Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
We usually imagine China's cities getting bigger, taller and faster.
But the next five years?
Well, the new national blueprint isn't about cranes and concrete.
It's about fixing and upgrading and reimagining the places that we already live.
So in 2030, will your street even feel like it's in the same city?
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushan and Feifei.
Up first.
When we think about China's urban transformation, we often picture skylines rising, megacities expanding and new infrastructure being built at scale.
But when it comes to the homes that people actually live in, the latest national plan tells a bit of a different story.
Over the next five years, the focus is shifting inward, from building more to improving what already exists.
So what is that actually going to look like in practice?
Yuxin and Fei-Fei, good afternoon to you both.
The kind of upgrades that we are going to talk about today make sense to me because...
With China's impressive urban expansion that has taken place over the past decades and decades, those buildings are not just the buildings, but the infrastructure is eventually going to need an upgrade.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
But yeah, the expansion was very impressive over a long time.
Yes Steve, over the past more than 40 years, you know, China went through, I think, what some would call the world's largest and fastest process of urbanization.
And when it comes to the pace of the urban development, we have some numbers that can tell us.
For example, according to e-house China Research Institute, that houses built in the 1980s account for more than 10 of the country's total housing stock.
And when it comes to the 1990s, that had counted for over 20%.
That means a lot of buildings, when it comes to the process of urbanization, are built for residential communities.
And when it comes to bigger cities, it's even bigger shares.
Well, I mean even those two statistics that you shared right there in the 1980s, 10.
In the 1990s, 20.
That means over the course of two decades, over the course of 20 years, you have nearly one-third.
Of the homes in existence that were built during that time.
That means that around like 30 percent of the houses right now China has aged more than 20 years old.
Yeah, exactly.
And in Shanghai the figure is even higher, reaching 61 percent, especially because we know that there are many ancient historical buildings in Shanghai and for renovation or a lot of things, it is really hard for them to do so.
And they have also very specific and special plans for these kind of buildings.
Yeah, and the expansion was fast.
We can say that's fast, right, over a period of 20 or 30 years.
So at that time, I'm sure it would have been very, very exciting.
All those buildings would have been brand new at the time.
They would have been gorgeous.
But now, time has passed and with the passage of time uh, comes age, and when buildings age, then they need to be renovated.
Yeah, many buildings, for instance, when it comes to aging buildings um, many buildings now, especially here in beijing, i would imagine same here, same in shanghai and other cities as well they, They suffer issues like cracked walls, peeling facade, roof leaks and corroded plumbing are quite often in many, many older buildings in Beijing.
And especially when it comes to, for instance, rains.
These kind of aging pipelines for waters and sewage can cause issues like blockage, like water outage, and also it requires frequent, very frequent maintenance, which almost become an issue for residents' daily life.
And they're sort of caught in between.
If you don't repair these kind of pipelines, you suffer issues like odor, you suffer issues like flooding inside your home.
But if you keep repairing them, that can happen very frequently.
You need to call some people all the time for this time it happens here.
Next time it happens, I don't know, one centimeters away from the old place.
It's just very hectic.
Yeah, so when you have this type of essential infrastructure like electricity and gas and drainage systems, ideally you'd like to have those in service for a very specific period of time.
But it happens where they will be in service longer than what they were originally designed for.
And some of these buildings, because they were built in probably like twenty years ago, some of the designs of the community complex and the whole building was suitable for the time before.
But for now, it is not that comfortable to live.
Many older neighborhoods were not designed for today's lifestyles, like parking, shortages were widespread.
The lack of elevators makes daily life especially difficult for elderly residents.
And accessible facilities, public recreation areas and fitness equipment, and also EV charging stations is also one of the issues.
And centralized charging facilities for electric bicycles are also often insufficient.
Yeah.
I mean, when you're building buildings in the 1990s, you're not thinking.
You know, we should really put some EV charging stations here.
And your coworker would say, what's an EV charging station?
It's impossible to see into the future.
This happens everywhere in the world, right?
Things change, circumstances change, people's needs change, and that means that the buildings and the infrastructure, what's required or what's desired, changes as well.
