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With the housing reforms of the 1990s,urban space in China has changed from a work unit based structure to a separation along social and functional lines.The middle class in this context displays a strong tendency towards home-ownership in commercially built,privately managed and well-secured housing estates.These estates are normally fenced or walled with more or less strict access control.In many ways they resemble what has been discussed worldwide as “gated communities”.The author places the Chinese commodity estates in this discussion on gated communities and points out that the phenomena of residential enclaves in China and in the West are on the one hand rather similar,but the attitudes towards gated living on the other hand are very different.With this contradiction in view,the author investigates and discusses the concerning attitudes in the case of commodity housing estates in Guangzhou.His main finding in brief is that although western research emphasises the problematic aspects of gated communities,the interviews conducted for this study disclosed a largely positive attitude not only within,but also from outside the estates.The study is part of a broader research on spatially differentiated governance within an international research programme on mega cities.Since 2007,extensive surveys in three case studies (gated estates) and comparable other forms of housing as well as numerous qualitative interviews with residents,political and commercial actors and experts have been conducted for this study.