China's Middling Middle

Steve, thanks for getting me into this late-20th century technology. I guess I'll begin my contribution to this effort with a nod to my own research interest (China), but I hope that the issue will appeal to all. The issue is this: No consensus exists as to just how many of China's 1.3 billion people should be classified as middle class. Joseph Fewsmith (IR, Boston University) has a great summary of recent attempts to affix a number to this sector of the population. Many have tried to get a number by simply using income as the criteria, but this runs into difficulty when one considers the tremendous income inequality in China. Others have attempted to derive a figure using only profession. Depending on the criterion used, estimates of China's middle class vary from ~25% (income), to 27% (profession), to 35% (consumption habits). If one combines all of the criteria used in the different studies, China's middle class plummets to about 4%. This number seems a little too low, but it does highlight just how cautious one should be with strong claims of China's sizable middle class.

Whatever the actual size of China's middle class may be, many, in some surveys most, people in China believe themselves to be middle class; some studies suggest 46% see themselves as middle class, others put the number of self-described middle class at 85%. Fewsmith concludes that, in the face of tremendous inequality between rich and poor, urban and rural, this huge disparity between reality and self-perception indicates the growing social cohesion in China and, given the non-revolutionary interests of the middle class, the greater stability of the system. Put more simply, he posits that many peoples' shared aspirational goals transcend and inoculate some of their situational differences and helps ensure the survival of the regime.

But is the fact that the goals of China's tiny middle class are shared by many of the its poor really enough to counteract the effects of the actual socio-economic conditions of the poor? The piece made me think of past studies of the U.S., which showed that almost all American's consider themselves middle class (2% saw themselves as 'upper,' 8% as 'lower'). I know there are many things peculiar to the U.S. that make this so, and the U.S. is undoubtedly a stable system, but am I wrong in thinking that how China's poor conceive of their relative socio-economic position might not be enough to draw a reliable estimate of regime stability?