*5.2. Discussion*

From its genesis, China's market reform has been guided and intervened in by the government. In contrast to the "shock therapy" of the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, China's gradual reforms are carried out under the action of improving the socialist system and exerting the institutionalization of socialism. This is the continuity of the political system and reality [37] (Liu 2003). The current social and economic state of China is not a completely self-disciplined market economy system, and all irrational interventions, including interventions of power and privileges, have not all been driven out of the market system [38,39].

On one hand, in the field of market economy, emerging economic elites have gradually emerged whose privileges are based on asset ownership. On the other hand, cadres, or at least some of them, have also learned how to use the market and successfully transfer their own bureaucrats. Privileges are therefore "commercialized" [40] (Szelenyi, 1987). This dual stratification system is particularly obvious in the housing field. On the one hand, according to the logic of market operation, housing resources are differentiated based on an individual's financial ability, and the market provides more incentives for direct producers. Market incentive mechanisms will reflect the return of human capital indicators, such as education, skill level, and housing resources. On the other hand, the powerful elite in the original redistribution system not only use the "privatization of public housing" reform process to share advantages under the planned economic system, as housing resources are legally "privatized" and "commercialized", but they also seize favorable political opportunities in the housing reform process or seek housing benefits through administrative power to enjoy market privileges.

While market transition theory and power continuance theory have a common assumption that China is undergoing a long process of marketization, the common concern of the two theories is how new resources resulting from the market transition are used and divided. Market elites gain resources fairly with better human capital. Powerful elites gain resources by transforming previous power advantages into market ability and status. The possible problem of such an assumption is that the speed of resources emerging from the market transition is misinterpreted into a steady speed, and a fight over resources between market elites and powerful elites is based on an unchanging number of resources.

However, when the time factor is included in this research, the speed of resources emerging from the market transition is unsteady. In the early days of market transition, such resources tend to emerge in a substantial number. Housing acquired between 1999 and 2003 has the highest added value in the housing market. This result means that the question of which party occupies the new resources first is not as critical as the question of which party first gains access to the new resources. An example of this is housing inequality. Once an individual acquires premium housing early, she or he has the capability to increase added value in the long term and profits from renting the house, deepening the stratification and forming a greater Matthew Effect. The answer to this can be found in the fundamental debate of market transition: which party can gain access to the new resources the earliest?

Based on the advantage of collective enterprises and organization clerks on housing value and housing added value, this paper proposes a third approach to answering the above question. Greater human capital and political capital do not necessarily result in more market resources. However, the work units between the market and redistribution system, such as collective enterprises, and occupations, such as organization clerk, which can directly participate in the housing redistribution process deliver the highest housing returns. Although collective enterprise did not have substantial advantages in the early days of market transition, collective enterprise is likely to profit from its vague identity between the market and redistribution system in the long process of reform. Organization clerks can profit because of their early and direct contact with the distribution of housing. These two show the competitive advantage outside the binary contrast between the market and redistribution. Regardless of which main resource distribution system is chosen, it is possible to bypass or avoid these two and then gain specific advantages. A prediction for this process is that, if such a possibility were not managed properly, a troubling group that could neither be affected nor directly influenced by marketization might emerge, further compounding the issue of housing inequality in the long term.

**Author Contributions:** Formal analysis, J.Z.; investigation, J.Z.; data curation, J.Z. and J.X.; writing original draft preparation, J.Z.; writing—review and editing, J.Z. and J.X. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research has received funding from National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 18BGL257), the Shanghai Philosophy Society Planning Project (Grant No. 2018EJB011) and the Chenguang Scholar Program in Shanghai (Grant No. 19CG70).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
