Homelessness and the Universal Family in China

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Huili He,Yihui Pang,Zhihao Su,Zhihe Wang,Jianjun Zhao
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12324

Homelessness and the Universal Family in

China

By Huili He*, ZHiHao Su†, JianJun ZHao‡, YiHui Pang§, and

ZHiHe Wang¶

abStract. Depending on how one defines homelessness, China has

either a very tiny homeless population or an extremely large one.

Compared to other countries, there very few vagrants: people living

on the streets of China’s cities without means of support. But if one

counts the people who migrated to cities without a legal permit

(hukou), work as day laborers without job security or a company

dormitory, and live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on the

edge of cities, there are nearly 300 million homeless. Free market

fundamentalism is responsible for the emergence of this sort of

homelessness in China. We review China’s recent new policies to

tackle homelessness and offer suggestions based on the traditional

Chinese wisdom, which includes the concept of the universal family

(family - tian xia). Homelessness in China must be addressed as a

cultural problem caused by the breakdown of ancient methods of

social integration. Treating it merely as a housing deficit will fail.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 2 (March, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12324

© 2020 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Professor and PhD supervisor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College

of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing.

Research: rural governance and rural construction. Former assistant mayor of Kaifeng,

Henan. Email: hehuili2008@163.com

†PhD candidate, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Humanities

and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing. Research: rural sociol-

ogy and rural social work. Email: suzhihao2017@126.com

‡Philosophy professor, Department of Philosophy, Chinese National Academy of

Governance. Leading figure in green development studies in China. Email: adad390@163.

com (corresponding author)

§PhD candidate, School of Marxism, Jilin University, Jilin Province, China. Research:

ecological feminism and traditional Chinese culture. Email: pangyh0909@163.com

¶Director of Institute for Postmodern Development of China, Claremont, California,

USA. Email: claremontwang@yahoo.com

454 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Introduction

Is there a homeless population in the People’s Republic of China today,

and, if so, on what scale? The question is hard to answer because

there are no official statistics. But we can make some conjecture from

some clues released by the authorities.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China helped 17.7 mil-

lion vagrants and beggars from November 2012 to June 2019. That

estimate constitutes only 1.2 percent of the national population, and

it may include the same people counted multiple times. But if we ex-

pand the definition of homelessness to incorporate nearly 300 million

peasant-workers living a marginal existence on the periphery of cities,

the homeless population in China balloons to over 20 percent of the

population. The vast majority of homeless people are in China’s major

cities, where they find work but lack a residency permit (hukou),

leaving them unable to find decent living accommodations. In con-

trast to vagrants, they are not visible on the streets, but in contrast to

citizens with permits, they are forced to live in overcrowded and un-

sanitary conditions. If the opposite of “homeless” means having stable

and livable accommodations, tens of millions of migrants live under

precarious circumstances. They know their neighborhood could be

demolished by the city to make space for high-end housing.

What has caused the formation of a huge homeless population

today? Why did it not happen before? What is the Chinese government

doing to tackle the homeless population issue? What are the limita-

tions of the current approaches? Are there better ways to deal with the

homeless population problem? This article will discuss these issues.

Homelessness as Structural Pathology

In a developing country like China with a large population and rela-

tively small amount of farmland, the opportunities of individuals have

inevitably been squeezed in the processes of gaining national sov-

ereignty, accumulating capital for industrialization, and undergoing

various forms of modernization. The problem of homelessness is one

extreme manifestation of what happens to marginal individuals when

systemic change occurs. Modernization in China has undermined tra-

ditional family and village structures that protected individuals from