Class in contemporary China

The emerging middle class in China. That is the term most often heard to describe the social changes that resulted from the political, social, and economic reforms in China since 1978. The emerging middle class also suggests a shift in political power in China, away from the party, toward citizens. Some observers may hope that the growing middle class means that increased demand for western goods will keep the likes of Procter & Gamble and Unilever in business, as western markets promise almost no growth to established brands. Yet perhaps the term “the growing middle class in China” tells us less about China and more about the expectation that the consumption, markets, and culture of a society naturally implies a democracy characterized by a large consuming middle class, taught by advertising to express a new class subjectivity toward work and consumption, as is characterized by the US example (Leach 1993; Lears 1994). If China is not to follow the US model of marketplace ideology (Arnould and Thompson 2005; Mikkonen and Bajde 2012), perhaps it will resemble the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), another state based on communist ideologies of class equality and a high standard of living (Sredl 2007). Yet, as Goodman argues, once one learns the history of class in China after 1949, it is clear that, in China, notions of democracy and egalitarianism do not always go hand in hand with consumer society and middle class, as they might elsewhere. Class in Contemporary China, a title in the China Today series, analyzes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) economic, class, and political policies, with a focus on the post-Mao era of reforms. The book, written by a scholarly expert on contemporary China, makes the related arguments that change in China must be understood on its own terms, and that reports of an emerging middle class that will ring in a new era of politics in which the state has less control might not fit the political, cultural, social, and economic reality of China. While there is an emerging lower-middle class, and a subordinate class that Party rhetoric encourages to consume as the lower-middle or middle class, factors such as the household registration system, access to higher education, and access to the Party-state, still create and perpetuate inequality. Indeed, income distribution in China is now wide at the top and bottom, and narrow in the middle, resulting in a dominant, middle, and subordinate class. The subordinate class makes up about 85% of the population and is increasingly politically active, showing a consciousness as a class and a desire for justice and involvement in politics (124). Within the middle class, the upper-middle has a much higher standard of living than the lower middle, which is mostly aspirational in its consumption. The political rhetoric that focuses on the expanding middle class reflects a post-Mao policy of avoiding engaging in class consciousness and class conflict. It also reflects CCP political discourse to encourage consumption and hard work among the new subordinate class of migrant peasant workers, perhaps as an answer to their calls for political participation and justice. It also masks the power held by the dominant class and its links to the CCP, rather than a suggestion that political power is changing, due to a rising middle class.


Introduction
The emerging middle class in China. That is the term most often heard to describe the social changes that resulted from the political, social, and economic reforms in China since 1978. The emerging middle class also suggests a shift in political power in China, away from the party, toward citizens. Some observers may hope that the growing middle class means that increased demand for western goods will keep the likes of Procter & Gamble and Unilever in business, as western markets promise almost no growth to established brands.
Yet perhaps the term "the growing middle class in China" tells us less about China and more about the expectation that the consumption, markets, and culture of a society naturally implies a democracy characterized by a large consuming middle class, taught by advertising to express a new class subjectivity toward work and consumption, as is characterized by the US example (Leach 1993;Lears 1994). If China is not to follow the US model of marketplace ideology (Arnould and Thompson 2005;Mikkonen and Bajde 2012), perhaps it will resemble the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), another state based on communist ideologies of class equality and a high standard of living (Sredl 2007). Yet, as Goodman argues, once one learns the history of class in China after 1949, it is clear that, in China, notions of democracy and egalitarianism do not always go hand in hand with consumer society and middle class, as they might elsewhere.
Class in Contemporary China, a title in the China Today series, analyzes the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) economic, class, and political policies, with a focus on the post-Mao era of reforms. The book, written by a scholarly expert on contemporary China, makes the related arguments that change in China must be understood on its own terms, and that reports of an emerging middle class that will ring in a new era of politics in which the state has less control might not fit the political, cultural, social, and economic reality of China. While there is an emerging lower-middle class, and a subordinate class that Party rhetoric encourages to consume as the lower-middle or middle class, factors such as the household registration system, access to higher education, and access to the Party-state, still create and perpetuate inequality. Indeed, income distribution in China is now wide at the top and bottom, and narrow in the middle, resulting in a dominant, middle, and subordinate class.
