本文为哥伦比亚大学教授黎安友（Andrew J. Nathan）2015年10月在“塞缪尔∙李普塞特世界民主讲座”（Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World）上演讲的讲稿。李普塞特是现代化理论的主要奠基人。他从社会经济结构的角度探讨民主的发生与存在条件。黎安友教授演讲的英文版发表于《民主杂志》(Journal of Democracy) 2016年4月号，总第27期。中译文首发于《中国战略分析》2017年第1期，2017年1月15日。
> 我个人从没有跟西摩·马丁·李普塞特（Seymour Martin Lipset）见过面；我到哥伦比亚大学的时候他已经离开了。李普塞特写过一篇自传体文章——《稳定的工作：一篇学术回忆录》，里面回顾了他在1943年成为哥伦比亚大学博士的经过。我看到觉得非常有趣。他说他当时在纽约市立学院（CityCollege）的社会学系拿到了一个教职，而那个教职要求受聘者必须得是在册研究生。因为哥伦比亚大学离那只有1英里远，下个坡再上个坡就到了，所以他就去了哥伦比亚大学。[1]我心想，今天要是选择一个研究生项目也像那么简单就好了。
作为一个哥伦比亚大学的博士生和年轻讲师，李普塞特当时是跟罗伯特·莫顿（RobertMerton）和保罗·拉扎斯菲尔德（Paul Lazarsfeld）这样奠定了现代政治社会学基础的学术巨匠一起工作的。等到我在20世纪60年代中期进入研究生院的时候，李普塞特的著作已经成为我们博士资格考试的必读书了。现在，我作为一个资深的学者，会抱怨学生们不去读本学科的经典著作。但李普塞特在1960年出版的《政治人》是个例外，大家都会去读。特别有影响的是他在1959年发表的文章《民主的一些必要条件：经济发展与政治合法性》（“Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development andPolitical Legitimacy”），收在这本书中作为一章，题为《经济发展与民主》（“EconomicDevelopment and Democracy”）。这篇文章讨论了他的一个经典命题：“一个国家的经济越发达，它就越可能维持（sustain）民主制度”。[2]李普塞特（讲明是在亚里士多德、马基雅维利和韦伯的影响下）提出：经济发展会扩大中产阶级，而中产阶级会支持民主。
中国中产阶级与李普塞特界定的中产阶级的不同之处，主要体现在四个方面。第一，中国的中产阶级占总人口的比重要小得多。陆学艺和他的同事在1999年估算中产阶级占了总人口的14.1%；陆学艺在之后的一次采访中说，到2008年这个数字会增长为22%—23%。[8]其他的学者也给出了相似的数据。虽然李普塞特并没有明确说他研究的中产阶级在总人口中应占多大比重，但他提出了一个“钻石型”的社会结构，其中间部分占的比重是最大的。相反，中国社会学家却在抱怨中国社会是“金字塔型”的：一个较小的中产阶级被极小的上层阶级和庞大的下层阶级挤在中间。中产阶级占据了一个有特权的社会岛（privileged social island）——具体而言就是生活在目前城市中非常普遍的“住宅小区”（gated communities）之中。中产阶级的成员会害怕，在一个多数人统治的社会，他们必须服从于下层阶级的利益。
第三个中国中产阶级的特殊之处在于它的“新”。李普塞特的中产阶级起源于中世纪的欧洲城市，作为一个不寻常的阶级在17世纪出现。它与现代民族国家和民主制度一起成长，而且拥有被广泛认同且具合法地位的身份。相反，严格地说，中国的中产阶级在1979年之前并不存在。共产革命之前存在的一个小规模的中产阶级在1950年代就被彻底消灭了，取而代之的是罗卡（Jean-Louis Rocca）所说的过着朴素生活、受少数党内精英领导的“一支多层级工人的军队”（an army of stratified workers）。[11]
然而，如果经济增长停滞，或者现政权开始左转（可能性很小）并侵害中产阶级的利益，中产阶级的安宁生活就会受到威胁。城市的生活方式会难以为继，越来越多的大学毕业生会找不到好工作。我们应该提醒自己，李普塞特没有说中产阶级会永远支持民主。李普塞特在另一篇著名的文章《“法西斯主义”——左、中、右》(“‘Fascism’—Left,Right, and Center”)里告诉我们，当中产阶级的经济和社会地位的安全程度降低，他们有可能会支持某种形式的极端主义。[29]在中国，这种极端主义很可能产生自仇外的民族主义，而这种民族主义正是政府一直作为支撑其合法的一种资源来推广的。为了表达这种民族主义的愤怒，中产阶级可能会指责政府叛国或者软弱，而这将推动政权往更为专制的方向发展。
[2] PoliticalMan: The Social Bases of Politics, expanded and updated ed. (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 31.
[3] 对于这个理论争议及其在中国的适用状况的文献综述，见Jie Chen and Chunlong Lu, “Democratizationand the Middle Class in China: The Middle Class’sAttitudes Toward Democracy,” Political ResearchQuarterly 64 (September 2011): 705–19.
[4] 就此问题的英文学术研究的综述，见Bruce Dickson, The Dictator’sDilemma: The Chinese Communist Party’s Strategy forSurvival (Oxford University Press, 2016).中文学术研究的综述，见 Cheng Li, “Chinese Scholarship on theMiddle Class: From Social Stratification to Political Potential,” in Li, ed., China’s EmergingMiddle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation (Washington,D.C.:Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 55–83.
