Locating China’s Middle Classes: social intermediaries and the Party-state

Abstract

The middle class has emerged as a political phenomenon in China since 2002 through a state-sponsored discourse that sees it as a universal and universalising class. Although the evidence from other countries suggests that the growth of middle classes leads to regime change, this seems to be an unlikely outcome for China. In the first place, China’s middle class discourse has uncertain sociological foundations. Secondly, where the middle classes are identifiable they still probably constitute no more than 12% of the population. Thirdly, China’s middle classes have a very close relationship to the Party-state. Most of the professional and managerial middle classes are part of, or closely associated with, the Party-state; and the entrepreneurial middle class has either emerged from within the Party-state or has been incorporated into it.