The New Class War
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SPECIAL REPORT CHINESE SOCIETY July 9th 2016 THE NEW CLASS WAR 20160709_SRchineseSociety.indd 1 28/06/2016 13:56 SPECIAL REPORT CHINESE SOCIETY The new class war China’s middle class is larger, richer and more vocal than ever before. That threatens the Communist Party, says Rosie Blau WHEN13-YEAR-OLD Xiao Kang began to feel lethargic and his breathing CONTENTS grew wheezy last autumn, his parents assumed he was working too hard at school. Then his fellow classmates at Changzhou Foreign Languages 2 Chinese nationalism Middle School started complaining too. The private school in a wealthy East, west, home’s best city on China’s eastern seaboard had moved to a smart new campus in September 2015, close to a site formerly occupied by three chemical fac- 3 Family, identity and tories. Tests showed the soil and water to have concentrations of pollut- morality A nation of individuals ants tens of thousands of times the legal limits, and over100 pupils have been diagnosed with growths on their thyroid and lymph glands. Yet the 5 Wealth school denies responsibility, and the local authority has put pressure on Keeping up with the Wangs parents to keep their children in attendance and stopped them from prot- esting. The toxic school remains open. 8 Public opinion Crowd control Xiao Kang and his family are beneficiaries of China’s rise. His fore- bears were farmers and more recently factory workers, but he attends the 10 Civil society “best” school in the city (meaning it gets the highest university entrance Daring to think, daring scores). His father hopes he will become an architect or a designer and to act may go to study abroad one day. As with many of his generation, all the financial and emotional resources of the boy’s two parents and four 12 Emigration The long march abroad grandparents are concentrated on this single child. The family is shocked that the government is so heedless of the youngster’s fate. If a school in 13 Looking ahead any other country was found to be built on poisoned ground, it would The writing on the wall immediately be shut, says the boy’s father. Why not in China? For most of China’s modern history, its people have concentrated ACKNOWLEDGMENTS on building a materially comfortable existence. Since 1978 more than 700m people have been lifted out ofpoverty. Forthe past four decades al- Apart from the individuals named in this report, the author would like to most everyone could be confident that their children’s lives would be thank the following who provided betterthan theirown. But the future looks less certain, particularly forthe generous help and shared valuable group that appears to be China’s greatest success: the middle class. Mil- insights: Holly Amelia, Alec Ash, lions of middle-income Chinese families like Xiao Kang’s are well fed, Elizabeth Knupp, Michael Kovrig, Kai-fu Lee, Glenn Leibowitz, Li Jian, well housed and well educated. They have good jobs and plenty of Helen Liu, Stephen Olah, Jacob choices in life. But they are now confronting the dark side of China’s 35 Poushter, Qiu Wenjing, Tom Rafferty, years ofdazzling growth. Karla Simon, Charlie Smith, Tang This special report will lay out the desires and aspirations of this Zi’an, Wang Hai, Wang Xiao, Jeff Wasserstrom, James L. Watson, Wing fast-expanding group. Many Chinese today are individualistic, empow- Woo, Xie Yu, Yan Yunxiang, Zhang ered and keen to shape society around them. Through social media, they A list of sources is at Hong, Zhang Xin and Daniel Zipser. are changing China’s intellectual landscape. They are investing in new 1 Economist.com/specialreports The Economist July 9th 2016 1 SPECIAL REPORT CHINESE SOCIETY dissenting voices. Today’s young Chinese tend to do what they want, not what society expects—a profound and very recent shift. Most of these young people exercise their autonomy by choosing their own marriage partners or shelling out for a new car. But many have an appetite forcivic engagement too: they are the foot-soldiers of China’s non-government organisations, a vast, though often politically sensitive, array ofgroups seekingto improve society in a variety ofways. Pressures on the middle class are growing. Some feel that no matter how able they are, the only way they can succeed is by having the right connections. Housing has been a driver of eco- nomic growth, yet property rights are shaky, and the govern- ment encourages private investment without adequately regu- lating financial products. As more people go to university, returns to education are falling and graduate jobs are harder to come by. Many fret that their children may not see the progres- sive improvements in material well-being they themselves have 2 experiences ofall kinds. But discontent overcorruption, inequal- enjoyed, and