The subordinate class makes up about 85% of the population and is increasingly politically active, showing a consciousness as a class and a desire for justice and involvement in politics (124). Within the middle class, the upper-middle has a much higher standard of living than the lower middle, which is mostly aspirational in its consumption. The political rhetoric that focuses on the expanding middle class reflects a post-Mao policy of avoiding engaging in class consciousness and class conflict. It also reflects CCP political discourse to encourage consumption and hard work among the new subordinate class of migrant peasant workers, perhaps as an answer to their calls for political participation and justice. It also masks the power held by the dominant class and its links to the CCP, rather than a suggestion that political power is changing, due to a rising middle class.

Summary of book
Since its founding in 1921, the CCP focused on creating a revolution on behalf of China's workers and peasants. The focus on the working class continued when the CCP came to power in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under Mao Zedong's political influence, between 1950 and 1953, the CCP officially categorized every citizen with a class identification. That class descriptor, which appeared on household registration documents, would create a structure of social stratification and a rhetoric of class struggle that would last for the rest of Mao's rule.
During the Great Leap Forward (1958)(1959)(1960)(1961), in addition to rapid and massive economic development based on mass mobilization, Mao used the rhetoric of exploiting and laboring classes, of a pre-war bourgeoisie and a CCP bourgeoisie that gained benefit from the use of material incentives to encourage production to create conflict within the party elites, and thereby gain control. Mao used the Cultural Revolution (1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976) and the rhetoric of class once again to seize power from those whom he perceived were his enemies by labeling them as those members of the party bourgeoisie who wanted a move to capitalism. The Cultural Revolution was also an opportunity to emphasize the ideology of constant struggle, and the importance of a heterogeneous working class and a peasant class.
A legacy of the Cultural Revolution is that the CCP tends to de-emphasize constant struggle and class conflict in favor of class unity and heterogeneity. For example, contemporary CCP rhetoric supports the growth of the middle class and the importance of the worker. Goodman demonstrates that, while the rhetoric of class struggle has quieted, economic reforms, which started in 1978, have created new forms of social inequality marked, by vast differences in income, education, and housing.
In 1978, two years after Mao's death, the CCP adjusted many policies of centralized rule by implementing a market-oriented development strategy that allowed for de-collectivizing agriculture, opening the country to foreign investment, and allowing for entrepreneurs to open businesses. In 1984, the CCP began the privatization of some state-owned industry, the lifting of price controls, protectionist policies, and other regulations. Political power was decentralized, allowing provincial powers to privatize local industry. The private sector began to be officially recognized as a part of the economy. In the 1990s, Mao's social welfare system was dramatically reduced and large-scale privatization increased. China entered the WTO in 2001.
A consequence of the reforms since 1978 has been the creation of an urban middle class. While there is no standard definition of middle class for researchers and within the CCP, Goodman considers education, occupation, and access to the Party-state through connections (access is usually a function of education and father's employment) as determinants of class. Goodman further suggests that the middle class can be considered to make up 12% of the urban working population (119). Within the middle class, about 44% is lower-middle class, 8% is upper-middle class, and 6% is cadres. The lower-middle class is composed of white-collar workers and non-cadre managers and professionals with no higher education. The upper-middle class is characterized as University educated managers and professionals.
Yet it is the dominant class, as Goodman labels this group, which exercises the most power, not simply through its money, but more through its networks of influence and positions of power within the Party-state. They determine how state resources are allocated and who benefits from privatization. For example, they might control who manages state-owned enterprises, putting family members in charge. They are the directors of large-scale private and foreign-invested enterprises, and they are the entrepreneurs. The dominant class makes up about 3% or 4% of the population (90). One way that the party masks the existence of this class, and the Party's embedded interests in this class, is by focusing its rhetoric on the middle class and encouraging the subordinate classes to emulate middle class consumption and lifestyle, even if they do not have the money to do so.
