For many foreign observers, China's daily landscape presents a series of fascinating phenomena. In this special commentary series, "The Logic of Chinese Governance through Daily Life," we address three core inquiries about China frequently raised by the international community: Where does Chinese people's trust in the government come from? How is the baseline of social welfare secured? And how is social order maintained from the bottom up? Through the eyes of expats living in China, this series aims to explore the "ground reality" of Chinese governance.

In much of the world, homelessness is seen as an inevitable fate for at least some portion of the population. Many see it as a natural social phenomenon that cannot possibly be solved. Some, whether or not they state it explicitly, even see it as an apt punishment for "failing" to integrate into society. In China, preventing, alleviating and ultimately solving any and all instances of homelessness is an explicit policy of the state with deep roots in China's contemporary history and continued relevance as it transitions to become a developed society.

One crucial and foundational aspect of this debate is the public and collective character of land ownership in China and the housing registration system. In June 1950, the Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China revolutionized China's social structure from a semi-feudal society with highly concentrated land ownership in the hands of landlords while hundreds of millions lived as landless rural proletarians or land-poor peasants.

Over the course of the next few decades of socialist construction of rural development, reform and the implementation of the household responsibility system, one thing remained true: Rural Chinese people always have somewhere to go back to. This is a relatively unique achievement during that period of time.

Homelessness is both structural and circumstantial. Land reform, the housing registration system and China's urban planning have ensured that China has a managed process of urbanization that prevents the structural emergence of homelessness and slum-like conditions experienced by developing capitalist countries in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. As for the "urban villages" - older neighborhoods often lacking ideal living conditions - China has taken proactive measures to perform large-scale renovation of such neighborhoods, an effort that still persists today.

According to Pan Wei, an official with the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development as quoted by the Chinese media, China has built over 68 million units of affordable and resettlement housing since 2012 alone, enabling more than 170 million people to have a stable home and further renovating 300,000 older residential communities, benefiting 130 million urban residents. The home ownership rate in China has now surpassed 90 percent.

Furthermore, and a crucial aspect to mention in regard to how the debate around homelessness is usually had in the West, China has been incredibly successful at eradicating the trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs in its society. In the West, homelessness and drugs are mutually reinforcing problems. In China, drug users are rehabilitated and eventually returned to their families and communities for a productive existence. Prison is reserved for traffickers. In the West, particularly in the US and the UK, it is common for drugs to ravage entire communities and leave many homeless drug addicts to live out painful and dangerous lives on the streets, with drug laws often lacking or aimed at punishing the user, rather than focusing on medical rehabilitation.

Anyone who has travelled the length and breadth of China, with its nearly ubiquitous large-scale residential communities, can confirm that today homelessness and vagrancy is an incredibly rare and ephemeral phenomenon when it arises. In my research on this matter, I have noted an increased interest, particularly in Global South countries like Brazil, in scholarship on this matter in China. China's grassroots organizations, both street-level committees and township-level rural governments, are the key first responders, tasked with handling immediate relief. The grid-style management system ensures that local government responsibility for given areas and the individuals who inhabit them is clear.

On a broader level, the overall planning of the process of development and urbanization by higher levels of government proactively prevents the emergence of large-scale homelessness problems in China. It is no exaggeration to say that China has become a model for managing the rural-urban development transition and combating homelessness and housing precarity.

As China transitions from a society that has already eradicated absolute poverty and achieved moderate prosperity to a developed socialist country over the next few decades, interest is bound to grow in how it deals with and responds to the challenges faced by highly urbanized countries in a dynamic global economic environment. Homelessness and housing precarity are now largely issues of the past.

The author is a comparative legal jurist currently studying Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University.