Chinese Middle Class: Reality or Illusion?
Zhou Xiaohong

Nanjing University
Abstract: In the process of modernization around world, the change
in class and social stratification, especially the rising and increasingof middle classes, has been a universally significant phenomenon.
Centering on the debate of whether or not there are middle classes in China,
this paper analyzes, against the background of Eastern Asianmodernization and the reform and opening in China, the emergence andsocial structure of the Chinese middle class, and points out that the
Chinese middle class is not only product of industrialization andmodernization, but also, more important, result of social transformation.
Owing to traits of modern Chinese politics, the Chinese middle class isevidently both a vanguard in consumption and a rearguard in politics. At
the end of this treatise, the author also discusses the relationshipbetween the rising of the middle class and the future of Chinese societies
in regard to economic development, social structure and ideology in China.
The discussion on Chinese middle class has recently become the major concernof Chinese sociologists as well as the general public. Ever since the early 1990s,
works on the middle class, in spite of all the ideological restraints existing, have beenreleased successively, out of the increasing interest in the matter by the publishers andthe mass media. The fundamental cause underlying the occurrence of such aphenomenon can be attributed to recent changes in China’s social stratum conditions
which, for the past over thirty years, have more or less remained unaffected. The moststriking change noticed is the emergence of another class or stratum, or, at least, a newgroup of people with medium incomes, than the two traditional working and farmingclasses.
I. IS there the middle class at all in China?
This question followed the release of our book entitled Survey A Survey ofChinese Middle Class earlier this year. Our investigation indicated that the middle
class or middle stratum accounted for 11.9 per cent of the population in Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan, the five major cities in China, according
to a telephone interview of 3038 households there. Three main indices, namely,
financial condition, occupation and educational background, were adopted in ourstudy for a comprehensive survey of the interviewees’ situation.
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The publication of our investigation created much stir in sociological circles andother sectors of society as well. Shortly after China Youth Daily, an influential
newspaper in China with a circulation of millions of copies a day, devoted a whole
page for the report on our study, the investigation as well as its follow-up discussions
were given full coverage home and abroad. Almost as many as 75,400 webpages wereavailable using the internet search engine Google for A Survey of Chinese Middle
Class, and no less than 39,700 using Baidu. Apart from objective reports on our study,
there was also considerable comment presented on these webpages. 1/3 of thecomment writers deemed the percentage of middle-income households in city
population, “merely 11.9 per cent”, much lower than their expectation, whereas theother 2/3 of them challenged not only our estimate of the total middle class population
but also the criteria for our judgments. According to them, if 11.9 per cent of Chinese
population was classified as the middle income group, the total would reach anamazing 150,000,000 in China, for one thing 1 ; and it was doubtful whether a personwith over 5,000 yuan monthly income, a white-collar occupation and formal college
education was qualified for the middle class, for another.
As a matter of fact, challenges of that kind never really detached themselvesfrom studies on the middle class. When Lu Xueyi declared in his A Study on Modern
China’s Different Social Strata in 2001, that the estimate number of middle-classhouseholds in China was 80 million, it gave rise to a large-scale heated discussion (LuXueyi, 2001). Then, in the year 2004, another stormy discussion on the same topic
was aroused when the National Bureau of Statistics issued the standard for China’s
middle annual income as ranging from 60,000 to 500,000 yuan per household. In
September 2005, Lu Xueyi again caused much agitation when he further proclaimed,
during “The Second China-Europe Senior Forum on Government Management”, thatbased on an annual growth of one percentage point, the middle class in China was
expected to make up for 40 per cent of the total work force in 20 years (Liu Jun et al.,2005).
Actually, the debate on whether there is the middle class or a middle stratum at
all in China goes far beyond the cyber talk. Some scholars, a few of whom are experts
on social stratification, also deny the existence of the middle class in present China.
As far as they are concerned, “there is more a middle-income group than the middle
class” (Wang Yi, 2003). Some others even claim that “the so-called middle class in
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We have every reason to believe that those who challenged our results in this way
have read neither the book by us nor the whole-page coverage by China Youth Daily.
