The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (book talk)
Date: Thursday, April 10, 2025
Time: 12:30-2 pm ET
Location: Furman Hall Room 326 and via Zoom
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About the event:
Since the Chinese government carried out full-scale privatization of the urban housing market nearly three decades ago, private home ownership in cities has soared and tens of millions of home-owning Chinese have joined home ownership associations. In his new book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Shitong Qiao argues that homeowner associations (HOAs) have fundamentally changed how Chinese urban neighborhoods and cities are governed. Drawing on six years of fieldwork, he finds that local governments have come to rely on homeowners to help govern their own neighborhoods, and homeowners have become accustomed to the democratic ritual of electing HOA leaders. Does the rise of HOAs have any wider significance for China’s political future?
(See this publisher flyer for a 20% discount on the book price.)
About the speaker:
Shitong Qiao is a professor of law and the Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke University. He previously taught property and comparative law at the University of Hong Kong and New York University and was a law and public affairs fellow at Princeton University. Professor Qiao employs mixed methods to explore the relationship between political power, law, and private ordering. He has published numerous articles in top Chinese and US law journals and a prize-winning book about law and marketization, Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
About the commentator:
Roderick M. Hills Jr. is the William T. Comfort III Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He teaches and writes about constitutional law (with an emphasis on doctrines governing federalism), local government law, land-use regulation, jurisdiction and conflicts of law, and education law. His interest in these topics springs from their common focus on the problems and promise of decentralization. His articles have been published in the Michigan Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Supreme Court Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. In addition to being a scholar and teacher, Professor Hills has been a cooperating counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.