After the reform and opening up, China underwent the largest and fastest urbanization process in the world, becoming the country with the most existing buildings and the most concentrated construction eras. At present, the risk of concentrated aging of buildings in China is accelerating.
Urbanization enters the "second half"
Hidden safety hazards of building aging cannot be ignored
By the end of 2022, nearly 20% of existing urban buildings in China were built more than 30 years ago, meaning these buildings will enter the middle-to-late stage of their design service life. In recent years, this proportion will continue to increase, and it is estimated that by around 2040, nearly 80% of buildings will enter this stage. A large number of old houses have low construction standards and lack necessary maintenance, posing huge safety hazards.
A large number of self-built houses add difficulty to the maintenance of aging buildings. According to the long-form data of the seventh national population census, the proportion of self-built housing for urban and rural households in China reached 40% and 90% respectively. These self-built houses often lack professional design and construction supervision, and have many safety hazards. In recent years, collapse accidents of self-built houses in China have been frequently reported. Accidents such as the "April 29 Changsha self-built house collapse," the "July 16 Yong'an self-built house collapse," and the "August 29 Linfen Juxian Restaurant collapse" all caused serious losses to people's lives and property.
The problem of building aging is more serious in megacities. Regionally, the construction eras of buildings in China show a trend of "old in the east and new in the west." Provinces in the east, especially early-developing large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, will face faster and larger-scale aging of buildings. In addition, megacities have large numbers of urban villages and village-level industrial parks, where building and population densities are extremely high, and illegal construction and functional changes are relatively common, making building maintenance and safety management issues more severe.
Building inspections, pension insurance, and other
basic systems urgently need to be improved
In recent years, the state has paid increasing attention to the establishment of basic systems such as housing pension. After the "April 29 Changsha building collapse accident," the General Office of the State Council issued the Work Plan for the Special Rectification of Self-Built House Safety Nationwide, proposing to improve mandatory standards for housing quality and safety and to study the establishment of systems such as regular housing inspections, housing pensions, and housing quality insurance.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has repeatedly clearly proposed exploring the establishment of a long-term mechanism for housing safety management and improving basic systems such as housing inspections, pensions, and insurance. In March 2023, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and 14 other departments issued the Notice on Strengthening the Safety Management of Operating Self-Built Houses, promoting the establishment of a long-term mechanism for the safety management of operating self-built houses. On June 28, 2023, Ni Hong, Party Secretary and Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, published a signed article in Study Times, proposing to study and establish three systems—housing inspections, pensions, and insurance—to provide full-life-cycle safety guarantees for housing and make people's living more comfortable and better. On January 8, 2024, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of College Student Dormitories, clearly requiring regular inspections of student dormitory buildings of a certain age.
Building a solid barrier for housing safety
still requires strengthening institutional and technological innovation
At present, China's systems for housing inspections, pensions, and insurance are still in the exploratory stage. At the local operational level, they still face many problems, such as unclear housing inspection standards, imperfect technical means, inflexible use of maintenance funds, and heavy fiscal pressure. Housing safety management still faces many challenges. For example, in the housing inspection system, China has established a housing safety management system centered on the appraisal of dangerous and old buildings, but the system itself emphasizes post-event disposal and neglects pre-event warning, and a safety warning and regular inspection mechanism for ordinary housing has not yet been established. At the same time, existing housing safety inspections mostly rely on manual testing, and efficiency and cost need to be optimized. Regarding the source of housing maintenance funds, China has established a special residential maintenance fund system, but it mainly covers ordinary commercial housing. A large number of self-built houses and old residential communities with high safety hazards lack coverage by special residential maintenance funds. At the same time, the existing special residential maintenance funds also face problems such as high thresholds for use and the lack of effective channels for individual owners to apply for use.
In this regard, it is still necessary to improve basic systems such as housing inspections, pensions, and insurance, strengthen the support of scientific and technological means, and build a solid barrier for housing safety through institutional and technological innovation.
First, establish a regular housing inspection system and use new technologies to set a "health code" for old houses. Clarify the inspection cycle frequency and inspection indicator system for various old houses such as self-built houses and commercial housing. Strengthen the research and development of scientific and technological means for housing inspections. Further open up the underlying data chain of full-life-cycle housing management, and use "QR code" technical means to strengthen safety monitoring of housing. Through integrated space-air-ground monitoring means, IoT sensors, artificial intelligence, etc., build a methodology system that combines large-scale early warning of natural disaster safety risks for housing with precise inspection of individual buildings, such as using InSAR satellite monitoring of irregular geological subsidence around housing, integrating multi-source data to establish high-accuracy housing disaster risk prediction models, and quickly detecting facade deformation of individual buildings based on LiDAR and intelligent image recognition.
Second, improve the housing pension and housing insurance systems, and open up multiple channels to establish pensions for old houses. It is possible to explore incorporating housing pensions into land transfer costs and integrating other housing-related revenues to establish public accounts. It is also possible to explore further optimizing the special residential maintenance fund system and the housing provident fund system to inject source vitality into the maintenance of old housing. For example, referring to countries such as the United States and Germany, the special residential maintenance fund can be changed from a one-time "large lump-sum payment" to a dynamic "small long-term payment" mechanism; operating self-built houses can be guided to pay special residential maintenance funds on a village collective basis, expanding the coverage of special residential maintenance fund payments. Accelerate the introduction of housing insurance mechanisms, open up policy paths for using the value-added income of special residential maintenance funds and housing provident funds to insure key building components, allow residents to add a lock to housing safety on a voluntary basis, and effectively reduce the government's fiscal pressure.
Third, improve the linkage mechanism of "people, housing, land, and money," and integrate into the whole chain to weave a dense "policy network" for old houses. Pay attention to policy innovation across the full life cycle of housing, promote coordination and cooperation among housing inspection, pension, and insurance systems and various policies such as urban renewal and housing credit, and form policy synergy. Consider exploring pilot systems such as mandatory inspections and graded certification of old housing in selected areas of megacities, combining housing inspection and certification results with loan interest rates, rental and sales taxes and fees, etc., guiding housing property rights holders to actively carry out housing inspections, and accelerating the establishment of the housing inspection system; improve the incentive mechanism for science and technology finance, encourage various market entities to participate in the research and development of key technologies and equipment for the functional revitalization, renewal, maintenance, and operation of old houses, and through full-cycle institutional guarantees for old buildings, improve the safety of old houses and effectively reduce the safety hazards of old housing.
评论 （0）