more youngsters are going abroad. ity, tainted food and a foul environment is sharp and deep; many Political scientists have long argued that once individuals worry that their hard-fought gains are ill-protected. For decades reach a certain level of affluence they become interested in non- the Communist Party has kept control over a population that material values, including political choice. Average income per now numbers 1.4 billion by exceeding people’s expectations. person in China’s biggest cities is now at roughly the same level Their lives have improved faster than most of them could have as in Taiwan and South Korea when those countries became de- dreamt. Though the state hasused coercion and repression, ithas mocracies. When China opened up its markets in the 1980s, 1 also relieved many pressure points. Now it is finding it increasingly hard to manage the complex and competing demands of the middle class; yet to suppress them East, west, home’s best risks holding back many of the most pro- ductive members ofsociety. When the Communist Party seized Do not expect China’s middle class to be liberal power in 1949, China’s bourgeoisie was tiny. In the Cultural Revolution two de- ACROSS CHINA’S PARKS, elderly folk gather the country’s “great rejuvenation”. China’s cades later, wealth, education and a taste of a morning to sing, dance, play music and land reclamation around contested rocks in for foreign culture were punished. But exercise. Much of the music is about their the South China Sea is controversial abroad, after housing was privatised in the 1990s, country: an anthem from the Cultural but the vast majority of Chinese people the government tied its fortunes to this Revolution, Peking Opera numbers or support its territorial claims there, accord- rapidly expanding sector of society, en- songs from one of China’s many ethnic- ing to a slew of polls. Nationalism has couraging it to strive for the material trap- minority groups. Most of the exercise is become a glue to hold people together, says pings ofits rich-world peers. rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. Joshua Eisenman of the University of Texas: For the first time in China’s history a China is a hugely patriotic country, but it is “The Communist Party of China is no longer huge middle class now sits between the also increasingly nationalistic. Its people communist so it had better be Chinese.” ruling elite and the masses. McKinsey, a feel that it is superior to other nations, and At the same time sentiment has consultancy, estimates its size at around that as China rises, others must cower. become more defensive. More than three- 225m households, compared with just 5m Chinese society is far more connect- quarters of Chinese surveyed in the 2015 in 2000, using an annual income of ed to global culture than it was just a few Pew Global Attitudes poll felt their way of 75,000-280,000 yuan ($11,500-43,000) as decades ago, but exposure does not trans- life needed to be protected from foreign a yardstick. It predicts that between now late into tolerance. In April Global Times, a influence. Mr Xi has tapped this vein too. In and 2020 another 50m households will jingoistic state newspaper, published a 2015 his education minister called for a ban join its ranks. They are spread across the poll showing that an astonishing 85% of on “textbooks promoting Western values”. country, but are highly concentrated in ur- respondents supported unifying China More puzzlingly, the Minister for Civil Affairs ban areas (see map); around 80% of them with Taiwan by force. In 2012 demonstra- has proposed renaming “over-the-top, own property; and they include many of tions erupted across China about Japan’s West-worshipping” place names like the Communist Party’s 88m members. claim to sovereignty over disputed islands “Thames Town” near Shanghai, a cobbled Though China’s population as a in the East China Sea; shops were looted, recreation of an English market town. whole is ageing, the middle class is getting Japanese cars were destroyed and riot International news coverage in China younger. Nearly halfofall people living in police had to be deployed to protect the mostly makes other countries look stupid, cities are under 35: they are eight times Japanese embassy in Beijing. dangerous or crime-ridden (particularly if more likely than country-dwellers to be Such belligerence has been fed by they have recently overthrown an autocrat- university graduates; and most are trea- the Communist Party’s own narrative of ic government), but that has not deterred sured and entitled only children, with no history, which credits it as saving China the Chinese from wanting to go and see the memory of a time when their country from a “century of humiliation” at the world for themselves in droves.