The Origin and Development of the Middle Class

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter mainly explores and summarizes the origin of the concept of the middle class and the connotation of the middle class in this book. We can trace back the origins of the modern concept of the middle class in the western countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution triggered its upsurge. Subsequently, it has become the main body of the social hierarchy structure of these countries, and the whole society was restructured as an olive-shaped social hierarchy, namely one in which “the middle class outnumbers the other two classes”. China’s middle class came into being and started its upswing along with the development of capitalism, dating back to the early nineteenth century. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the adoption of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, there was no actual middle class in China, but only the middle class in its broader sense.