[5] Tianjian Shi, “China:Democratic Values Supporting an Authoritarian System,”in Yun-han Chu et al., eds., How East Asians View Democracy (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2008), 229; Dickson, appendix toDictator’s Dilemma; Jie Chen, A MiddleClass Without Democracy: Economic Growth and the Prospects for Democratizationin China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[6] 基于一个对中产阶级的定义，即在2005年每人每天消费支出在2到20美元之间（购买力平价）。按照此定义，可以算出在2005年中国有超过8亿人属于中产阶级。这个算法根据Asian Development Bank, Key Indicators for Asia and thePacific 2010 (August 2010), 5, www.adb.org/publications/key-indicators-asia-and-pacific-2010.
[7] 陆学艺（LuXueyi）编，《当代中国社会阶层研究报告》（Research report on socialstrata in contemporary China），北京：社会科学文献出版社，2002：252。
[8] 见《独家专访陆学艺:中产阶级每年增长一个百分点》（“Lu Xueyi Exclusive Interview: Middle Class Grew by OnePercentage Point per Year” ），新华网，2009年8月17日， http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-08/17/content_11894452.htm 。
[9] Chen and Lu, “Democratizationand the Middle Class in China,” 713–14. 这项研究是在北京、成都和西安进行的。
[10] LuigiTomba, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2014), 104.
[11] Jean-LouisRocca, A Sociology of Modern China, trans. Gregory Elliott (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2015), 16.
[12] 关于收入，见: http://knoema.com/pjeqzh/gdp-per-capita-by-country-1980-2014?country=China;关于城市化，见: World Bank and the Development Research Center of the StateCouncil, People’s Republic of China, UrbanChina: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington,D.C.: World Bank, 2014), 3; 关于高校招生，见: Jing Lin andXiaoyan Sun, “Higher Education Expansion and China’s Middle Class,” in Li, ed.,China’s Emerging Middle Class, 222.
[13] Lipset, “SteadyWork,” 9.
[14] Jessica C.Teets, Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
[15] Benjamin L.Read, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networksin Beijing and Taipei (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012),107.
[16] Haifeng Huang, “InternationalKnowledge and Domestic Evaluations in a Changing Society: The Case of China,” American Political Science Review 109 (August 2015): 613–34.
[18] 亚洲晴雨表调查提出的问题是：“你对民主在你们国家运作的情况有多满意？”问题是为跨国家的调查设计的，而且因为所有的亚洲政府都声称它们是民主国家，我们也可以相信这种大体上对政治制度的满意度评分。要比较的话，参见Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman, “Satisfactionwith Democracy: A Note on a Frequently Used Indicator in Comparative Politics,” European Journal of Political Research 42 (May2003): 391–408.
[19] 这些是在亚洲晴雨表调查列出的7项“自由民主价值”中至少支持4项的人所占的比例。基于世界价值观调查（World Values Survey）和对亚洲与非亚洲国家的比较得出的，关于更现代化的人口持有更自由的价值观这一模式的普适性的调查结果，见Christian Welzel, “The Asian Values ThesisRevisited: Evidence from the World Values Surveys,”JapaneseJournal of Political Science 12 (April 2011):1–31.
[20] 关于对亚洲和中国青年人态度的类似调查结果，见Yun-han Chu and Bridget Welsh, “Millennialsand East Asia’s Democratic Future,” Journal of Democracy 26 (April 2015): 151–64, and Min-hua Huang, Yun-han Chu, and Cao Yongrong, “China: The Impact of Modernization and Liberalization on DemocraticAttitudes,” in David Denemark, Robert Mattes, andRichard G. Niemi, eds., Growing Up Democratic: Generational Change inPost-Authoritarian Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner,forthcoming).
[21]张伟（ZhangWei），《冲突与变数：中国社会中产阶层政治分析》（Conflict and uncertainty:political analysis of the middle stratum in Chinese society），北京：社会科学文献出版社，2005：406—407。
[22] 见 www.youtube.com/watch?v=q61X3zfBE8g.
[23] 这种分析可以参照：Eva Bellin, “The Dog That Didn’t Bark:The Political Complacence of the Emerging Middle Class (withIllustrations from the Middle East),” in Julian Go,ed., Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 21 (Bingley, U.K.:Emerald, 2010), 125–41; Kellee S. Tsai, “Capitalists Without a Class: Political Diversity Among PrivateEntrepreneurs in China,” Comparative PoliticalStudies 38 (November 2005): 1130–58; TeresaWright, Accepting Authoritarianism: State-Society Relations in China’s Reform Era (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2010).
[24] TianjianShi, The Cultural Logic of Politics in Mainland China and Taiwan (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 195. 这些数据来自2003年亚洲晴雨表调查的中国调查。
[26] Seymour MartinLipset with Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremismin America, 1790–1977 (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1970); Lipset, American Exceptionalism: ADouble-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), Lipset with GaryMarks, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed inthe United States (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
[27] Seymour MartinLipset, “Predictingthe Future: The Limits of Social Science,” in Consensusand Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology (New Brunswick, N.J.:Transaction, 1985), 329–60, orig. in Lipset, ed., TheThird Century: America as a Post-Industrial Society (Stanford: HooverInstitution Press, 1979), 1–35.
