The economic reform program initiated by the Chinese government in 1979 has dramatically transformed Chinese society. Cities, in particular, have been subject to social, economic, and spatial changes that affect the daily life of residents: Land and housing reforms have broken the Mao-era connection between home and workplace; state services and benefits have been cut; and the private economy offers new employment and business opportunities that tempt rural residents to migrate to urban centers. As a result of these processes, urban society is experiencing growing socio-economic and spatial stratifications. These are highly visible in emerging suburbs where new residential and commercial development have been interspersed among pre-reform structures.; This dissertation, which is based on research done between 2001 and 2002, studies the socio-spatial processes and transformations in Wangjing, a suburb in northeastern Beijing. Centered around three main groups of people---young, wealthy couples living in new commercial compounds; state-employees; and migrants, living and/or working in the suburb---I analyze the development of the area as the result of the interplay of politics, planning, and people. The dissertation provides an ethnographic account of the growing socio-economic differences and sheds light on the different layers of power and influence of residents, the state, and the market. It also studies the diverging values and behaviors that accompany the socio-economic differences among urban residents. In my account of the transformation of suburban space and Chinese peoples' involvement and reaction to it, I argue that the new negotiation and production of space is a highly complex process, influenced by both, state and market forces. I show that the state project of modernization generates a "citizenship of consumption," which grants rights and autonomy to consumers while ostracizing those who lack the financial means to participate in today's consumer culture. In the process of growing class structuration, high-end residential compounds have become a basis for the formation of social status, identity, and habitus. In this manner, the consumption of housing has turned into a reflection of the dynamic processes of social and spatial reconfigurations in contemporary urban China.
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