It was specified in our study that the survey was done among the urban citizens livingin the above-mentioned five major cities in China, and hence our findings were notapplicable to rural population, which makes up for over 60 per cent of Chinese
population, or citizens of other cities lower in economic and development level.
2China is no more than a myth invented by media reporters and scholars” (CaiZhenfeng, 2004).
The Chinese middle class has long endured much hardship for its survival, thesame way as have the studies on such a group of people. The former subject is wellhandled in our book China’s Middle Class: What They Can Do and What They Should
Do (Zhou Xiaohong, 2002), whereas the latter will be dealt with in the current study
from one perspective only: How comes that, after 25 years of social reforms andopening-up, most people are still rather skeptical about the presence of the middle
class or the middle stratum in China?
One reason accounting for the above-mentioned skepticism lies in our
misinterpretation of the English term “middle class”, as once also happened in other
East Asian countries and areas like Taiwan and Korea (Xiao Xinhuang, 1994). In
Hongkong and Singapore, where English is generally used by the public, the term
“middle class” is employed for the reference to a particular group of people, almost
free of misunderstanding; there, the term “the new middle class” is usually usedinterchangeably with “the professionals”. In both Taiwan and Korea, however, thetranslation for the English term “middle class” in their respective local languages
implies “the possession of middle property”; consequently, it is no longer appropriate
to follow Mills’ practice as identifying professionals and white-collar workers with“the new middle class.” In mainland China, the conventional translation for the term
“middle class” is zhongchan jieji, which means “the middle property class,” and,obviously, this translation adds to people’s overemphasis on the amount of assets
owned, at the cost of total ignorance of occupational characteristics of the modern
middle class or the new middle class. Even in the United States, as a matter of fact,
the income, be it the absolute income or the relative income, of the middle class is far
less than our expectation; “The great bulk of the new middle class are of the lower
middle-income brackets”; Mills puts it bluntly. Again, when it comes to the transitionof the old middle class to the new middle class, he asserts that “negatively, thetransformation of the middle class is a shift from property to no-property; positively,
occupation” (Mills, 1951: 64-65).
The second reason why people challenge the existence of the middle class in
China can be attributed to their confusing “middle class” with “middle class society.”
A close inspection into articles refuting the existence of China’s middle class showsthat most authors have cited as a supporting argument the five standards proposed by
Niu Wenyuan, leader of a research team for sustainable development strategy studies
at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS): (1) the rate of urbanization isover 70 per cent;(2) the white-collar work force is of the same, if not larger, size as
the blue-collar one;(3) the Engel coefficient is lower than 0.3 on an average;(4)the3Gini coefficient is maintained between 0.25 and 0.30; and (5)the average term ofeducation for an individual is over 12 years.(As quoted in Wang Yi, 2004)
Anyone who has some knowledge of the middle class would know that the above
standards are not intended for the judgment of the presence or absence of the middle
class in a society; but rather, they are criteria for the middle class society, i.e., asociety composed mainly of the middle class people. Still, it is open to discussion
whether these standards are valid for the evaluation of the middle class society. A casein point would be the United States. The Gini coefficient for the nation is as high as
0.4, but no one would deny the fact that the States is a typical “middle class society”
in the world.
Apart from the two reasons listed above, another fact which may give rise topeople’s skeptical attitude has something to do with people’s overestimation of the
middle class and its social properties. In an internet article entitled “The concept of‘middle class’ misinterpreted: High income does not mean high quality,” the author
argued that “as far as an individual is concerned, the middle class does not mean
comfort and luxury, but responsibility and devotion…. The very reason why the
middle class is a social group with extraordinary sense of social responsibility lies in
the fact that the middle class people have full supply of the necessities oflife…”(Weng Weng, 2005). Having read this article, one would have a better
understanding of who has misinterpreted the middle class, especially when you
compare it to the following phrases from the book White Collar, The American Middle
Class by Mills, “the decline of the free entrepreneur and the rise of the dependant
employee on the American scene has paralleled the decline of the in dependent
individual and the rise of the little man in the American mind” (Mills, 1951: XII).