[28] Andrew J.Nathan, “Foreseeingthe Unforeseeable,” Journal of Democracy 24 (January 2013): 20–25.
# Andrew J. Nathan: The Puzzle of China’s Middle Class (2015)
My spiritual home S 2018-05-16
Author Li Anyou
January 16, 2017 (Chinese version publication date)
Chinese middle class puzzle
Written by Li Anyou
Translated by Chen Wanlong
This article is the transcript of a lecture delivered by Columbia University professor Andrew J. Nathan at the "Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World" in October 2015. Lipset is the main founder of modernization theory. He discusses the occurrence and existence conditions of democracy from the perspective of socio-economic structure. The English version of Professor Li Anyou's speech was published in the April 2016 issue of Journal of Democracy, issue 27 overall. The Chinese translation was first published in "China Strategic Analysis" 2017 Issue 1, January 15, 2017.
> I personally never met Seymour Martin Lipset; he had already left by the time I arrived at Columbia. Lipset wrote an autobiographical article, "A Steady Job: An Academic Memoir," in which he reviewed his experience in becoming a PhD student at Columbia University in 1943. I found it very interesting. He said that he got a teaching position in the sociology department of City College of New York at the time, and that teaching position required that the candidate be a registered graduate student. Because Columbia University was only a mile away, just downhill and uphill, he went to Columbia University. [1] I thought to myself, if only choosing a graduate program were that simple today.
As a doctoral student and young lecturer at Columbia University, Lipset worked with academic giants such as Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld, who laid the foundation for modern political sociology. . By the time I entered graduate school in the mid-1960s, Lipset's work had become required reading for our Ph.D. Now, as a senior scholar, I complain that students don't read the classics in the subject. But Lipset's "Political Man" published in 1960 is an exception, and everyone will read it. Particularly influential was his 1959 article "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy", which is included as a chapter in this book , entitled "Economic Development and Democracy". This article discusses one of his classic propositions: "The more developed a country's economy is, the more likely it is to sustain its democratic system." [2] Lipset (under the influence of Aristotle, Machiavelli and Weber) proposed that economic development will expand the middle class, and the middle class will support democracy.
There has been much debate about how exactly this theory should be understood,[3] but there is no consensus in this area. Regarding this issue, I insist that: first, the middle class will be more inclined to choose democracy. They will support democracy if it already exists; they will want it (though not necessarily act on it) if it does not exist yet. This tendency to support democracy is based both on material interests (for example, the middle class hopes to have the rule of law to protect their property ownership) and on cultural values (for example, independent economic status and educational opportunities will bring independent individuals self-esteem and preference for freedom of thought and expression). Second, however, the existence of a middle class does not necessarily lead to social change toward democracy. Such changes also depend on the positions of other classes, the balance of power within the system, and the emergence of unpredictable crises. Third, although the examples examined in Lipset's 1959 article all come from the Western world, Latin America, and English-speaking countries outside Europe in the 1940s and early 1950s, the logic of his assertions is certain (also has been shown) to apply to other parts of the world and later periods of middle-class development.
In this context, the situation of China's middle class seems to have become a puzzle. At some times, it can be safely said that China's middle class is calling for democracy: in 1989, the democratic movement spread to more than 300 cities, involving not only students but all types of urban residents; in opposition to the construction of garbage incineration plants and chemical plants in the neighborhood movement; in the protests against counterfeit and substandard goods, environmental pollution incidents, and disasters such as the Tianjin chemical warehouse explosion in August 2015; in the rights protection movement, the new citizens’ movement, feminists, and the expansion of civil rights in the struggles of other groups within society’s movement space.
Based on these examples, many scholars (both Western and Chinese) predict that as the middle class grows, it will put more pressure on governments to liberalize. [4] The West’s “engagement” policy toward China is partly based on this expectation. The hope is that this engagement will create a middle class that will advance democracy.
However, most of the time, China's middle class does not behave in line with such expectations. When encountering conflicts with the authorities, most members of the middle class try to avoid challenging the system. They will adopt a strategy of remonstration, stating their loyalty to institutional rules and policies, and only criticize low-level officials for implementation issues.
In numerous surveys, middle-class respondents have shown high support for China’s authoritarian system. Recently, Tianjin announced that people’s trust in the government, the Communist Party, the courts and the police exceeded 80%. In a recent survey by Bruce J. Dickson, he found that respondents’ “satisfaction with the central government” averaged 7.59 (on a scale of 0-10), with urban residents and those whose incomes have improved showing Higher support for the central government. Chen Jie’s surveys and interviews (see his 2013 book A Middle Class Without Democracy) have reached similar conclusions: China’s middle class broadly identifies with the system and more so than other social classes. Disapproval of the democratic system shows that the middle class is unlikely to be a promoter of democratization in the near future. [5]
So what went wrong? Is China an "exception"? (“Exceptionalism” is another of Professor Lipset’s most frequently discussed topics. Of course, he is referring to the United States, not China.) In terms of the performance of the Chinese middle class that is different from that of the middle class in other countries, is there really a “China model?” "Woolen cloth? In fact, Lipset's method of focusing on the historical and sociological background is very effective in studying China, because the situation of China's middle class is indeed different from the countries Lipset studied in many important aspects, so Their performance also differs in many ways.
