Study On The Housing Provident Funds As Personal Property

In recent years,the low utilization level and the phenomenon of ‘robbing the poors to subsidize the riches' surrounding China's housing provident funds policy have caused fierce dissatisfaction among the depositors and led to the hot discussion among scholars in many fields.Some scholars even suggest an overall abolition of the policy and adopt a voluntary saving system like western countries.Although there are some problems in the existing provident funds policy,it is still far from being a failure policy with no value to reserve.Through analyzing the allocation of legislation power between central and local legislators and the existing laws and regulations,we found that the current policy could continue to play a positive role by confirming and strengthening the property attribute of the housing provident fund.As a special form of property,the holders are subjected to more restrictions when they exercise their rights on the housing provident fund because the property must be used for certain purposes.However,by carefully scrutinizing the content and style arrangement of the Housing Provident Funds Regulation,we found the Article 5 which has long been regard as restriction of the holders' rights is actually targeted at the management authorities and their employees rather than the right holders.Moreover,in recent years,some local regulations have already allowed people enjoy minimum living security or encounter significant difficulties caused by diseases and unexpected events to withdraw their provident funds.It shows that the legislators have become increasingly aware of the importance of enhancing the property attributes of the housing provident funds.As a kind of financial claim,there is no essential difference between the right on housing provident funds and the ordinary deposit claims.In the past,the management and judiciary authorities always refuse to support the depositors' rights on grounds of the function-specific or social security attributes of the provident funds.It's actually a kind of misunderstanding of the regulations which not only improperly limit the depositors' due rights but violate the requirements of ‘administrating according to law'.In my opinion,the fundamental way to change the phenomenon of low utilization level and ‘reverse subsidy' is to stimulate the property attributes of housing provident funds.It requires the legislation authorities strictly follow the criteria of ‘legislative retention","public interest" and "proportionality" and encourage the local legislatures to appropriately relax the restrictions on the depositors in the light of the actual situation in their administrative areas.On the other hand,the management agencies must fulfill their duties according to law and not distort the legislation's original intention and the judiciary authorities should provide the final relief through the mechanism of administrative proceedings to protect the depositors legitimate rights.At present,the existing construction of the housing provident fund system in China has basically provided a feasible mechanism to ensure the provident fund depositors' property rights.Therefore,the suggestion of abolishing the current provident fund system seems too radical and not cost-effective as well.The problem of China's housing provident fund policy is not about lacking efficient mechanism but more about how to ensure the effective operation of the system and reduce the gap between the incomes of the residents and the housing price.When the residents' income is much lower than the price level,any kind of housing financial policy perhaps would not play a great role.Since the housing price of China would not reduce in the short term,maybe the only thing the legislators could do is to enlarge the utilization scope of the provident funds so that people could use the property to satisfy their basis living needs.