As Beijing faces intensifying geostrategic headwinds and scrutiny of its great power ambitions, the concept of "douzheng"—which translates to both "struggle" and "fight" in English—has resurfaced in Chinese strategic discourse. "Struggling" has become a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping's vision for achieving China's "great rejuvenation" and was recently enshrined in the Chinese Communist Party constitution at the 20th Party Congress. The need to "struggle for a new era" has been invoked in numerous contexts, from campaigns to combat internal corruption to calls for Beijing to assert its interests abroad more forcefully.
In the first essay of our new "Lost in translation: Decoding Chinese strategic narratives" series, Patricia M. Kim and Mallie Prytherch take a deeper look at the douzheng concept and how it is used in China's domestic and foreign policies.
🏢 Converting offices to apartments. The conversion of less environmentally friendly office buildings to green apartments can help address three pressing issues: today's oversupply of office space, the housing shortage, and excessive greenhouse gas emissions. Arpit Gupta, Candy Martinez, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh explain how the Inflation Reduction Act can help finance subsidies for office-to-housing conversions and share a tool to calculate project costs in major U.S. cities.
🏠 Single-family rentals. The growing presence of institutional investors in the single-family rental market has generated concerns recently. Single-family rentals are an important part of the rental market because they offer people the ability to rent larger homes in communities that are often closed to multi-family renters. Laurie Goodman and Ingrid Gould Ellen propose policies to improve transparency in property ownership and protect renters.
In case you missed it, these policy proposals were discussed at an event hosted this week by The Hamilton Project.
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