The price of not owning: housing discipline among highly educated renters in urban China

China is often described as a nation of homeowners, where ownership is widely seen as the preferred and normative form of housing. This paper examines how this ideal persists despite declining property values. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of discipline and interviews with highly educated renters in Nanjing, the study finds that policy discourses legitimising rigid demand are deeply internalised, facilitating the separation of the dwelling function of housing from its financial attributes. More broadly, homeownership is linked to stability, achievement, and men’s commitment-readiness, whereas renting is associated with transience, insecurity, and emotional inferiority. These meanings are reproduced and reinforced through both actual and perceived surveillance within wider social networks, as well as through dispersed forms of practical and emotional punishment embedded in an inadequately regulated rental market. The study concludes by identifying the distinctive mechanisms that sustain China’s homeownership ideology and discusses their implications for the development of more inclusive housing policies.