## Who belongs to the middle class in China?
Before we analyze the situation of the middle class, we need to understand who we are talking about. Not everyone who considers themselves middle class is what Lipset calls middle class. For example, the 2008 Asian Barometer Survey sampled the entire Chinese population (including urban and rural areas) except Tibet, and asked respondents to answer questions about where they fit into 10 social status levels from the lowest to the highest. In terms of position, 58.2% of the respondents positioned themselves in the middle position, that is, 5 to 7. This finding is understandable if we consider that 77.2% of respondents said that their family's financial situation is better than it was a few years ago. For example, when a worker is able to send money back to the countryside to help her family build a tile-roofed house and buy a motorcycle, she has reason to think that she has risen to the middle class. But we would not think of her as middle-class in Lipset's sense.
Defining China's middle class by income is not a good way. The incomes of Chinese people are changing too fast for one income group to stabilize into a definable class. (Moreover, many Chinese families have such diverse sources of income that they cannot accurately tell how much money they earn, and some are unwilling to do so even if they could.) Defined solely by income, in 2005 There are more than 800 million Chinese people who can be counted as middle class, which is about 57% of the total population. [6]
But this is not the middle class we want to explore and who, according to Lipset's theory, should support democracy. When Lipset explained the pro-democracy preferences of the middle class, he considered rural small landowners, urban small businessmen, and white-collar independent professionals as the typical social positions of the middle class he studied at the time. They possess material wealth and certain skills and dignity, so that they have the need to be free from deprivation by authoritarian governments and the right to express their demands.
As a result, Chinese sociologists (possibly influenced by Lipset's theory) also use people's occupations as the main indicator of social stratification when analyzing China's social structure. (Interestingly, they reject the word "class" because it is associated in Marxism with exploitation and class struggle, which cannot exist in today's "harmonious society." So they used the word "stratum" instead of Lipset's "class.")
In China, the most widely used method of classifying social class was established by the late sociologist Lu Xueyi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and his colleagues. They distinguished 10 occupational groups, ranging from high-level state and business leaders (above the middle class) to industrial workers, agricultural laborers and the unemployed (below the middle class). The middle class refers to "people who are mainly engaged in mental work, whose source of livelihood mainly depends on wages and salaries, who have the ability to earn higher income, better working environment and a considerable level of family consumption and leisure life, and have a certain degree of autonomy at work. rights, and have good citizenship, public moral awareness and corresponding cultivation". [7] They include professional and technical personnel, white-collar workers and individual industrial and commercial households working in party and government agencies and enterprises.
## What is the difference between China’s middle class?
The differences between the Chinese middle class and the middle class defined by Lipset are mainly reflected in four aspects. First, China's middle class accounts for a much smaller proportion of the total population. Lu Xueyi and his colleagues estimated in 1999 that the middle class accounted for 14.1% of the total population; Lu Xueyi said in a subsequent interview that this number would grow to 22%-23% by 2008. [8] Other scholars also gave similar data. Although Lipset did not explicitly say what proportion of the total population the middle class he studied should account for, he proposed a "diamond-shaped" social structure in which the middle segment accounted for the largest proportion. Instead, Chinese sociologists complain that Chinese society is "pyramid-shaped": a smaller middle class squeezed in by a tiny upper class and a huge lower class. The middle class occupies a privileged social island—specifically, living in the “gated communities” that are so common in cities today. Members of the middle class may fear that in a majority-dominated society they must subordinate themselves to the interests of the lower classes.
The second obvious difference lies in the nature of the profession. China's middle class mainly consists of civil servants, employees of state-owned enterprises and employees of universities, hospitals, media and other institutions belonging to or controlled by the state. Younger generations prefer such jobs because they pay decent wages, are more secure, and offer more fringe benefits than most in the private sector. Ambitious young people strive to join the Chinese Communist Party because party membership is the key to influence and success in almost every field.
Unfortunately, I do not have any precise figures on how many middle-class people are directly or indirectly employed by the party and the state. A survey in three major cities showed that 60% of middle-class respondents were employed by state agencies, and this factor showed a clear negative correlation with support for democracy. [9] Most doctors work for state-owned hospitals, and most writers write for official writers' associations. Lawyers and law firms appear to be independent, but are actually monitored by the state. The only industries with a large number of independent practitioners are art and architecture, but most of them also rely on commissions or orders from the state to make money. Independent business owners make up only a small part of the middle class, and they also rely on close ties with the government to “get” their business done. In short, this is a dependent middle class, not an independent one.
This is worth exploring further. Sociologist Luigi Tomba believes that the rise of China's middle class began with the housing reform in the 1990s. This reform heavily favored employees in government departments and state-owned enterprises. Those government agencies and state-owned enterprises owned most of the properties during the Mao era and then rented them to their employees. In the housing reform, government and state-owned enterprise employees became property owners at a small cost through the following three channels: first, the privatization of existing unit housing; second, the unit built new housing and subsidized it. The property is sold to employees at a reasonable price; the third is that the unit subsidizes loans or purchase money for employees to purchase commercial housing. These employees who get the house at a very low price can usually sell it at a high price in the commercial housing market. As a result, these public sector workers “have become what is called the ‘properted class’ today.” [10] Government employees also enjoy better health insurance, pension funds, and (in recent years) higher wage growth rates than employees in other fields.