Class in Contemporary China demonstrates that a subordinate class of migrant workers who have almost no civil rights or access to education, health care, and good housing has emerged as a result of the reforms since 1978, especially the privatization of state enterprises and the reduction of Mao's welfare state. The subordinate class is made up of rural peasants and urban workers in the informal economy. In sum, the subordinate class makes up about 85% of the population (124). Their labor drives growth and production in China. Policies such as the household registration system maintain rural peasants as a reserve pool of cheap, migrant labor, with few rights to education and health care. The party is implicit in creating the new subordinate class, Goodman argues. Affiliation with the CCP remains an influential determinant of stratification, yet members of the subordinate class are not members of the CCP. Thus, the Party focuses its rhetoric on creating workers with middle class aspirations for consumption and lifestyles in the new economy. This rhetoric is a means of making its economic policy legitimate and distracting attention from its complicity in the creation of new form of inequality.
However, the class consciousness and idea of struggle remains in the increased social activism and protests of the subordinate class. Their protests are a means of political participation that seeks to remedy injustice, especially in the areas of labor, wages, and housing. Public sector workers tend to see themselves as the "leading class" of a socialist state (129). Their protest takes the form of work stoppages and strikes in the public sector as a means of seeking better pay and conditions. It is also a means of expressing uncertainty in the face of privatization. In rural areas, peasants have attempted to organize and take control of local, government-controlled resources (127).
Indeed, the biggest challenge for the CCP will be funneling this class into a new working class or lower-middle class, based on new terms of engagement that are centered on aspirational consumption and lifestyle, while keeping access to the CCP for the new dominant class. In other words, the CCP will need to continue the narrative that the PRC brought a new era of equality for the worker, while moving away from the class conflict rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution, as means of legitimating the past. The CCP also has make an argument for its relevance by emphasizing a future that ensures a consumer lifestyle for the new urban middle class, while finding a way to move the urban working class into the middle class (189). In fact, in 2013, the Central Committee of the CCP made changes to the finance and banking systems and developed new solutions to welfare provisions, perhaps in response to the social activism and size of the new subordinate class.
Goodman concludes the book by suggesting these recent reforms and the reforms since 1978 are best understood as a process of change within a socialist market economy, not the end of the CCP and the establishment of capitalism. While the middle class can be expected to grow, especially the lower-middle class, its size does not represent a revolution. Neither does the CCP rhetoric about class and consumption represent a move to capitalism and democracy. Rather, the increasing size of the middle class might reflect the increasing standard of living of the working class and rhetorical moves by the CCP to re-articulate its social contract with this group. In the future, observers can expect that the public sector and the Party-state will continue to dominate, and to evolve. The rhetoric itself, I think, would be interesting to understand in the broader context of global consumer culture and the decline of the labor movement.

Strengths
The strength of this book is its detailed knowledge of China and the CCP's use of class to create a worker's state and a system of control and stratification by the mid-1950s, followed by its post-Mao and post-Tiananmen use of middle class rhetoric to mobilize the masses. The author also provides evidence through access to education, housing, and Party-public sector employment that the class system of the early 1950s tends to have continuing influence on stratification. Goodman covers social change in a vast period (1949-present) in only 233 pages, including notes, which is to say that it does a good job of covering all the bases. The book does so within the limits of making the book accessible to its intended audience, which seems to be those with little prior knowledge of China. Another strength of the book is that it is able to address current changes in China, such as changes to banking and finance implemented with the 3rd Plenum of 2013, as part of the changes in politics and in political practices by the CCP since Mao.
There is also a good, although very brief, discussion of the global political economy of marketization. The point of the exercise is to consider if marketization means that economic capital eventually trumps the power of political capital, creating a new elite. The exercise is done through a comparison between the reforms of the CCP and the reforms in Hungary and Poland in the 1980s, followed by a brief comparison with the "shock therapy" economic reforms and democracy in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Goodman concludes that one form of capital does not replace another. Instead, they combine to create a new class structure from the old power structure, which Goodman implies is evident in the political power and wealth of the dominant class.
Terms and historical periods that are specific to China are defined in a way that is accessible to a reader who is unfamiliar with China's size, scale, diversity, and rapid pace of change. The book also addresses factors that influence stratification in a specific way in China, such as gender, ethnicity, and geography. The CCP's use of the rural/urban divide and its outcomes for stratification is addressed in a way that helps the reader understand why the term "emerging middle class" masks massive inequalities in contemporary China, rather than promises political revolution away from party and economic elites.