II. Who are the middle class people in China?
The Chinese middle class in the modern sense came into being between lateth
19 century and early 20th century, and the concept was gradually enriched in the firsthalf of the 20th century. It was such metropolis as Shanghai that had supplied a hotbedof its emergence. The growing process of the middle class in China before the year
1949 was, however, one featured by difficulty and hardship, due to both the invasionof Japanese imperialists and the problems of the old China (Lian Lian, 2005).
The Chinese middle class was deprived of its breeding ground after the
revolution in 1949. Although the middle class did not undergo the same roughtreatment as was imposed on landlord and bureaucratic-capitalist classes, the great
majority of the class who used to be members of the national bourgeoisie and thepetty bourgeoisie were almost extinct, after a series of political movements (e.g., fromThree Antis and Five Antis to Anti-Rightists and Cultural Revolution) and economic
4reforms (e.g., industrial and commercial reform). Not until the adoption of the
opening policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the year 1978 did the middle class findits new way to come into Chinese society. In another word, the prosperity of themodern Chinese middle class or middle stratum owes most to the social reforms andopening-up or social transformation since 1980. As early as five years ago, it wasestimated that the proportion of middle class people or households, i.e., those with
10,000-100,000 yuan per capita annual income or 30,000-100,000 yuan’s worth offamily assets, was about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the whole population (Xiao
Wentao, 2001). At the same time, it was also calculated, according to a sample survey
in urban and rural places in China, that the middle-career people was 15.9 per cent of
the whole population, the middle-income people 24.6 per cent, themiddle-consumption people 35%, the self-approved-middle-class people 46.8 per cent,and the percentage of people who fell into all the above categories was only 4.1 percent (Li Chunling, 2003). Our own study shows, however, that the middle classpeople, those who can meet the three composite indices on career, education andincome, are of 11.8% of all the citizens in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou
and Wuhan (Zhou Xiaohong, 2005a: 45). No matter how high the percentage or
proportion is, the middle class or middle stratum in modern China should be including
the following basic components:(1) The owners of newly-born private and township enterprises, a group ofpeople that has been spawned by China’s free market agenda over the past 25 years.
According to statistics, by the end of 2002, the number of self-owned enterprises inmainland China had reached 2,435,000, with total employees involved being as manyas 34,093,000. Among them, investors that could be classified as members of the
middle class or the middle stratum were 6,228,000 (National Statistics Bureau, 2003:
148).
(2) Other kinds of self-employed people like petty proprietors and small trades
people, who emerged almost the same time as those private and township enterprises
owners. By the end of 2002, the total number of this group of people was 23,775,000,
and employees involved were 47,429,000 (National Statistics Bureau, 2003: 149). Of
course, a small part of this group of people had so small business that they could
hardly be labeled as the middle class.
(3) Some officials and intellectuals who serve, directly or indirectly, for Party
and government apparatus, as well as the leaders of state-owned enterprises. This
group was derived from the middle layer of the above-mentioned planning economy
society or, as Li Qian has put it, the quasi middle class. Whereas some state
enterprises leaders may have experienced big changes in their economic and social
status, those Party and government officials and intellectuals, owing both to their own
5cultural and quality advantages and the privileges their work units enjoy, havereserved their superiority, although no longer in an over-bearing manner.
(4) Those Chinese people who work in white-collar and senior managerial
occupations in joint ventures. Statistics suggested that by the end of 2002, mainland
Chinese workers employed by foreign-investment enterprises were 3,675,600, andthose employed by Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan funded enterprises were 3,529,500,
and the total was 7,205,100 (National Statistics Bureau, 2003: 138).
(5) A great number of managers of enterprises and social organizations. With
the increasing social demand, there have appeared more and more MBA, MPA andmasters of laws. This group of people, while steadily increasing in number, is in every
way qualified for the Chinese middle class.
(6) Those high-income people working in new hi-tech professions or fields,such as returned overseas students, architects, lawyers, accountants, real estateappraisers, salespeople, film and TV program producers, stock investors as well asother types of professionals.
