Middle class becomes rising power in China
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-11-06 15:51

The scenic northeast China's port city of Dalian is admitted to be a promised land for the group with passions and intelligence, who constitute the middle class in China.

Twenty-seven-year-old Wan Fang, who works as an enterprise planner, receives a yearly pay of nearly 200,000 yuan (about US$24,000) only in his second year, and that is tantamount to what his parents earned during the past eight years.

"People of our generation may consider more about how to break away from the past uptight life," said Wan, "thus we worked hard in the university, thinking of bringing fortune to the families through the knowledge."

"I am glad that my dream is gradually coming true", he said.

Sociologist Bao Degong from Northeast University said more than 80 million Chinese people can be categorized into the middle class.

Bao said the middle class people are primarily found in the coastal areas where the economy rapidly develops, and they are particularly owners of the small and medium private enterprises, township entrepreneurs, and the new and high-tech specialists.

Zheng Tianshun, in his 30s, is an expert technician of the table planing machine in a state-run factory in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. He is very satisfied with his monthly pay of 5,000 yuan (about US$600), which is the maximum payment of workers of his level in the city.

"An old hand of the complicated skill, I am paid ten times as much as that of the normal workers", said Zheng, "the harder you work, and the more you will earn".

However, people with higher pay would live in an embarrassing condition 20 years ago, when equalitarianism prevailed in China, said Bao. "At that time a better economic situation might incur jeers and even despise from the majority others, which was an extremely abnormal phenomena."

China's economic reform has brought about a brand-new society, in which people with fortune and good education background have quickly found their positions and formed the middle class in China, said Bao.

The knowledge-based economy in China today, in addition to the central government's strategy of constructing the country with science and technologies, has boosted the rapid development of higher education, which is the incubator of the middle class, he said.

According to a report made by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China's middle class will be remarkably expanded in the coming eight to ten years.

However, there are still sharp differences between the rich and the poor in China today, and a developing middle class will well reconcile the conflicts between the two groups, serving as a bridge, said Bao.