Abstract: It is an important task for political scientists to study homeowner-rights movements in urban China. Based on extended field work in Beijing residential areas, we have completed the following five articles in this special issue. Compared with the existing literature, our study has three features. First, we employ a sampling survey to gauge the attitudes and behaviors of the ordinary homeowners. Second, we focus on the horizontal linkages among different residential areas, describing their patterns and political implications. Third, we compare and analyze the local innovations of some typical residential areas, exploring multilateral relationship among the state, market and society in transitional China, attempting to discover the transformation mechanisms of community governance and understand the local democratic system with Chinese characteristics.