This paper explains the reasons behind the growing social tension and increased number of conflicts in China after a good performance in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. In this paper, we map out the issues with old urbanization (1978–2014) and the problems unsolved by past policy, and analyse whether the new policy changes introduced by the New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) may help to deal with those problems. We argue that the tensions that evolve into conflicts are often a result of unaddressed social anxiety. Using money to purchase social stability can only be part of the solution. There need to be more serious attempts to improve governance, which involve: improving multi-level governance and inter-regional coordination, enhancing policy transparency and rule by law, adjusting the level of redistribution, and integrating rural and urban community governance structures.

The second King’s College London Symposium on Ageing and Long-term Care in China was convened from 4 to 5th July 2019 at King’s College London in London. The aim of the Symposium was to have a better understanding of health and social challenges for aging and long-term care in China. This symposium draws research insights from a wide range of disciplines, including economics, public policy, demography, gerontology, public health and sociology. A total of 20 participants from eight countries, seek to identify the key issues and research priorities in the area of aging and long-term care in China. The results published here are a synthesis of the top four research areas that represent the perspectives from some of the leading researchers in the field.

Intergenerational support between parents and children in Chinese cities has been dramatically affected by recent social changes. This paper investigates the changing pattern of intergenerational housing support between retired old parents and their children, and the legacy of public housing in shaping this pattern. By initially establishing an up-to-date picture of intergenerational housing support between retired old parents and their children, it seeks to determine how this support depends on whether parents have previously been allocated public housing and, if so, on whether they have disposed of it or have continued to occupy it. A survey with 1000 retired old people from Tianjin in 2009 is used for the analysis. A support flow model is used to go beyond studying housing support per se, and to study the flow of intergenerational support in both directions and in different forms.

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games tend to be accompanied by copious media coverage of the negative social impacts of these events, and people in the affected areas are often thought to share similar experiences. The research in this paper, which focused on the Beijing Summer Olympic Games of 2008, unpacks the heterogeneous groups in a particular sector of the housing market to gain a better understanding of how the Games affected different resident groups. The paper critically examines the experience of migrant tenants and Beijing citizens (landlords in particular) in “villages-in-the-city” (known as cheongzhongcun), drawing on their first-hand accounts of the citywide preparations for the Games and the pervasive demolition threats to their neighbourhoods. The paper argues that the Beijing Summer Olympiad produced an uneven, often exclusionary, Games experience for a certain segment of the urban population.