Suburban Beijing

In the last decade of the twentieth century, one of the most fundamental changes in urban China has been the expansion and privatization of housing, with per capita housing space increasing by more than 50 percent. As a result, ordinary citizens in urban China have started to cultivate personal space and have a new incentive to make more money, and wealth is being stratified.

Suburban Beijing documents this process, analyzing its underlying forces and its ramifications for redefining the Chinese social landscape. Friederike Fleischer depicts the way Chinese residents in Wangjing, a Beijing suburb, have been affected by the recent transformation in their housing, showing how the suburb developed from its antecedents as a Maoist industrial production zone to its present status as China's first middle-class residential area.

The new suburban middle class live side by side with retired workers and with rural-to-urban migrants. Fleischer describes how all three groups share the same neighborhood, highlighting both the similarities and the growing differences between these groups of suburban residents in a rapidly evolving China.

Friederike Fleischer is assistant professor at the University of los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.

Contents
Introduction: Transforming Suburban Life in China
1. A History of Wangjing: Building the Suburban Industrial Zone
2. Reforming the State Sector, Opening the Private Sector: Changing the Suburban Experience
3. Daily Life in Wangjing: From Exclusive Highrise to Crumbling Compound
4. Socio-economic Differences: Emerging Market Forces, Diverging Values
5. Consumption and the Geography of Space and Social Status
Conclusion: Social Stratification, Consumption, and Housing
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Field Sites and Methods
Appendix B: Beijing Households and Population Year 2000
Appendix C: 2000 Annual Cash Income Per Capita of 1000 Beijing Urban Households
Appendix D: Sample Living Conditions of 15 Interviewees in the Hong Yuan Compound
Notes
Bibliography
Index