Some problems are worth our attention when it comes to the estimation of thesize of middle class population. In the first place, we have noticed that the middle
class in China did not spring up until 1978. In western countries, the middle class has
undergone a fairly long development process, and many families of the class can betraced back to their early ancestors. On the contrary, the middle class in China wasalmost eradicated by the revolution after 1949, so that what exists now in modern
China is in a sense the first generation of the middle class. But, we should also noticethat some of the post-1978 middle class people owed much to the social and economic
resources they occupied in the planning economy. In his study, Lu Xueyi confirmedthat the maintenance of superiority by officials and intellectuals in the middle class
greatly depended on how they adjusted their own social positions and made use of
acquired social connection resources, power resources and knowledge resources in themarket economy (Lu Xueyi, 2001: 255). The study carried out in Shanxi by David
Goodman indicated that China’s middle class, being it private entrepreneurs or
managers of state enterprises, keeps a good rapport with the national and Party
organizations, which is a prerequisites for their acquisition of the economic resources(Goodman, David S. G., 1999).
Secondly, in the western world, there was a gap of over one century between
the emergence of the old middle class and that of the new one. The former was mainly
a result of industrialization, whereas the latter was formed during the transition fromindustrialization to post-industrial society. But, in China, the two kinds of middle
class were forged almost simultaneously after 1978. The reason for this is that the old
middle class in China, like owners of private and township enterprises and petty
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proprietors, was, strictly speaking, not a result of industrialization itself (In China,
industrialization boomed even before 1978, when the modern state system and ahierarchy of power were also established.), but that of market transformations in thewake of the reforms and opening-up. It was just the reforms and opening-up thatcaused China to display itself in the world arena and soon, based on her
industrialization, formed the new economic system embedding post-industrial
elements like tertiary industry and technology-intensive industry, and finally led to theemergence of the new middle class including professionals and managers. The shortinterval between the emergence of the old middle class and the new one can be better
illustrated through a comparison between the abnormal situation where “intellectuallabor is less well paid than manual labor” in 1980s and then the return to a “rational
relation between mental labor and manual labor” in 1990s. The current phenomenonof the harmonious co-existence and co-development of the two types of middle classor, the conspicuous heterogeneity of the development of the middle class in mainland
China, makes it possible for the middle stratum to be vividly described as “multiple
collars”.
III. The social background for the emergence of China’s middle class
In the western world, the transition from the industrialization to post-industrial
society provided a social background for the emergence of the middle class; in China,
industrialization itself did not impose as much influence on the social classtransformation. As we can see, industrialization only began to have effect on theformation of the middle class after the reforms and opening-up in 1978 and theconsequent massive social transformation.
This conclusion is better justified when considering how remarkable anachievement China’s industrialization had made during the 30 years between
1949-1978, with a yearly growth rate of about 7%, not counting the hazardous Big
Leap Forward period. However, apart from all those political devices that were meant
to contain the emergence of the middle class, some economic factors also made theemergence of the middle class a mere dream. Political means employed concerned
two seemingly contradictory respects. One was to plant a symbolic “exploiting class”,
as opponents of existing working and peasantry classes, for as long as 30 years. The
other was to apply the equalitarian de-stratification strategy 2 among “the masses”.
There were multiple means for the realization of de-stratification, ranging from theequalitarian salary system to the allotment system for daily consumptions, the housing
distribution system, and the abandoning of the piecework system as well as the2

According to William’s (1984) study, China was the most equal society among all the socialist
countries during the period from 1960 through 1970, when the higher income was only 2.2 to 2.3
times that of the lower one, with the Gini coefficient being a mere .20 to .21.
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premium system.
The economic factors were multiple in the same way. To begin with, under the
influence of Russian economic mode, Chinese industrialization gave priority to thedevelopment of heavy industry, on the sacrifice of light industry and service industry,
which were closely related to the daily life of common people, but lagged seriously
behind people’s demand of enhancing life quality. Also, owing to the principle of“regarding agriculture as the key link in national economy” and the quasi-militarizedadministrative system in people’s commune, the flowing of farmers was greatly
confined; especially after the monopolization of the purchase and marketing of grainin 1953, agricultural and sideline products were in great shortage, the various coupons
prevalent in Mao Zedong era being a sure proof of that. Finally, the militaryconfrontations with the United States and afterwards with India and Russia made thedefensive expenses a considerable proportion of the national income. All theabove-mentioned factors contributed to the fact that the income of Chinese averagepeople had hardly any substantial increase from 1952 through 1980 3 .
