Effect of China Housing Provident Fund System from the Perspective of Policy Transfer

With 30-year-long urban housing system reform in China, Chinese housing supply system has shifted from planned public housing system to a market-oriented supply system. With housing monetization and privatization, the Chinese government encourages urban families to purchase housing from the commodity housing market. In order to realize the initial capital accumulation for the employees to purchase a house, the government imitated Singapore Central Provident Fund and established the Housing Provident Fund system in China. As a compulsory savings accumulation plan, it has not make the same active social and economic effects as Singapore CPF-HDB system though Chinese housing provident fund system and the Singapore Central Provident Fund system have formal similarities on some policy elements such as contributors and coverage range, etc. Based on Dolowitz & Marsh's model framework for the evaluation of policy transfer effectiveness, the paper discusses whether there is a failure of policy transfer in Chinese housing provident fund system. Studies show different housing market structure, different policy elements and mechanisms make the Housing Provident Fund system "improper policy transfer" and "incomplete policy transfer" in the process of transplantation. Different understanding of the nature of the HPF also results in different outcomes of the policy transfer.