507 Urban Geography, 2006, 27, 6, pp. 507–525. Copyright © 2006 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved. COLLECTIVISM, POLITICAL CONTROL, AND GATING IN CHINESE CITIES Youqin Huang 1 Department of Geography and Planning Center for Social and Demographic Analysis State University of New York Abstract: This paper provides a conceptual framework emphasizing the role of culture and the state in understanding gating in different countries, and applies it to examine the long-existing and widespread neighborhood enclosure and gating in Chinese cities. It is argued that the collec- tivist culture deeply embedded in Chinese society and tight political control actively pursued by the government contribute to the widespread character of gating in China, whereas dominant Western-based theories such as the discourse of fear and private provision of public services are less applicable, even though they are becoming increasingly important in the new gated private housing. Gating and neighborhood enclosure in China help to define a sense of collectivism and foster social solidarity. Thus gating per se does not necessarily lead to residential segregation, although it begins to reinforce segregation in the reform era. Gating also facilitates political con- trol through neighborhood-level governments whose jurisdiction often corresponds to enclosed neighborhoods but forms change between different political-historical periods. Thus, while the physical form of gating is similar between China and the United States, the underlying sociopo- litical constructs and implications are quite different. INTRODUCTION While gating is not a completely new phenomenon in the United States, large-scale gated communities for middle-class Americans have only emerged in recent decades (Blakeley and Snyder, 1997; Hayden, 2003; Low, 2003). Gated communities are also becoming a global phenomenon, as they are proliferating on every continent (Webster et al., 2002). With recent housing reform in Chinese cities, many private housing estates similar to gated communities in the United States have emerged. Scholars have used American-based theories such as private provision of services and fear of crime and “others” to explain the gating phenomenon in Chinese cities (e.g., Miao, 2003; Wu, 2005). Yet gated and walled communities have always existed in Chinese cities (Knapp, 2000). Traditional Chinese houses—“courtyard houses” (siheyuan)—were built in an enclosed form, and most housing constructed in the socialist era was in the form of “work-unit compounds” (danwei dayuan), which were usually walled, gated, and guarded. None of the American-based theories can explain gating in these contexts. I argue that the collectivism-oriented culture deeply embedded in Chinese society and the 1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Youqin Huang, Department of Geography and Planning, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222; telephone: 518-442-4792; fax: 518-442-4742; e-mail: yhuang@albany.edu