space, better air quality, and spaciousness, among other physical characteristics, but also privacy and exclusivity in their new places of residence. I show that residential compounds have become the basis for identity and lifestyle formation, crucial in the process of social differentiation, which in turn underline and reinforce growing disparities in Chinese society. Over and above the outcome of economic restructuring and political decision making, residential differentiation in China today is a social practice that marks urban professionals' status and supports their new modern, urban identities. In addition, this social practice also has an impact on Beijing's suburbanization process.