All the changes came only after 1978. The Third Plenary Session of theEleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China set off a large-scale
reforms and opening-up movement in China. The movement started with the contract
responsibility system of linking remuneration to output in agriculture, and later spreadto many urban economic fields. In the following over 20 years, China’s economic
development made achievements of world interest. The yearly increasing rate of GDP
remained 8 per cent after 1978, and it even achieved 11-13 per cent during the three
years between 1992 and 1994. The strategic objective of quadrupling GDP during the
20 years between 1980 and 2000, set by Deng Xiaoping at the Twelfth National
Congress of the Communist Party of China, was also met five years ahead of time.
If the fast development of China’s economy during the last 20 years of the 20th
century lays the basic material foundation for the bettering of Chinese’s people’s life,
it is the social transformation after 1978 that has lent much to the emergence andgrowth of China’s middle class. Here the social transformation includes the following
three primary aspects: firstly, to carry the industrialization from 1949 through 1978
further so as to assist the social transition from an agriculture-oriented one to anindustry- and service-industry-oriented one. Secondly, more importantly, to transit
from mandatory planning economy to modern market economy. Last, to transit from a
political system featured by extreme centralism to socialist democratic politicalsystem. Soon we would find that it is just the social transform, together with all the3
Statistics provided by China Agricultural Yearbook (1980) and China Statistical Yearbook (1981) suggested thatthe average per capita annual income for Chinese civil servants was 446 yuan in 1952, and 529 yuan in 1980, thetotal increasing rate being 18.6 per cent, and that the average per capita annual income for peasants was 38.8 yuan
after collectivization in 1953, and 54.4 yuan in 1975, with a total increasing rate of 40.2 per cent.

8changes it has brought along to social life, that has rendered possible the emergenceand growth of China’s middle class.
The first change that can be attributed to the social transform is the dissociationof people’s everyday life from the political life of the state and the appearance of“public fields”, a term by Jurgen Habermas, in certain scopes, as a consequence of therelaxed and well-regulated political environment and the readjustment of national andsocial relationship. This change is one of the necessary conditions for the emergenceand growth of China’s middle class. After China adopted the reform and opening
policy, the first meaningful change noticed was the removal of the labels on landlords
and rich farmers by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China after
1979, for one thing; and the modification of the basic line of keeping economic
construction, rather than class struggle, as the central task, for another. This change,
accompanied by some other changes, especially the subdivision of career, finally led
to the stratification of the Chinese society following, in place of the former“symbolic” class standard, a career standard. While this serves as a prerequisite forthe emergence of the middle class, the further weakening of the interference of thestate on the social life, economic as well as political (China has taken its first step
towards villager autonomy in rural places), the formation of a civil society, and the
expansion of all relevant public fields, will definitely contribute a lot to the maturityof the Chinese middle class.
The second change lies in how the sustained, steady growth in the national
economy, the adjustment of the economic construction, the expansion of tertiaryindustry, the rise of the marketing level, and the quickening of the pace ofurbanization have all fulfilled the conditions for the emergence and growth of China’s
middle class. The achievement made by Chinese economy during the past 20-odd
years, which is widely acknowledged by the whole world, continues the world’s
confidence in China’s promising future. As for the forge of the Chinese middle class,the increase of economy may lay the foundation, whereas the rise of the national
income and its increasing rate may be more direct a reason. A fact is that the national
income made up for 57 per cent of GDP in the year 1980, 71 per cent in the year 1993
and, hopefully, as much as 81 per cent in the year 2010, which means more and moreof the state wealth is now in the grasp of common people. What’s more, a draft of theConstitutional Amendment, submitted by the National People's Congress (NPC)Standing Committee to the NPC session in 2004, made formal alterations of Article
Thirteen from “The State protects citizens' lawful income, deposit, housing and theownership of other lawful property'' to “"Citizens' lawful private property brooks noviolation''. Although it was only about one year ago that the clause recognizing“protection of private property” was included into the constitution, the successful9practice of encouraging the individual economy by the Chinese government alreadyhinted its protection of citizen’s legal private property.