Yeah, I think in the past, especially when it comes to parking shortages.
I mean, it's a very important issue.
And it caused even, you know, disruption disputes among, you know, neighbors and even communities, is that in the 1990s, I think, China didn't really have a lot of private car ownership, but now it's one of the biggest private vehicle market in the world.
I think the latest number has it China's car ownership hit 370 million. by the end of June.
But when these communities were built in the 1990s, the ownership was only about a few million.
And after that, over the past...
I don't know 2030 years.
From 1990 throughout to the early 2010s, this kind of private car ownership has been surged on an average annual growth rate of 20.
Yeah.
So it's also very unrealistic to ask for one developer to think 20 or 30 years beforehand.
Of course.
I mean, going back to the 1970s, the country had 1.36 million civilian automobiles on its road.
That's a fun statistic to know.
And if you compare that to 2026, I mean, the numbers are just astonishingly different.
So yes, it makes sense when you talk about parking spaces for buildings that were built in the 90s or early 2000s.
It just wouldn't have been on the designers' radars to put adequate parking for the future.
I don't even need the numbers to understand the disputes that you're saying Fei-Fei, because I am living in an older community complex and it's probably older than me and the whole community is packed with private cars.
And I try to drive in a car inside because I'm a new driver, but it is probably the most difficult thing for me to drive through this community.
It's stressful, right?
It's stressful.
How's your new driving going, by the way?
We haven't checked in in about a year or so.
Yeah.
It was fine, except driving you in my community complex.
Right.
So those are the issues.
And again, these are issues that are inevitable.
They're going to happen everywhere in the world.
The question is, how is the country addressing these problems?
Well, actually before this year, between 2021 to 2025, there have been urban renewal projects happening in cities and some places.
For instance, when it comes to the parking spaces that we just talked about, across the country, they've added over 34 million parking spaces, but it is far from enough.
And that's why that brings us to the latest plan, called Urban Renewal Plan.
That's spanning from this year to 2030.
They're adding more such facilities in communities and, you know, renovating more residential buildings that especially aged over the year 20 years old.
And I think another fun link to think about this story is that, as developers or governments going through this urban renewal plan for one, for instance, one residential complex Other complexes that were built, for instance, 10 or 5 years ago are also aging.
So it's sort of an ongoing snowballing process that you need to think about.
So then let's talk about the specifics of this.
It's called...
The Urban Renewal Plan during 2026 to 2030.
It came out this year.
It's brand new.
And the plan's not just about housing.
It covers everything from yes, residential buildings, but also city planning, also historical sites.
Those are included in the plan.
And the government also set up specific standards for urban renewal too.
They're encouraging and setting up standards to make sure that this kind of urban renewal to go through smoothly.
And China is also addressing some of these housing problems by transitioning from building new districts to improving the quality and safety of existing housing stock.
And the strategy moves beyond just simple repairs to focus on holistic housing lifecycle approach through some key initiatives.
Okay, so what does that?
That sounds like it's from a government report, which it is, but what does this actually look like for us then?
One thing is about encouraging.
You know, for some existing houses they're encouraging residents to carry out some decoration and partial upgrades, specifically promoting prefabricated decoration.
Because I think that's also one of the issues when the large scale renewal urban buildings, because that's one of the biggest complaints during the renovation of older residential communities.
What's one of the complaints?
The noise and also the dirt and the dust.
Dusty.
So in many neighborhoods, elderly residents living upstairs struggle to sleep because of these constant drilling and hammering, so making construction a major source of opposition.
But with these kind of prefabricated renovation methods, most of the work is completed off-site.
Oh, so prefabricated decoration fixes that noise problem, because whatever it is that you are renovating inside your house is going to be prefabricated.
It's going to be built... somewhere else and then brought and installed into your home.
Exactly.
And that's how it can be so much faster than you install and start to mix everything on site.
And for a standard apartment, a pre-fabricated renovation can be completed in just seven days.
More than 70% faster than these kind of conventional methods.
So what, I can just go on Weixin and order a kitchen?