The third special feature of China's middle class lies in its "newness". The Lipset middle class originated in medieval European cities and emerged as an unusual class in the 17th century. It has grown up alongside modern nation-states and democratic institutions and has a widely recognized and legitimate identity. On the contrary, strictly speaking, China's middle class did not exist before 1979. A small middle class that existed before the communist revolution was completely wiped out in the 1950s, replaced by what Jean-Louis Rocca calls "a large group of people who lived a simple life and were led by a small number of party elites". an army of stratified workers. [11]
The middle class re-emerged during the "reform and opening up" period in the 1980s, and did not develop rapidly until the economic takeoff in the 1990s. In 2012, China's per capita gross national income (purchasing power parity) reached 40 times that of 1980; urban residents accounted for 52% of the total population from 20% in 1978; and the number of college enrollment increased from 2 million in 1990 to 17 million in 2005. [12] This rapid change means that most of China’s current middle class are the first generation members of this class. Their lifestyles are obviously different from their parents’ generation, and they are also surrounded by people similar to them, with a completely new society. identity person. Even in middle-class families with two generations, cultural differences between the generations are often stark.
It is difficult to imagine the extent to which such rapid change can disorient individuals and their social environments. These people who live in urban communities are in the process of forming a lifestyle, in part by consciously emulating what they understand to be Western consumption habits. For the mature middle class, wealth is a stimulus toward political participation; for the new middle class, political participation is a distraction. At present, China's middle class has not yet formed a common understanding and interests, let alone a stable belief in social wealth, and it is this belief that will give more mature middle classes the confidence to safeguard their rights and interests.
The final difference is their associational life. The rich social life of the Western middle class is one of the important themes Lipset discusses. In "Steady Jobs," Lipset writes: "Saskatchewan [Canada] is an extremely politically active region with a population of only 800,000, but local community organizations and government provide created at least 125,000 jobs. When I learned about this situation, I became sensitive to the relationship [between civil society and democracy].” [13] What he actually wanted to point out is that the relationship between schools and libraries Boards of directors, collective barns, welfare societies, and other "societies" in Tocqueville's sense—rather than formal political organizations—were the training grounds for effective political participation.
China's middle class does not have such corporate life. The government outlawed any organization that might compete with top-down “mass organizations” of youth, women, and workers. It allows some professional organizations (rather than mass organizations) to focus on environmental issues, but it strongly discourages local environmental protests. The government also suppresses the rise of independent media and controls the Internet. It allows small-scale volunteer organizations to work in areas such as public health, environmental protection, education reform, and disaster relief, but strictly limits them to the provision of services and does not allow for policy advocacy. [14]
The government seeks control over religious life by recognizing the five major religions and exercising control over their personnel, property, and activities. Independent religious organizations can only operate underground and avoid contact with the authorities as much as possible. The government occasionally tolerated local civil society organizations that aimed to fight discrimination or defend women's rights, such as Yi Renping and the New Citizens Movement (now suppressed). In 2015, the authorities rounded up more than two hundred human rights lawyers and related employees, bringing an end to their small efforts to bravely use the legal system to safeguard the interests of various vulnerable groups.
Urban communities have no equivalent of elections in rural areas (which are tightly controlled by the CCP). Community and residents' committees, considered "autonomous" institutions, are organized from the top down, controlled by government employees, and have many tasks to undertake. These tasks include conveying government policy information to residents, assisting with household registration management and family planning, carrying out health cleaning and mediating disputes. As Tomba said, one of the preset functions of community and resident committees is to make middle-class residents feel that they are more "civilized" and have higher "quality" than the lower-class people, and to contribute to social harmony and political obedience. Proud to be a typical example. Of such committees, Benjamin Read writes: “Not only are they an important part of the surveillance networks established by security agencies, they also help the state act on surveillance information and, from time to time, intervene as part of political campaigns. "[15]
Perhaps the most active middle-class social life platform at present is the homeowners committee that represents homeowners against real estate companies and property management companies. The interests of these micro-associations must be limited to matters at the residential community level, and they generally only negotiate with private real estate companies (rather than with government departments), and real estate companies are usually managed by local governments and subject to party supervision. To represent the country in carrying out family planning and publicity work. While it may be that for some local leaders, owners' committees can serve as a school for citizen organization and action, such struggles with property companies over issues of contract compliance and living conditions cannot be escalated to the level of class interests that confront the existing political order.
## What are they thinking quietly?
Although different from the middle class in Lipset's sense, China's middle class does have some important characteristics related to support for democracy that he defines. Members of China's middle class do own some property, and they hope that the government will protect their property through the rule of law; they have stable jobs, which gives them an expectation of living a dignified life; and when they receive education, they have the opportunity to explore the world. and tools for independent thinking. They have been deeply influenced by Western values through consumption, television, movies, the Internet, travel and studying abroad.
To be sure, despite the rise of social media, most of China’s middle class still get their information primarily from media that is directly or indirectly controlled by the government. CCTV's "News Network" will focus on the chaos in the Middle East and North Africa after the Arab Spring; it will also use the stability of Iran to compare the dire situation in Iraq after the government was overthrown by the West; and it will also focus on reporting on the crisis and slow growth of the Western economy. . Government propaganda also rejects "Western democracy" and celebrates "socialist democracy" that is said to be more authentic and culturally appropriate for China, but it still creates an affinity for the concept of democracy among viewers. Those who have access to outside information or have traveled abroad are more likely to agree with Western values and are more likely to criticize China's system. [16] Therefore, we have reason to explore: Behind the understandable political caution of this fragile and dependent new class, what are they secretly thinking?
The results of the 2008 Asian Barometer survey give us some clues. We can define the middle class among the survey respondents as those urban residents who have received at least a secondary education, believe that their family income can meet their basic needs, and have some savings. According to this standard, 14.2% of the effective sample can be regarded as middle class. [17] These financially well-off and relatively well-educated urban residents are more likely than non-middle-class respondents to express dissatisfaction with the current way politics is run (29.7% vs. 18.9%). [18] They are also more likely to Support a range of abstract liberal democratic values such as separation of powers and judicial independence (46.2% vs. 24.7%). [19]
This attitude becomes even more pronounced as younger generations join the ranks of the middle class and older ones drop out. Indeed, due to the rapid spread of secondary and higher education in China, the middle class is younger than the rest of the Chinese population. In the Asia Barometer survey, 29.5% of middle-class respondents were aged 18 to 29, while this proportion was only 18.5% of non-middle-class respondents. Younger members of the middle class are more likely than older members to express dissatisfaction with the way politics is run (34% vs. 27.9%) and more likely to endorse liberal democratic values (50.4% vs. 44.5%). [20]
In 2005, Zhang Wei, a political scientist at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, wrote a very insightful book using in-depth interview research methods. In the book, he warned that the middle class has a tendency to alienate. Unlike Lu Xueyi and other leading sociologists who believed that the middle class would be a force for social harmony and stability (based on their education, social privileges, and higher "quality"), Zhang Wei found that China's middle class Is silent, indifferent and alienated:
## Political alienation is passive political indifference. Compared with ordinary political indifference, political alienation is not stable. More directly, political alienation itself is a tension of expectations, a hidden state in which political expectations have not been released. A closed political order can suppress enthusiasm for political participation, and at the same time, it may also accumulate strength for future enthusiasm for political participation... Once political alienation becomes explicit into political participation, the pressure on the political order may be more intense than usual political participation. [twenty one]
This analysis rings true. The Chinese middle class I have met (certainly not a representative sample) would feel politically blocked. They responded to this situation in different ways. Some became dissidents; these people existed, and they were heroic. The question here is why their numbers are so small. There are also some middle-class people who choose to immigrate. There are many such people; but considering China's huge population base, they still account for a very small proportion. Most of the middle class can be classified into the other four groups.
Perhaps the largest group is the politically anesthetized. My impression is that this is especially prevalent among the second generation of the middle class. Because they are young, they have little memory of 1989 and even less understanding of the Cultural Revolution. They grew up in an environment that emphasized career and consumption. They understand that politics is something that cannot be touched, and everyone understands this tacitly. An exaggerated depiction of this group can be seen in the popular Chinese film series "Tiny Times," in which beautiful, wealthy young Shanghainese are left to juggle their clothes and their love interests. [twenty two]
The second group is the acceptors. [23] I have met young scholars who have never heard of Liu Xiaobo and are not interested in what happened in 1989. Some of them are "political counselors" who work hard to teach their students to be loyal. The feeling I got from talking to them is that they like the China where they live, the Chinese system is like this, and the truth of the system is the truth they are ready to accept. Even if China maintains its authoritarian system, their lives are freer and better than those of the previous two generations who lived under Mao. Therefore, as Shi Tianjian said, although respondents to the Asia Barometer survey believe that democracy is very needed and suitable for China, they also believe that China’s system is already very democratic (7.22 on a scale of 0-10) [ twenty four]
The third group is the ameliorators. They have seen the shortcomings of the system, but they have also seen progress within their lifetimes. They believe that through education, writing, or legal work, they can advance the future in their own way. If one believes that such progress can be achieved, it is certainly worth striving for.
The last group might be called the alienated. Such people may be more common among older or more educated members of the middle class. They have no illusions about the system, but they are not yet ready to take the big risks involved in an opposition movement, nor are they ready to give up their advantageous positions and resources to live a less powerful life abroad. If they could design a perfect world, things might be different, but for now, these people will continue with their current lives.
All four groups are realists in some sense, and I respect them for that. The pro-democracy movement of 1989 took place in part because the nascent middle class felt that its new prosperity was threatened by inflation and corruption. This gave a section of the middle class an opportunity to express their concerns about the political system. Today, however, inflation is under control, corruption is deterred and investigated, and the system is determined to rein in power. China's middle class knows that now is not a good time to challenge the authoritarian political system. These considerations, I think, lead to the somewhat puzzling findings described at the beginning of this article.
