China's middle class may be rising, but not in revolt
David Goodman rejects the simplistic equation of the rise of the middle class in China with that of the West, and thus the assumption that the former must lead to democracy as the latter did
Much is expected of China's growing middle class. Since 2002, the Communist Party has embraced the idea of expanding the middle class so that it becomes more than half the total population by 2050 in order to encourage consumption and ensure social stability.
For China's urban population, middle-class growth is the promise of increased prosperity. For the rest of the world, an expanding middle class in China suggests market demand to be fulfilled and, through their understanding of social history in Europe and North America, the prospect of a democratic China.
The common belief of the past 20 years outside China is that economic growth, a growing middle class and the rise of entrepreneurs inevitably leads to democracy. Everyone knows democratic countries do not go to war with each other, and that a democratic China means thereby less of a "China threat".
The China threat may indeed disappear, but this is unlikely to be because of a rising middle class. The problems with these various equations are that different meanings of the middle class have been elided, even though they may have nothing in common; that, however it is conceptualised, the middle class in China is actually small despite the current rhetoric; and, last but by no means least, that China's socio-political experience is not that of Europe or North America, so the middle class remains an essential part of the state from which it has emerged and is not very likely to be the Chinese equivalent of the European or North American bourgeoisie with whom they are often equated.
The middle class has at various times been many things, and it makes little sense to equate the bourgeoisie, the professional and managerial classes, the leisured classes and the comfortably well-off, though they clearly overlap.
The idea that the middle class leads to liberal democracy comes from two sources: one, Barrington Moore's interpretation of social and political change in Europe that centred on the well-known mantra of "no bourgeoisie, no democracy"; the other, Samuel Huntington's argument that complex societies generate middle classes demanding political pluralism.