Well, I think it's more on the whole industrial supply chain issue.
Is that instead, for example, you were thinking about re-renovating your kitchen or your bathroom.
Instead of having everything made on site inside your apartment, it's like making different parts of your bathroom, for instance, into smaller module.
And when the workers came, they can just install your toilet for you.
Piece by piece by piece.
Yeah, and then install your sink for you.
It not only eliminates, will limit the noise and the drilling and the hammering required for renovating this bathroom, and also is, of course, easier and faster.
And also I think in some local governments They're also subsidizing, offering subsidies for this kind of renovations.
For instance, in Yingzhou district of the city of Ningbo, they are offering subsidies of up to 30000 yuan per home.
30000 yuan per home, so that they're attracting residents to think about this way of new renovation as well.
So this is the strategy then.
Offer great, and that's a great incentive, isn't it?
Up to 30,000 yuan for prefabricated renovations.
So it's addressing the problem from the outside the building facades, the infrastructure while addressing it from the inside as well.
But the municipal governments or what have you?
The local authorities?
They can't step inside someone's apartment.
But the apartment owner can.
So if the apartment owner is heavily incentivized to improve the quality and the infrastructure of the interior of the home, then you're attacking the problem from two sides the inside and the outside.
Yeah.
And especially when it comes to individual homes.
You can't just mandate certain ways of things to do.
Well, you can't say things for like public facilities.
You can sort of promote this kind of prefabricated decoration methods.
But when it comes to individuals, there has to be ways to make residents think yeah, I want to try that.
I think that's a better way and also cheaper way for me to renovate my bathroom or my kitchen.
And apart from that, I think another major push is basically targeting the population, the change of population, for example for the aging population.
For those with limited mobilities.
As part of the urban renewal plan, they are also pushing for age appropriate and barrier free modification for individual homes.
And these are the types of changes that again, would not have been included in the original construction in the 1990s.
Because we've talked on Roundtable before about
China's aging population and how the aging population has different needs and the government is trying to do things to make things as comfortable as possible, because that group now represents a large portion of society.
Yeah.
And also, I think the community itself is changing.
Maybe that community back in the 1990s are a bunch of 30 year olds.
They feel very confident and capable of climbing six story, you know stairs and back to home with no elevator.
Yeah, but now you know 30, 40 years later, they need elevators to get home and that can be challenging for them.
And also on a community level, I think, when it comes to what you can do in your community.
For instance, in my community, they are sort of trying to make use of a lot of vacant buildings inside of our community.
How so?
Transform them into small community centers with different functions.
I think in one particular center, they are offering... canteens for elderly on the first floor.
And then on the second floor, you can have a daycare center.
And maybe on the third floor is a public library that you can just go inside and study or work.
So they're sort of making transitions so that well in the past, in the 1990s, I don't think people would spend a lot of time, for instance, in libraries.
But on one thing on one side of the story is that people don't think reading was that important back then.
But now more people want to read.
And another thing is when it comes to daycare centers.
More and more people are willing to send their, for example, two-year-olds to daycare centers so that they can get back to work.
They can have a few hours of themselves and they are in need of this kind of facilities.
But when it comes to the market for private sectors, it's also very difficult to build up that capacity within a few years of time.
And that's when it comes to this public involvement.
Setting up a space where you can have this kind of services in a way of public and private cooperation is sort of meeting people's current living needs.
Making the communities even more livable.
Yeah, yeah.
And that points to another factor I think under this plan is about the use of smart technologies at homes.
And it's not only about implementing a smart TV, encouraging to buy a smart TV or building better routers.
Yeah, because it aims to build a kind of comprehensive smart.
Wouldn't that be funny if China's five-year plan was about building better routers?
Well, it's part of the plan, but it's not everything.
Right.
Well, actually, yeah, it is actually not a joke.
When you are considering a good living environment, you consider now a good network.
And actually a good network does not only require you to contact with your internet service provider.
It actually requires you some kind of infrastructure that needs to be installed in your building.
For example, when you want to install internet in your home, the service provider will first check on the address that you're living in and check if your building has the capability of installing that fast speed internet.
