This paper examines the recent growth of government-led affordable housing in Guangzhou ad-dressing a paucity of global housing studies that explore experimental and contextual policy ap-proaches in China. It also addresses the lack of Chinese housing studies recognizing the impact of housing design governance, including regulatory controls and design standards, on housing preferences, supply, and lifestyles. Since 1995, the supply of affordable housing has surged, now surpassing that of market housing. This response to failures in the private housing market and a lack of equitable access to housing signifies a significant shift, acknowledging the need to re-establish a state-led and long-term public housing supply after decades of housing marketiza-tion. Employing an architectural design research perspective, this paper investigates the interplay between affordable housing supply and the emergence of housing standards, examining resultant housing design outcomes. It poses the question: What changes in housing policy and interventions in housing markets are necessary to increase public rental housing supply, and how do these changes affect housing outcomes? The paper explores these questions through a discussion of the key moments in affordable housing policy and housing estate development in Guangzhou that fa-cilitated the creation of widely accessible public housing and long-term housing assets. This pro-vides new insights into China’s unique approach to translating central government social welfare and housing policy through contextual design experimentation and pilot housing projects, de-parting from the conventional top-down policy implementation found in most other countries.