However, I would like to use another "A" word to describe a common characteristic of people who decide to live in their given reality: they are anxious. What China's middle class lacks is a sense of security. Economically, except for a small group of people who are rich enough to transfer assets overseas, the wealth growth of China's middle class still relies on the management capabilities of an opaque bureaucratic system, and this ability will experience great risks in the unclear future. big change. Every slowdown feels like a harbinger of impending disaster. Politically, the middle class is caught in the middle. Above is the ruling party, which is undergoing a treacherous and dangerous struggle in the form of an anti-corruption campaign. Below are a large number of workers and farmers who are considered uncivilized and suppressing the anger of dissatisfaction. Moreover, from the perspective of the middle class, their interests and those of the lower class are opposed to each other.
Such is the ambivalence of those trapped in an unstable reality. This is why the current system seems so afraid of the middle class, even though this class expresses high levels of support for it. Xi Jinping’s regime is already trying to intimidate the middle class, both through a new national security law and the drafting of laws on cybersecurity and foreign civil society organizations, as well as through a crackdown on rights lawyers, increased demands for ideological unity and the creation of a A system that looks like a new totalitarianism. The pressure on a “harmonious society” had continued to increase during the previous Hu Jintao period, and the opening of some limited and small-scale civil society activities has also transformed into more repressive and threatening policies. These measures seemed to prevent the middle class from challenging the regime, but they also paid the price of increasing their anxiety.
## Cultural particularism?
Does all this mean that China is culturally special? Indeed, there are some arguments that the reason why China's middle class is more politically compliant is because of the Chinese people's preference for harmony and collectivist values. I agree that different cultures are unique blends of behavioral patterns and values (neither Chinese nor American culture is monolithic). Moreover, as Shi Tianjian has pointed out, in the past Confucian society, the concept of focusing on collective interests and hierarchy was indeed relatively stronger. [25]
But here again we should follow Lipset's lead. His in-depth observations on American exceptionalism, written in several books, emphasize that institutional rather than cultural factors characterize the United States' lack of a strong socialist movement, racial divisions, and the recurring resurgence of right-wing extremism. [26] This statement is also true for the attitude of China's middle class: this attitude is a reaction to the institutional realities that today's China has inherited from the past (one-party system, state-controlled economy, and the persistence of a large class of workers and farmers) . The economies of many other late-developing countries followed similar institutional paths, and their middle classes similarly remained inactive until they became stronger. In this sense, China's middle class is not special at all.
But China is changing. What kind of future will China's middle class face? Although Lipset cautions that social scientists are not good at predicting the future, we may still want to hazard some guesses. [27] As long as China’s economy continues to grow at its current level (reportedly 7%, but a more accurate figure may be around 5%) and the political system remains stable, the middle class will expand further. The implications of this plot development for the prospects of democracy are anything but one-sided. Chinese sociologists hope that continued prosperity will reduce social conflict and that a stable middle class will continue to support the current regime. On the other hand, if the values of the middle class become increasingly liberal, their political alienation will grow even as they continue to endure a regime that continues to deliver prosperity.
While a top-down democratic transition by a faction within the regime is unlikely to occur, if it did occur we should expect the middle class to welcome the attempt as long as the process does not disrupt social peace and economic stability. Once the regime looks headed for disintegration, as it did in 1989, the middle class may once again awaken politically and act on its long-buried grievances. [28] But even if this scenario develops, we cannot expect that the middle class will become the decisive force in democratization unless it somehow overcomes its cultural and social isolation from other classes, or it experiences certain The process finally became the largest class in China's "diamond-shaped" social structure.
However, if economic growth stagnates, or if the current regime begins to turn left (which is highly unlikely) and infringes on the interests of the middle class, the peaceful life of the middle class will be threatened. The urban lifestyle will be unsustainable, and more and more college graduates will be unable to find good jobs. We should remind ourselves that Lipset did not say that the middle class would always support democracy. In another famous article, "'Fascism'—Left, Right, and Center" ("'Fascism'—Left, Right, and Center"), Lipset tells us that when the economic and social status of the middle class less secure, they may support some form of extremism. [29] In China, this kind of extremism is likely to arise from xenophobic nationalism, which the government has been promoting as a resource to support its legitimacy. To express this nationalist anger, the middle class may accuse the government of treason or weakness, which could push the regime in a more authoritarian direction.
Both assumptions about the future are fraught with risks, and it's this thinking that keeps China's middle class where it is today. What the middle class really worries about is an economic or military crisis, or an internal power struggle that triggers a breakdown in order. Concern about this crisis also explains why the middle class continues to embrace liberal values while still supporting an authoritarian system.
(Li Anyou: Professor of the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. Chen Wanlong: Mainland Chinese sociologist.)
[2] PoliticalMan: The Social Bases of Politics, expanded and updated ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 31.
[3] For a literature review of this theoretical controversy and its application in China, see Jie Chen and Chunlong Lu, "Democratization and the Middle Class in China: The Middle Class'sAttitudes Toward Democracy," Political ResearchQuarterly 64 (September 2011): 705–19.
[4] For a review of English academic research on this issue, see Bruce Dickson, The Dictator's Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party's Strategy for Survival (Oxford University Press, 2016). For a review of Chinese academic research, see Cheng Li, “Chinese Scholarship on the Middle Class: From Social Stratification to Political Potential,” in Li, ed., China’s EmergingMiddle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 55–83.