The third change is that the diversification of culture and the shift from elitist
education to mass education have prepared the ground, both culturally andpsychologically, for the emergence and growth of the middle class, especially the newone. In Mao Zedong era, culture and literature and art were working exclusively forthe politics and as a means of propagandizing official ideology; and thus,
understandably, the exclusiveness and the orthodoxy of the worker-peasant-soldier
culture and literature and art left it impossible for the middle class (even if there weresuch a class in terms of the economic income) to possess its own cultural property.
The diversification of culture and people’s tolerance of multi-culture only came up
following the reforms and opening-up in 1978. Moreover, just as Mills has put it,“mass education has also been one of the major social mechanism of the rise of the
new middle-class occupations, for these occupation require those skills that have been
provided by the education system” (Mills, 1951: 266). The development in China’s
higher education is perfectly obvious. For instance, Chinese People’s University’senrollment rate was above 15 per cent in the year 2003, which was good evidence ofthe transition from elitist education to mass education. However, the development of
the higher education and the rise in the people’s educational level do not suffice forthe emergence of the middle class. It was again confirmed by William’s study that
whereas the number of years for education for Chinese average people kept risingfrom 1930 through 1978 (except for in 1960s when the Cultural Revolution led to a
decline in educational level), their occupational ranks and their incomes deteriorated(William, 1984). The situation was altered only after 1980 when education started toyield increasingly profitable returns for people, with an increasing rate as high as 6-7
per cent in 2000 (i.e., one extra year of education brings about a rise of 6-7 per cent in
one’s income), which was almost equal to that of developed nations. This also
provides favorable conditions for the emergence of the middle class, the new one in
hi-tech fields in particular.
IV. Growing pains or, the bottleneck in development
From the above discussion, we have seen how the over 20 years of reforms andopening-up has given rise to the tremendous transformation and change in almost all
respects of Chinese society, even the social construction, and how this fact has caused
the emergence and growth of China’s middle class. Just because the Chinese middle
class has exerted much influence on China’s modernization process and because of its
own growth rate, the rising of such a class in China has aroused a worldwide concern.
As we have noticed, a whole set of policies carried out by the Chinese government
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after the reforms and opening-up are all favorable for the emergence and maturity ofthe middle class or, using a term from the state discourse system, the middle stratum.
In the primary 10 years after the reforms and opening-up, a whole set of new policies
produced universal benefits for not only farmers but also the whole society, among
which the first middle income group emerged as the times demanded when Deng
Xiaoping advocated “allowing some people to become well-to-do ahead of others.” In
the latest ten-odd years, the number of the middle class people has multiplied soenormously that some overseas media even take alarm at their own judgment that
“China has stepped into a middle-class era.”
We would not deny that China’s middle class has taken its shape and is now inrapid growth, but this does not mean China has stepped into a middle-class era. In
western developed countries, i.e., the so-called post-industrial or middle-classsocieties, the middle class people account for 80% of the whole population (hencereferred to as “the masses”), and the social structure is the “olive” styled one. In
present China, however, the middle class constitutes less than 20 per cent of the whole
population. Even after over 20 years of reforms and opening-up, the former“pyramid” styled social structure has only been replaced by an “onion” structure, onewith a slightly expanded middle part and an even bigger base. What’s more, no matter
whether it is for the rapid development of the economy, the distribution of wealth, thetransformation of social structure or, the realm of ideology, the maturity of China’s
middle class is doomed to rigorous test.
The first difficulty for the maturity of the Chinese middle class lies in the
distribution of wealth brought about by the rapidly growing economy. We havediscussed the legitimacy of incomes by China’s middle class, especially those new
middle class people who live on their own intellectual output, but, at the same time, it
is also evident that the upper “capital class” and a fraction of the middle class in
Chinese society either are derived from the former power center or, at least, havesomething to do with it. Part of their wealth is acquired through unfair competition or
utilization of the loopholes in the state system and policies. More importantly, thisgroup of people, while small in number and proportion, own a great part of the social
wealth. Statistics suggest that the financial capital for the present China is over one
thousand billion yuan, but the majority of it is under the control of a tiny minority. In
2003, the per capita GDP for Beijing, counted on the permanent population, reached$US3,074, $US6,000 for Shanghai, and $US4,000 even for the whole triangular zone,
which has, in every way, reached the level of the moderately developed countries (LiYang, 2004; Oriental Morning Post, 2005). But at the same time, the increase of thegap between the poor and the rich is also apparent, the seriousness of the problem ofwhich is fully demonstrated by the Gini coefficient of 0.457. Obviously, if the efforts11on constraining the over-concentration of the wealth into the hands of a tiny minority
failed, the result would be not only a more striking poor-rich disparity but also
conflicts among different social strata. Such a situation will not be beneficial for thegrowth and maturity of China’s middle class; on the other hand, it is quite possiblethat the middle class may be finally taken as the “scapegoat” for social inequality.
