Introduction

One of the most notable features of urbanization in China since the late 1990s is the rise of an urban middle class. While researchers continue to argue among themselves about the exact definition of the middle class in a post-socialist economy and how to draw the class boundary, few observers of contemporary China would disagree that many of the affluent managers, administrators, and professionals in the major cities are quickly acquiring a new social identity and leading new ways of life. From the proliferation of nightlife entertainment in urban hotspots to the consumption of luxurious items and/or foreign brands (on coffee consumption, see Henningsen, 2012; on taste and class identity, see Dong and Blommaert, 2016), from the drastic increase in car ownership to the growth of gated communities, the cityscape in contemporary China has undergone drastic changes in the course of urbanization and socioeconomic restratification. Social class constitutes an important dimension of the changing urban life in China. And the rise of a newly formed middle class in the major cities is both an agent in shaping the changing cityscape and an outcome of current urban development.

This chapter, drawing on our observations conducted in a suburban middle-class community in Beijing in 2007–17 (for details, see Lui and Liu, 2015, 2019) and the study of the middle class in Shanghai since the mid-1990s (see Lui, 2001, 2004, 2009), reports on the emergence and formation of an urban middle class in contemporary Chinese cities. It is argued that this middle class came into existence when China’s economy was marketized and the social structure had undergone a major transformation as a result of such economic changes. Within a period of 20 to 25 years, China has witnessed the birth of a middle class in the context of the transition to a post-socialist economy, the formation of new class identities and lifestyles, and growing class-related anxieties. Of course, the rise of the middle class is only a part of the broader restratification processes in contemporary China. Equally significant are the influx of migrant workers into cities and the concomitant polarization in the urban social structure (for a survey of China's ongoing urban transformation, see He and Qian, 2017). But the newly formed middle class does put its footprints on contemporary Chinese cities.