China's Emerging Middle Class

Beyond Economic Transformation

Cheng Li

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780815704058
• eBook ISBN: 9780815704331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The rapid emergence and explosive growth of China's middle class have enormous consequences for that nation's domestic future, for the global economy, and for the whole world. In China's Emerging Middle Class, noted scholar Cheng Li and a team of experts focus on the sociopolitical ramifications of the birth and growth of the Chinese middle class over the past two decades.
The contributors, from diverse disciplines and different regions, examine the development and evolution of China's middle class from a variety of analytical perspectives. What is its educational and occupational makeup? Are its members united by a common identity—by a shared political vision and worldview? How does the Chinese middle class compare with its counterparts in other countries? The contributors shed light on these and many other issues pertaining to the rapid rise of the middle class in the Middle Kingdom.
Contributors: Jie Chen (Old Dominion University), Deborah Davis (Yale University), Bruce J. Dickson (George Washington University), Geoffrey Gertz (Brookings), Han Sang-Jin (Seoul National University), Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao (National Taiwan University), Homi Kharas (Brookings), Li Chunling (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Jing Lin (University of Maryland–College Park), Sida Liu (University of Wisconsin– Madison), Lu Hanlong (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences), Joyce Yanyun Man (Peking University–Lincoln Center), Ethan Michelson (Indiana University–Bloomington), Qin Chen (Hohai University), Xiaoyan Sun (Beijing Foreign Studies University), Luigi Tomba (Australian National University), Jianying Wang (Yale University), and Zhou Xiaohong (Nanjing University).

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Copyright Information
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: The Global Significance of China's Emerging Middle Class
• Introduction: The Rise of the Middle Class in the Middle Kingdom
• The New Global Middle Class: A Crossover from West to East
• Part II: The Chinese Perspective: Social Stratification and Political Ideology
• Chinese Scholarship on the Middle Class: From Social Stratification to Political Potential
• Globalization, Social Transformation, and the Construction of China's Middle Class
• The Chinese Middle Class and Xiaokang Society
• Part III: Issues of Definition: Compositional Differences and Internal Divisions in China's Middle Class
• Characterizing China's Middle Class: Heterogeneous Composition and Multiple Identities
• China's New Upper Middle Classes: The Importance of Occupational Disaggregation
• Part IV: Expanding China's Middle Class: Housing Reform and Educational Development
• China's Housing Reform and the Emerging Middle Class
• The Housing Effect: The Making of China's Social Distinctions
• Higher Education Expansion and China's Middle Class
• Part V: The Chinese Middle Class in Comparative Perspective
• Placing China's Middle Class in the Asia-Pacific Context
• Middle-Class Grassroots Identity and Participation in Citizen Initiatives, China and South Korea
• Part VI: China's Middle Class: An Agent of the Status Quo or a Force for Change?
• China's Cooperative Capitalists: The Business End of the Middle Class
• What Do Chinese Lawyers Want? Political Values and Legal Practice
• Attitudes toward Democracy and the Political Behavior of China's Middle Class
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover