The temporal variation of housing financialisation: a case study of China

Abstract

Responding to the call for a greater attention to the inherited variations in housing financialisation, this paper contributes by bringing in a constructivist perspective in exploring how financialisation gradually unfolds in a particular context. Drawing on the case of China, two interrelated arguments are made. First, a structural and temporal distinction is made between three phases of housing commodification, speculation and financialisation 1.0, where significant differences are noticed between the ownership structures, housing rights, markets, returns and motivations from a constructivist perspective. Second, these phases are systemically interrelated as a result of the state-market nexus in China where active state intervention connects these different processes in a continuous cycle of the urbanisation of capital. The case of China adds to the emerging literature on housing financialisation from the global south, and speaks to the largely downplayed temporal variations of housing financialisation in the vigorous literature on financial geography and urbanism.