Dr. Reeja Nair (Institute of Chinese Studies Delhi), Dr. Solomon Benjamin(IIT Madras)

In its Thirteenth Five Year Plan in 2016, the government of Shenzhen announced that establishing housing for ‘talent workers’ will be a priority for public housing in the future. In pursuance of this, in August 2018, the Shenzhen Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau announced that by 2035, at least 1 million housing units would be designated as housing units for non-local professionals. Currently, government-funded homes make less than 20% of the total housing stock in Shenzhen. Until recently, only Shenzhen hukou holders could buy or apply for housing in Shenzhen. The new policy changes that. This paper analyses the government policy of prioritizing housing based on skills (talent workers) by allocating affordable housing in the form of talent workers’ housing (TWH) and tries to understand whether skill could be the basis for efficient allocation of housing for migrant workers in Chinese cities.