So you're talking about drilling and installing fiber optic cables in the walls and things like that?
But it's been installed far before the whole building has been set up.
And it's kind of a whole plan when the whole community has been built up.
And also the plan is also encouraging government and the community complexes to have a comprehensive smart living ecosystem that integrates, like homes, communities and cities through these kind of digital technology.
What types of things are we talking about here?
Because, yeah, we're not just talking about having...
5G internet service?
I think one I think most people would sort of have encountered but have a noticed point is that in a lot of cities in China they are installing smart water meters.
They are sort of offering to change your old water meters, which requires you to have somebody comes to your door and check the numbers and write down the numbers so that you know how much you pay for your water meter.
In a few days time, but now they're switching to the smart water meters, which you can pay on your phone and you can get a real time upgrade when it comes to how much water have I used up to now and how much money should I pay for for this month.
So smart water meters would be an example.
Gas leak monitoring would be another example.
Smart smoke detectors would be another example.
And also bringing the elderly back into the conversation.
Here is Smart elderly care and health monitoring within the home as well.
And all of that improves safety.
It improves the quality of life.
And you're right, Yusha.
Now it makes me realize you do need a good router for all of those things to happen inside your home.
So this is talking about building an ecosystem then, isn't it?
Inside the home, a comprehensive smart living ecosystem that integrates the house.
Like you said, the community, the community.
How would I'm just trying to think outside of the house?
How would having a smarter home integrate into the community, connecting the community?
Well, I think for one, for instance, the example I just gave Steve about having an elderly at home.
And for instance, at home, they probably installed some sort of emergency call button.
But when the elderly push that button, who would be on the receiving side of this call?
And when it comes to making that all online, for instance, I think some of my friends who worked in communities are saying that they are sort of thinking that about things like an online platform or an app on your phone.
When the elderly, for instance, are in need of help, they can press some buttons on that application and then medical services or housekeeping or building maintenance or in case of emergency, can be notified.
And also when we're thinking about coming back to the smart water meter, which I'm obsessed with, when we're talking about saving waters, making better use of the water resources in many, many cities around the world.
We also need some sort of monitoring system to get a bigger picture of how much water are used in this area of urban life and how much water is wasted and how much water is going to the sewage, how much water is going to households.
By implementing this kind of smart water meters in both households, residential compounds, office buildings, even factories, you can have that bigger picture.
And then you can think about, you know, what is the big plan for the next step?
And they're doing it all over the country already.
27 provinces, across 27 different provinces.
Cities are putting out real-time monitoring platforms, where they're using sensors, they're using geographic information systems, they're using digital twin technology.
We talked about that before where you build a digital twin so that you can use that digital twin to see what would happen if
Those are great for what if situations so that you can prepare yourself when things go wrong.
Tech to track the condition of gas water draining networks.
All of it, all of it working together, is is the connection to the community.
That's why I think what we said is it's been there.
The plan of the urban renewal plan has been there for several years.
These kind of things, they were not there, of course, when the building was built.
But now what we can see is that, of course, they are not using the super high-tech technology for these older buildings.
And I think it is about popularization.
It's about okay.
Now every household has a telephone that you can directly call to the front desk of this community complex.
That is about the convenience.
It's about there is a new gate in this building.
You don't need to care about probably the basic safety of the whole building.
So it's probably not the latest, most high-end technology that we are talking about, but it is the basic quality of life that they can improve.
It's raising the floor.
It's not necessarily pushing the ceiling into the year 2300 or something like that, but it's raising the floor so that it improves the quality of life and the infrastructure for everyone.
But I do have a question though.
So you want to go into communities and you want to improve buildings.
You want to improve infrastructure.
But I would have to assume that some buildings in some communities are degraded to the point where they are beyond fixable.
So what happens in that case then?
Well, I think, first of all, is that the government the plan is encouraging governments to create their own map of the different conditions of different buildings and houses in the area.
For instance, if some buildings are just deemed to be very dangerous to living and is beyond the capacity or being too expensive to have it fixed.
Then of course, they can start to talk about demolish them and rebuild new ones.
