House Buying As Hope Mechanism: the Culture of Homeownership in Hong Kong (1970S – 2010S)
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HOUSE BUYING AS HOPE MECHANISM: THE CULTURE OF HOMEOWNERSHIP IN HONG KONG (1970S – 2010S) Chung-kin Tsang A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of the Philosophy in the Department of Communication. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved by: Lawrence Grossberg Sarah Dempsey Po-keung Hui Christian O. Lundberg Michael Palm © 2018 Chung-kin Tsang ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Chung-kin Tsang: House Buying as Hope Mechanism: the Culture of Homeownership in Hong Kong (1970s – 2010s) (Under the direction of Lawrence Grossberg) Hong Kong, a global financial hub, is well-known for being the world's “freest” economy, and the least affordable city for housing. The rapid and stable financialization process through which Hong Kong was transformed from a light industrial city in the 1970s to a financial hub with real estate as the engine of growth since the 1980s was not only a top-down imposition; it also relied on securing the consent across the population, albeit temporarily and contingently, in a unique context. By piecing academic and non-academic literatures together, this research proposes that homeownership and financialization were articulated jointly by the British colonial state and the local population from the 1970s to the 1990s into a cultural mechanism of hope – House Buying. This hope mechanism requires: 1. a self-reliant subject acting through the market, 2. a narrative of life-goals that characterize a middle-class way of living; 3. a temporal mapping of the future based on the social route of a “housing ladder” from public rental, subsidized homeownership to private homeownership, and a social plane with a relatively open opportunity structure. The formation of House Buying was part of, and reinforced the depoliticization of the local population from the 1970s to the 1990s through producing “hope in the tunnel”. iii After the 1997 handover, Hong Kong became the Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) under the rule of China. The context changed dramatically, and the hope mechanism was seriously challenged. People's individual effort was unable to keep up with the booming property market when the housing ladder collapsed, and the objective opportunity structure was narrowing. Through conducting focus group interviews among 73 relatively better educated young adults, this research finds that the hope mechanism of House Buying is still dominant yet with a different formula. These young adults remain self-reliant in the individual level, and attach a sense of safety net to homeownership as both a shelter and a financial tool to secure their own future. They gain hope through “waiting for the coming crisis” (like SARS or terrorist attack) as the connection to the future. The supposedly devastating crisis is now domesticated as an excellent homeownership and real estate investment opportunity for being a “normal” part of the market economic cycle. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of a dissertation always requires a massive amount of material, emotional and intellectual supports, and the purpose of Acknowledgements is to reveal these otherwise hidden conditions. I am very lucky to be supported by many teachers, friends, and family members. My supervisor, Lawrence Grossberg, has had a no-nonsense commenting style that can always make me stressful, and hence push me further forwards. And I will always remember the fried chicken in Mama Dips, and the Chinese buffet in 35 Cafe. Meaghan Morris has faith in my abilities, encouraged me to pursue the academic career, and treated me an expensive French meal in Wanchai. Donna Chu has been my interlocutor on intellectual and emotional issues throughout this long journey from the first day, and has forced me to join parties that rescue me from isolation and loneliness. And if my memory is reliable, I drank almost a whole bottle of expensive Japanese whisky in one of these parties. I regularly met with Ng Chun-hung and Charles Cheung in the Japanese restaurant Oishi around HKU. Ng always advised me with caring and inspirational aphorisms like shedding light in the darkness, and Cheung has never hesitated to give me a helping hand whenever I was in need. The chance of participating in the focus group interviews with Francis Lee, Leung Kai- chi, Gary Tang, Chan Chi-kit, and Vivien Zhang is key to the completion of this research. I can never thank enough for Tang’s invitation, and Lee’s prompt reply and thoughtful comments to my preliminary ideas and drafts. Eva Li, Joseph Li, Dennis Leung, Shannon Wong Lerner, and Grover Wehman-Brown are my academic comrades. I constantly bombarded Eva Li with rough drafts that should never be read by anyone, and she still replied with encouragements and v suggestions. I discussed with Joseph Li and Dennis Leung numerous times about the framework, and they continued to sort out the findings together with me. Shannon Wong Lerner and I have always been supporting each other in our long journey of dissertation writing. And Grover Wehman-Brown helped me copyedit this dissertation and unconfused the confusing sentences and paragraphs. Many friends in Chapel Hill and Hong Kong have helped and stayed with me. Alex Chan, Jackie Tang and Kaman Lau hung around with me in Chapel Hill, and spent time together in Mint & Basil, Buns, University Mall and South Point. My classmates, Adam Rottinghaus and Justin Flores, housed me when I traveled between Hong Kong and Chapel Hill. Wayne Erik Rysavy, HyunJoo Mo, Tu Lan, and Jing Jiang drove me to do grocery shopping in Harris Teeter, and thus sustained my life in critical moments. In Hong Kong, Daisy Chu, Moffy Lee, Kelvin Yau and Kathy Yu are my interlocutors on social and cultural issues, and Alex Leung is my long-term gym comrade. Kitty Ho, Sampson Wong and the Alcohol Salon they host also gave me a sense of self-worth amid my darkest hour in dissertation writing. Karen Chan, Kim Lee and Benny To generously offered me teaching opportunities that secured my living expenses and tuition fee. My parents trust me unconditionally and have kept their worries about my progress and concerns of family expenses only to themselves. I am blessed that we can make ends meet during the years of my study. Kim Cheung chooses to stand by me when I was most uncertain about the future. The dissertation can be finished because of her support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Making a Dialogue in the Financialization of Housing and Hope ........................... 8 1.2 Engaging in Local Discussion ............................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 2 – FINANCIALIZATION AND HOPE: THE CASE OF HONG KONG.. 20 2.1 Approaches to Financialization and Housing ........................................................ 20 2.2 Cultural Mechanism of Hope – the Case of Hong Kong ....................................... 30 2.3 Thinking through Hope – the Social Subject, the Good Life, and Temporal Mapping of the Future ................................................................................................. 32 2.4 House Buying as Hope Mechanism under the Discourse of the Market ............... 37 2.5 Gloominess in Hong Kong among Young Adults ................................................. 47 CHAPTER 3 – HISTORICAL FORMATION AND POLITICAL EFFECT OF HOUSE BUYING IN HONG KONG (1970S – 1990S)...................................................................... 56 3.1 The Watershed of Hong Kong – 1966 and 1967 Riots .......................................... 59 3.2 Three Steps of “Housing Ladder” in Hong Kong .................................................. 64 3.3 Self-reliance in the Official Discourse ................................................................... 71 3.4 From Shelter to Home – the Middle-class Good Life ............................................ 77 vii 3.5 Financialization of Homeownership – Homeownership as a Good Investment Decision ....................................................................................................................... 82 3.6 Belief in Open Opportunities, Generally-felt Optimism and Hope in the Tunnel with Undercurrents of Social Inequality ...................................................................... 90 CHAPTER 4 – COLLAPSE OF HOUSING LADDER AND NARROWING OF OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE IN THE STRUGGLED PERIOD ................................. 97 4.1 Social Policy: Failed Response from the State ...................................................... 99 4.2 Political: Corporatist State ................................................................................... 105 4.3 Economic: Deindustrialization and Financialization ........................................... 109 4.4 Social: Increasing Social Polarization and Narrowing of Opportunity Structure 115 4.5 Cultural: Emergence of Post-materialist Values and Discourses ........................ 120 CHAPTER 5 – HOPE THROUGH WAITING FOR THE COMING CRISIS ............ 128 5.1 Gloominess of Young Adults