Abstract
In reviewing the history of China since it embarked on the path of reform and opening up, this chapter intends to prove that the emergence and growth of the middle class in contemporary China are closely related to the economic and social development, as well as a matter of course of historical progress. By drawing on the significant studies conducted at both home and abroad, the contemporary middle class is defined from seven dimensions that are consistent with the national conditions; namely, income, property, living standards, occupation, education, moral imperative and social norms; On this basis, according to the latest statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, the definition and features of the contemporary middle class are further clarified. In line with the author’s calculations, there are roughly 200 to 250 million people in China who qualify as middle class as defined in this book, accounting for 14.7 to 18.4% of the national population of 1.36 billion pin 2013. Among them, the urban middle class makes up about 200 to 220 million and the rural middle class about 20 to 30 million, which is close to the results of studies in China.
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Notes
- 1.
According to China Statistical Yearbook 1991.
- 2.
China Statistical Yearbook 1989.
- 3.
China Labour Statistical Yearbook 1989.
- 4.
According to China Statistical Yearbook 1997.
- 5.
Gong Guan (the Managing Editor): Economic History of the People’s Republic of China, Economy & Management Publishing House, 2010, p. 198.
- 6.
According to China Statistical Yearbook 1997.
- 7.
Quoted from Floating China——The 60th Anniversary of the Republic of China, https://www.qq.com/, October 10, 2008.
- 8.
Quoted from A Perspective into Living Conditions of the Social Intermediate Strata——Houses and Cars Do Not Equal to Happiness, People.cn, August 6, 2014.
- 9.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook.
- 10.
According to the State Statistical Bureau.
- 11.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook.
- 12.
Quoted from the China Statistical Yearbook 1995 and 2012 Statistics Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China of the State Statistical Bureau.
- 13.
Data from China Statistical Yearbook, which does not include rural residents in urban areas.
- 14.
According to the Annual Bulletins of Statistics of the State Statistical Bureau and China Statistical Yearbook.
- 15.
According to the Annual Bulletins of Statistics of the State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook and data from the Ministry of Education.
- 16.
The wealthier level, here, refers to a status where people enjoy a relatively higher real income in reality and life quality, not the “higher income” classified in the Urban and Rural Resident Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics according to five or seven equal parts (In the China Statistical Yearbook, in some years, such as 2012 and 2013, a quintile of data was published while for some years such as 2014, seven equal parts of data were published.) If the figure has to be quantitative, it should be more than the “higher income” of the National Bureau of Statistics.
- 17.
Cited from 2013 China Statistical Yearbook.
- 18.
Cited from Annual Increase of 35% of Employees in Express Industry, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, June 29, 2011.
- 19.
The upper limit is 2.5 times the lower limit, and is determined by the current income distribution pattern of “the average is above the median”. In future, corresponding adjustments should be made as the distribution data change.
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Calculation steps: Firstly, according to the data of the 2013 urban resident survey published by the National Bureau of Statistics, the average urban household per capita income was 29,547 yuan (per person per year), which is higher than that of the 20% middle-income families (the median). The lower limit of the medium standard is determined by the average, and the upper limit is determined by the figure that is 2.5 times the lower limit. Then the standard range of the lower and upper limit of urban household per capita annual income is set.
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Secondly, the annual income of every middle-class family and every middle-class member is calculated based on the lower and upper limits of the household per capita annual income in the first step according to the family structure that every family contains 2.86 people and 1.49 people are employed, which comes from the data of 2012 China’s Urban Household Survey published by the National Bureau of Statistics.
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Thirdly, we set the regional coefficient as 0.8–2.0, and that of megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is 2.0. The income standard of middle-class families and people in the megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou can be obtained by doubling the results in the first and second steps, which can then be regarded as the threshold of the middle class.
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- 20.
The average number of family members in the investigated families was 2.86 and the average number of employees per family was 1.49 according to the data from the urban and rural resident survey published by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2012. The data for 2003 were not published. According to the cover of Chinese Times in January 19, 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics (2005) proposed “the cap for average income of the urban middle-income family was 180,000 yuan, 2.77 times the number of the lower limit, 65,000 yuan”.
- 21.
The starting line and lower limit for the per capita GDP of the global middle-income class proposed by World Bank was 3,470 USD and 8,000 USD, respectively.
- 22.
In 2003, the project of the Macro-economy Research Institute of National Development and Reform Commission proposed that urban and rural residents whose per capita income was between 34,700 yuan and 100,000 yuan were middle-income people and the multiple was 2.88 times.
- 23.
Wang Hong: Project of Research on Expanding Middle-income Labor Group of China Research Institute of Labor Security, based on over 500 questionnaires in Tianjin, Henan, Zhejiang and Inner Mongolia.
- 24.
The Analysis and Research on the Life of Urban Resident Group with Middle-income of Guangdong Province proposed that urban residents, whose per capita annual disposable income is between 12,000 and 30,000 and whose Engel’s Coefficient is between 30 and 39%, can be defined as the middle-income group. It is feasible to define the income that is between the well-off situation and the relatively wealthy situation as middle-income”, Sina, November 18, 2004.
- 25.
The unnamed data in this paragraph are cited from the China Statistical Yearbook 2014. I.
- 26.
According to the China Statistics Yearbook 2014.
- 27.
The estimation of income structure and population of rural families is based on relevant data from the China Statistical Yearbook 2014.
- 28.
According to the China Statistics Yearbook 2014.
- 29.
Analysis and Research on the Life of Middle-Income Urban Residents of Guangdong Province, Sina, November 18, 2004.
- 30.
Cited from Gu Jirui: The Comparison of the Concept, Method and Standard of Defining the Middle-Income Group, Modern Economic Research, Page 14, Number 10, 2005.
- 31.
Cited from Li Chunlin: Breaks and Debris: Empirical Analysis on Contemporary Chinese Social Class Differentiation, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005.
- 32.
Cited from Zhou Xiaohong: Chinese Middle Class: Reality or Idolum, Tianjin Social Sciences, No. 2, 2006, pp. 60–67.
- 33.
Cited from Li Qiang: How to View Our Middle Class, Leader’s Writing, No. 9, 2007, pp. 14–17.
- 34.
Cited from Li Peilin: The Scale, Cognition and Social Attitude towards Chinese Middle Class, Society, No. 2, 2008, pp. 1–20.
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Su, H., Wang, H., Chang, F. (2022). Who is the Modern Middle Class in China?. In: The Rise of the Middle Class in Contemporary China. The Great Transformation of China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5099-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5099-5_4
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