But I think first of all is that they need to have this kind of a bigger picture of how many houses are they talking about within their city areas.
And what are the new plans if they are thinking about demolishing and building new ones?
So, when it comes to demolition and rebuilding, the plan actually supports models where old and unsafe buildings were torn down and rebuilt on the same site to provide residents with more than unsafe facilities.
What about older communities within an urban area?
Because we see this a lot in China's cities.
Here in Beijing would be a great example.
You've got the modern skyscrapers, but directly next to those you have the hutongs, which are the old alleyways with the traditional communities and the old style homes which have been there for decades, even before the 1990s or 1980s.
So what happens there?
Yeah, that's what we call the urban villages.
They are the kind of former rural village that has been surrounded by urban development during the rapid urbanization but still retains its collectively owned land and many aspects of its traditional rural way of life.
And it is also very very, I think, popular and common in some major cities like Beijing.
Beijing has 501 urban villages.
Like also Shenzhen, like Guangzhou.
So there are several ways.
And this plan is also focusing and I think paying attention to these kind of scenarios.
So eliminating some safe hazards that could happen because urban villages are often characterized by extremely high building density and also blocked fire access routes and these kind of tangled connected electrical wires.
Yeah, right.
And these neighborhoods are very, very tricky to do any sort of renovation or reconstruction because they are alleyways right.
These are very narrow streets and a narrow and it's like you go into a hutong and it's almost like a maze sometimes.
Right, you can easily, it's wonderful, it's beautiful, you can easily get lost in there.
But the streets are sometimes so narrow in there that you feel like there's no way a car can fit in here, never mind some sort of reconstruction equipment Yeah, and also when it comes.
So that's why, when it comes to on this kind of community level, it pose really challenges for the community workers to first of all get a bigger, full picture of who is living there.
What conditions are they living under?
And, I think, another bigger part when it comes to these areas called urban villages, that they don't have the equipment or services that we talked about before, like the community center, that we think are also very essential to daily lives now.
And I think that's why, when it comes to this renewal plan for urban villages, it's not only about enhancing the safety measures and building or demolishing building new homes.
It's also about giving them more services, for instance, when it comes to education, daycare centers, supermarkets or any markets or health clinics, that it also can make these residents living in these urban villages also feel comfortable, confident and happy to live in.
It's not just about the buildings that people live in.
It's not just about homes.
And we've mentioned it a couple of times already, but I want to talk a little bit in more detail about it the pipelines that run underneath these homes.
There are thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of kilometers of underground pipes that, of course, need to be maintained.
This is for gas.
This is for water supply.
It's for sewage and drainage and even heating.
So what's the plan to deal with those?
Well, it's a very comprehensive and also big plan.
It involves investments about five trillion yuan.
And when it comes to the programs of renewing or upgrading this pipeline system, they have like different scenarios, for example, for aging residential infrastructures.
Old water supply systems in many urban neighborhoods are being replaced with new pipes.
And also they are using smart technologies like we talked about.
They're using smart pumping stations or remote digital metering to help people.
Get a bigger picture when it comes to leakage, to reduce leakage and also improve service quality.
And also when it comes to flash floods that happened in many cities around the world.
This kind of equipment, the sensors, the smart technologies, the meterings, the monitoring services.
Early detection.
Yes, are very, very important to get to, as we talked about, for example, to get to know what if situation, what if this rain keeps pouring down like this for the next hour?
What would happen to this pump?
What would happen to this pipeline?
And what should we do in preparation for that?
And I think that is also one of the challenges when it comes to urban, modern urban planning is that we are running into situations that no one have ever thought about it, even five years before.
And we need to prepare for that.
Well, in the end, China's housing story, it's an interesting time, isn't it?
Because it's moved from expansion to improvement now.
And it's not about building more and more and more and more.
It's about making what we have better, which means safer infrastructure, safer structures in general, more reliable infrastructure, more livable communities where the people who live in those communities feel safe and happy and fulfilled.
And that's the direction we're going in right now.
It's a big story.
It's a big project, which is why it's probably going to take the five years that they had planned for it.