I often found that passages presenting data from the China National Economic Research Institute, the Central University of Finance and Economics, or the National Bureau of Statistics read in such a way as to suggest that the author thinks the data might not be the most unbiased representation of reality. The question of accurate data on the size of the middle class is important for supporting the author's central argument, that the rise of the middle class in China, and the Party-state's support of the middle class, is more nuanced than it appears, and has more to do with rhetoric and the political dynamics of class. There are few measures that are consistent in the income levels that reflect the middle class, and some are driven more by ideology than by reality (104). The author meets the challenge of data that might not be completely accurate by bringing together several sources and the bases of their measures, and then demonstrating why one is most likely to be the most accurate.

Weaknesses
A perceived weakness in this book is that, while it makes some connections with the literature on marketization and inequality in other parts of the world since the 1980s, such as Eastern Europe, it does not seem to focus on developing theory on marketizing economies, globalization, or stratification and how they relate to the case of China. Likewise, the book suggests that it will discuss how contemporary Chinese understand class as compared to official rhetoric about class. The use of data to show that rhetoric and lived experience show two different Chinas can leave the reader wondering what the source of the author's data is. For example, in the discussion of social stratification, and housing reform in Chapter 2, paints a very clear picture of the difference in access to good housing and schooling between those who work inside the system (public sector) and those who work outside the system. The example of housing highlights the author's main point: that reports of the end of socialism and the Party-state in allocating economic and social resources and the growth of capitalism and democracy in China are exaggerated, so to speak. We are seeing, instead, more decisionmaking at the local level. Yet, one is left asking: is this observation about housing taken from informal conversations with friends? While one need not doubt Goodman's statements, as Goodman has a strong record of expertise on the topic of China, a bit more background on how the insights on lived experiences were accessed would only strengthen his argument. This is true, even if all the author can say is that he is limited in what he can say, due to censorship.
Theories about the relationship between consumption ideologies and political ideologies and structures, and how the intertwine to create a specific consumer subjectivity, come up in Chapter 4 through a discussion of aspiration and the middle class, and in the discussion of the future in Chapter 7. Goodman implies that middle class aspiration is a driver of change in political rhetoric and the creation of a new class consciousness among workers. A reader might also like to know more about the ways that the politics of class and consumption in China compare to that of other countries and contribute to theoretical discussions on this topic.
An example of the book's overlooking potential parallels between China and other countries that sought a worker's state come in Chapter 1, in the discussion of the Bourgeoisie in the Party. In the SFRY, a similar problem was addressed by dissident Milovan Đilas The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (1957). It would be interesting to consider the parallels between the critiques of inequality and the political dynamics behind the critiques in the PRC and the SFRY.
Indeed, while a reader might wish this book did more than just include theories on stratification, development, consumption, and globalization, but develop contributions to them, this book does explain social change to class in China, and it convinces the reader that the term "emerging middle class" might have more to do with CCP political rhetoric and self-interest than the reality of everyday life for most urban Chinese. In short, it achieves its goal. The largest group is the subordinate class of workers in the public sector, workers the private sector, and the rural peasantry. The CCP will have to find a way to include them in the fold of prosperity brought by marketization. This book would be most useful to marketers, students, and academics interested in a background of social change and social stratification in contemporary China.

Assessment of book's strengths and weaknesses
The strength of Class in Contemporary China is its ability discuss political reform, the opening of markets, and class in China in a way that is accessible to readers who might be unfamiliar with the history, scale, diversity, geography, and speed of change in contemporary China. It is an informative read to those scholars who are beginning to learn about China, or to marketers who are interested in speculating about the growth of a consumer middle class in first and second tier cities in China. The book analyzes a vast amount of data, and the author writes with authority on a complex subject. Yet a reader who seeks to understand how social change in China might relate to social change in other socialist or non-socialist countries since 1978 and the growth of global neoliberalism will be better served with another book: those questions are skimmed over in Class in Contemporary China. Likewise, this is not the book to turn to for a treatment of the relationship between consumption ideologies, political ideologies and social change. Some of the data seems to be based on anecdotes and experience, yet the basis of those anecdotes remains unaddressed in the book. However, the author makes clear at the start that the goal of the book is to understand social change and class in China, and the author achieves that goal. A reader with a consumption markets and culture perspective is left wanting to know more and asking more questions, which is probably a good reflection of the book as an important starting point for researching China.