The Asian Economist

When people around the world hear about China, they think human rights violation. Tibet and poisonous toys. They wonder why this type of government is still in tack. Why don’t the people rise up and over throw it and turn it into a democracy. When will China change from a one party system into a democracy? Don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. There is a large number of people that are loving the system and that number is on the rise.

Who are they? These newly affluent middle-class households possess family incomes of at least 80,000 yuan ($10,000) per year…the lowest income necessary to afford both an apartment and a small car, the sine qua non of middle-class prosperity. Most are salaried employees, and among these the greatest number are public servants. They are academics and high school teachers, doctors, engineers, and the white collar staffs of state-owned enterprises, as well as the government administrators of all stripes. Their numbers are large enough that they set the tone and tastes of respectable urban society.

What is their taste? They distinguish themselves from the businesspeople who crowd the same shops and restaurants. They view the latter as parvenus and hold in disdain the uneducated business class’s supposed lack of taste. The well-educated salaried middle class perceives its status as superior The four most admired occupations turned out to be those of professor, lawyer, doctor and middle-school teacher, listed above provincial party secretary, the mayor, an international businessman, or the director of a joint-venture company. Much lower was the esteem held for a low-level officials (who ranks below a barber).

How does the government co-opt them? But in the years since, as China’s economy has continued to expand at a breakneck pace, there has been a deliberate government policy to favor them through their pay slips and perks. Year after year those on government payrolls have been offered higher salaries. During one year in the late 1990s, the pay of all of the academics at China’s most prestigious public universities was literally doubled in one go. Even earlier, in the first half of the 1990s, a huge government-endorsed construction program was initiated to build vast numbers of pleasant new apartment blocks, which were immediately sold off to favored state-sector employees at knock-down prices, sometimes as low as 20% of construction costs. Some of the most recent high-rises are truly fancy, with Japanese-style garden ponds and waterfalls, ornate statuary and health clubs. Thanks to the hefty subsidies to purchase flats, the most fortunate members of the salaried middle class can afford to live in comparative luxury alongside wealthy businesspeople who earn many times more. They also have enough cash left at their disposal to buy autos, and in the early 2000s the sale of cars began leaping by close to 40% a year. State employees who in the 1980s could not afford a fridge or color TV or even leather shoes and who lived in dreary walk-ups now have gained a material life that they had never imagined possible. They do not want to upset the apple cart. If the government’s plan was to co-opt the salaried middle class, it has worked.

What is their political attitude? The educated middle class is elitist. Many of its members do not want democracy—that is, multiparty elections for the nation’s top leaders. Nor did they want this at Tiananmen a decade and a half ago. They did not and do not want China’s peasant majority to play a decisive hand in deciding who rules. Most of them hold the rural populace in disdain, and their fear is that the peasants would be swayed by demagogues and vote-buying. They believe that the rural populace is not yet ready to participate in elections. This is ironic, since villagers have been the only ones in China who have been allowed to cast secret ballots to elect their locality’s leader.

Many members of the educated middle class are vaguely pro-democratic just so long as democracy can be put off to a future time. This is not only the case today, but also was true at the time of Tiananmen. The then Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang favored a policy called “neo-authoritarianism,” under which the Party would act as a benevolent autocracy until such time as the middle class had developed sufficiently to predominate in a democratized polity. Until then, China would remain in a state of tutelage, much as Sun Yat-sen had proposed in the 1920s. This was the program of the Party elite’s reform camp, and it drew support from among the urban, educated elite. Nevertheless, many today still think of themselves as pro-reform, albeit in modest ways. They are apt to shake their heads in dismay at China’s environmental problems and express hopes that the government will give greater priority to the issue. Those with expertise are often eager to offer up suggestions on how to enact this or that small, incremental reform. What pass in China for academic papers are often really policy prescriptions on how to improve one or another aspect of China’s physical or administrative infrastructure, or relieve traffic congestion, or provide for a more effective education curriculum. Who would the middle class blame for the inconvenience of their daily life? The blame has shifted to the private employer, or the school head, or a local official who is perceived as blameworthy; the central government is no longer the lightning rod for people’s frustrations and anger. This is especially true among the urban middle class, which had little to feel resentful about in any case.

How does the middle class perceive the national leadership? The middle class perceive the national leadership in a generally favorable light. “The current leaders fit the image of the type of people the middle class wants to see in charge. The President and Party Secretary Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are university-educated technocrats who rose to the very top through what has increasingly become a Party meritocracy. They look like members of the educated middle class, and share many of its values. This is their leadership.

What role does the middle class play in democratization? China’s middle class blocks the way to regime change or democratization. The Chinese educated middle class has become a bulwark of the current regime. Summarizing a large survey of political attitudes in Beijing, a recent book by the political scientist Chen Jie concludes that, among all urban groups, “those who perceive themselves to belong to the middle class and who are government bureaucrats are more likely to support the incumbent authorities.” Don’t expect regime change or democratization any time soon. The rise of China’s middle class blocks the way.