Therefore, the government should, through perfection of the legal and tax systems andthe establishment of an appropriate social security system, protects the economic
interests of the lower-income groups and, at the same time, facilitates a rational andeffective flow of the national wealth to the middle class or middle stratum. Also, toensure that the middle class would not follow the suit to seek “special privilege” forthe improvement of their own economic status, which is sure to invite criticism andboycott from the mid-and-low social classes, the government cannot neglect legal
constraints on the middle class as well.
The second difficulty for the expansion of China’s middle class is related tothe unsolved problem of the demand and pressure the large rural population has onindustrialization. Ever since the reforms and opening-up policy, we have observed anationwide large influx of rural laborers into cities and developed areas, whereindustrialization begin to take its effect. According to the fifth national demographic
census, the number of rural laborers in cities added up to 88 million. With China
being admitted into WTO, most villages, especially those in backward rural area, will
confront more severe challenges, and it then follows that the amount of farmers who
have no other choice but to move into cities for a living will continue to shoot up.
Nevertheless, the cities’ absorption of rural labor force is rather limited, because thepace of industrialization is lagged behind the flowing rate of farmer laborers, thebusiness of state-owned enterprises is generally depressed, and township enterprises
which used to display prosperity are now losing their momentum (most villages in
China’s rural areas have not been affected by industrialization yet). Apparently, even
if the millions of Chinese farmers can successfully find their places in cities, owing to
the requirement on labor force by industrialization, it is quite likely that they can only
place their hopes on their next generation, i.e., “the second generation immigrants”, toenter into the ranks of the middle class. Therefore, it remains a remote dream for
China to have the same “olive” structure as some western societies.
The final difficulty for the growth of the Chinese middle class stems from
ideological pressure. As we all know, modern Chinese regime is a socialist one which
is characterized by the leading of the work class and the alliance of workers andfarmers. But, the current situation is when more and more state enterprises are caught
in extreme difficulties, the leading position of the work class meets great challenges
and, as we have found out, it is just these challenges that have delayed the recognition12

of the legitimacy of China’s middle class in legal documents. Most officials andofficial documents prefer to address this class as the middle-income class or the
middle stratum. Obviously, it is disadvantageous for the future development of the
middle-property class or stratum if it cannot be properly acknowledged in theory. In
fact, on second thoughts we would realize that it is not so contradictory to
acknowledge the socialist regime of present China and, simultaneously, the existenceof the middle-property class or the middle stratum as we would think. On the one
hand, our analyses have made clear that the middle class is far from being themainstream of the society in China, a developing country still in its process ofindustrialization. Even in the following dozens of years, the growing rate of the workclass (the so-called blue-collar workers), in its traditional sense, is sure to surpass thatof the middle-property class or stratum, especially when considering that more andmore rural laborers will enter into the group of industrial workers. Consequently, theexpansion of the middle class will not shake the fundamental regime of China. On theother, Deng Xiaoping’s proposal of viewing intellectuals as a part of the work classhas both its theoretical basis and practical necessity. In western sociological society, it
is just common sense to view mental workers as “white-collar workers”, in that their
vocational feature and their middle income do not change the nature of their work. As
a consequence, I would argue that the expansion of the middle class in China could
just as well be perceived as the wax and wane of the two groups, white-collar groupand blue-collar group, of the same work class. One visible change in the 21st century
will be, along with the continuous flowing of farmer laborers into cities as demandedby the industrialization, the majority of the work class, through further improvementof their economic and social status, become members of the now minor
middle-property class or stratum.

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