[5] Tianjian Shi, "China:Democratic Values Supporting an Authoritarian System," in Yun-han Chu et al., eds., How East Asians View Democracy (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2008), 229; Dickson, appendix toDictator's Dilemma; Jie Chen, A MiddleClass Without Democracy: Economic Growth and the Prospects for Democratization in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[6] Based on a definition of the middle class, consumption expenditure per person per day in 2005 was between US$2 and US$20 (purchasing power parity). According to this definition, it can be calculated that in 2005, more than 800 million people in China belonged to the middle class. This algorithm is based on Asian Development Bank, Key Indicators for Asia and thePacific 2010 (August 2010), 5, www.adb.org/publications/key-indicators-asia-and-pacific-2010.
[7] LuXueyi (ed.), "Research report on socialstrata in contemporary China" (Research report on socialstrata in contemporary China), Beijing: Social Sciences Literature Press, 2002: 252.
[8] See "Lu Xueyi Exclusive Interview: Middle Class Grew by OnePercentage Point per Year", Xinhuanet, August 17, 2009, http://news. xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-08/17/content_11894452.htm.
[9] Chen and Lu, “Democratization and the Middle Class in China,” 713–14. This study was conducted in Beijing, Chengdu, and Xi’an.
[10] LuigiTomba, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 104.
[11] Jean-Louis Rocca, A Sociology of Modern China, trans. Gregory Elliott (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2015), 16.
[12] On income, see: http://knoema.com/pjeqzh/gdp-per-capita-by-country-1980-2014?country=China; on urbanization, see: World Bank and the Development Research Center of the StateCouncil, People's Republic of China, UrbanChina: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2014), 3; on college admissions, see: Jing Lin andXiaoyan Sun, “Higher Education Expansion and China’s Middle Class ,” in Li, ed., China’s Emerging Middle Class, 222.
[13] Lipset, “SteadyWork,” 9.
[14] Jessica C.Teets, Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
[15] Benjamin L. Read, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 107.
[16] Haifeng Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic Evaluations in a Changing Society: The Case of China,” American Political Science Review 109 (August 2015): 613–34.
[17] The middle class defined in this way is smaller than the more than 20% defined by the sociologists quoted in this article. There is no direct way to compare the two groups, but given that the middle class as defined by the Asia Barometer Survey is more urban and wealthier than the middle class that defines it as a larger group, it would be appropriate to use this data .
[18] The Asia Barometer survey asked: “How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in your country?” The question was designed for cross-country surveys, and because all Asian governments claim they are democracies, We can also trust this overall satisfaction rating with the political system. For a comparison, see Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman, “Satisfaction with Democracy: A Note on a Frequently Used Indicator in Comparative Politics,” European Journal of Political Research 42 (May2003): 391–408.
[19] These are the proportions of people who support at least four of the seven “liberal democratic values” listed in the Asia Barometer survey. For findings on the generalizability of the pattern that more modern populations hold more liberal values, based on the World Values Survey and comparisons of Asian and non-Asian countries, see Christian Welzel, “The Asian Values ThesisRevisited: Evidence from the World Values Surveys,” JapaneseJournal of Political Science 12 (April 2011):1–31.
[20] For similar findings on attitudes toward young people in Asia and China, see Yun-han Chu and Bridget Welsh, "Millennials and East Asia's Democratic Future," Journal of Democracy 26 (April 2015): 151–64, and Min-hua Huang, Yun-han Chu, and Cao Yongrong, “China: The Impact of Modernization and Liberalization on Democratic Attitudes,” in David Denemark, Robert Mattes, andRichard G. Niemi, eds., Growing Up Democratic: Generational Change in Post-Authoritarian Societies ( Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming).
[21] Zhang Wei, "Conflict and uncertainty: political analysis of the middle stratum in Chinese society", Beijing: Social Sciences Literature Press, 2005: 406-407 .
[22] See www.youtube.com/watch?v=q61X3zfBE8g.
[23] For this analysis, please refer to: Eva Bellin, "The Dog That Didn't Bark: The Political Complacence of the Emerging Middle Class (with Illustrations from the Middle East)," in Julian Go, ed., Political Power and Social Theory , vol. 21 (Bingley, U.K.:Emerald, 2010), 125–41; Kellee S. Tsai, “Capitalists Without a Class: Political Diversity Among Private Entrepreneurs in China,” ComparativeStudies 38 (November 2005): 1130–58; Teresa Wright , Accepting Authoritarianism: State-Society Relations in China's Reform Era (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2010).
[24] TianjianShi, The Cultural Logic of Politics in Mainland China and Taiwan (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 195. These data come from the 2003 Asia Barometer Survey on China.
[25] Shi, CulturalLogic. However, Shi Tianjian would agree with Lipset: cultural personalities and values will be gradually shaped by social structures and institutions.
[26] Seymour Martin Lipset with Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Lipset, American Exceptionalism: ADouble-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996 ), Lipset with GaryMarks, It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
[27] Seymour Martin Lipset, “Predicting the Future: The Limits of Social Science,” in Consensus and Conflict: Essays in Political Sociology (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1985), 329–60, orig. in Lipset, ed., TheThird Century : America as a Post-Industrial Society (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 1–35.
[28] Andrew J.Nathan, “Foreseeing the Unforeseeable,” Journal of Democracy 24 (January 2013): 20–25.
[29] InLipset, Political Man, ch. 5.
Note: This article comes from the "China Strategic Analysis" website, for which I would like to express my gratitude.
