[Biweekly Symposium] No. 592: Civil Rights and the Shift of Private Space into Public Space.

Lecturer: GUO Yuhua

Host: Guping

Commentators: JIA Xijin, CHEN Fengshan, HUA Xinmin, CHEN Bulei

Professor GUO Yuhua has been a long time observer of the current affairs in China. She firstly emphasized that the social problems that rose from housing was a critical shift from private space to public space. It was more than just housing, but it was a multi-faceted issue concerning civil rights. 

Private housing was first and foremost private in nature. How did it become public, or quasi-public? Professor GUO boiled it down to the fact that everything about the private life had been over politicized. The very fact that people live in different areas in reality showcased that the political status of a person had huge impact on his way of life, region of housing, and place of social status. She then talked about the anti-demolition campaign that sprung up every now and then, the implications of such campaigns on the transition of institutions in the Chinese society and the systematic conundrum that conservation of civil rights had been outweighed by the need of maintaining stability. 

Unirule Biweekly Symposium has been serving the Chinese public as an open platform for academic exchange.