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Qian's and Zhu's different mind-sets should come as no surprise, says Stanley Rosen, a political science professor and China specialist at the University of Southern California who specializes on China. After all, Rosen explains, the Communist Party has turned its entire message virtually upside down over the past generation. "It used to be bad to be rich," he says. "Now it is bad to be poor. As it searches for sources of its own legitimacy, the government's strategy is to create a middle class that is grateful to the Party for allowing it to exist." Ever since Deng's first market reforms in 1978, the government has been more accommodating to the group that had always been its sworn enemy: capitalists. As the economy has taken off, Deng's successor President Jiang Zemin has become aware of the dangers of a politically empowered middle class, and has sought vigorously to neutralize that threat. First in 1988, the government recognized private property as an important part of the economy. Then in 2000, Jiang debuted the "Three Represents," a theory that states the government must now represent the interests of the "most advanced productive forces in China"—universally understood code words for the rich and middle class. And in a July 1, 2001 speech, Jiang indicated that capitalists and entrepreneurs should be allowed to join the Party.
The Party's strategy of appeasing the middle class carries considerable risks, however. Many observers think that an ascendant middle class will lead, inevitably, to political liberalization. This, of course, is one of the government's worst fears, with many conservatives believing that capitalists are ultimately unappeasable and will gather power outside the system rather than work from within it.
Others are not so sure. They argue that the government and the middle class ultimately crave one thing in common above all else: stability. "These people have vivid memories of the uprising in Tiananmen Square, and have come to see it as a dead end, a revolution that went nowhere," says Cheng Li, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and a professor of government at Hamilton College in New York. "The middle class has sided with the government." It is the unemployed factory workers and abandoned peasants who are striking and rioting in ever greater numbers while most of the middle class in Beijing and Shanghai revel in their newfound comfort. Notes the CASS sociologist about the incipient middle class: "They're content and thus tend to profess a total disinterest in politics. They won't be the ones issuing calls for democracy or human rights. Their politics range from moderate to just plain apathetic."
That's not the case with Zhu Ansheng's less affluent generation. Visit Zhu's house and it's clear he has spent much time pondering the theory of the Three Represents; he quotes liberally from various strains of Deng's political and economic thinking, and is keenly interested in what will happen during the coming Party Congress. His son Qian, on the other hand, claims to be disinterested in such issues. "I read the paper, I watch television, I try to know what is going on," says Qian, "but I don't really follow politics." Middle-class Chinese like Qian seem, for now, to have come to an understanding with their Party leaders. Since communism nearly bankrupted the country, the government is attempting to retain its Mandate of Heaven the only way it now knows how—by improving the nation's standard of living, even if it means throwing out its founding belief system. And the middle class, seduced by the pleasures of comfortable living and 20 years of growing fortune, is willing to condone and endorse the Party's legitimacy, even if that means suppressing any desire for political participation or reform.
There are considerable challenges, however, to the successful establishment of a sizable middle class. Some claim that it is an eastern, urban phenomenon that will not transfer to the slower-growing, neglected center and west of the country. And there is evidence that this class is part of society's increasing polarization of wealth rather than a true middle bracket. The CASS study notes that market reforms are widening the disparity, not closing it. In 1978, according to the report, the richest 20% of Chinese households were four times better off than the poorest. Today the richest have incomes 13 times greater than the poorest.
But start probing middle-class Chinese and you discover that they, too, harbor resentments and skepticism behind their professed political indifference. Corruption and its euphemistic handmaiden guanxi (connections) have convinced many in the middle class that the playing field is not level, and that merit will only get them so far. Over coffee at the Soho bar in Xintiandi, Qian frets that his dislike of guanxi has impeded his rise: "Because of my personality, I don't like to build guanxi. If I liked guanxi," he says, gesturing at his uniform, "I would not be working here. I would be higher." In darker moments, he doubts whether he will ever manage to start his own business. It is "difficult, very difficult" if you don't come from the right background, he says. Likewise, Qian's father fears that his son—though still young—has already hit the apex of his career. "To start your own business you either need money or the right connections," says Zhu. "You can use either to solve your problems. But if you don't have either, then it is impossible to succeed."
For all the hype about China's unleashing of free-market forces, the government still wields tremendous influence over which companies succeed and which fail. Private entrepreneurs profit richly from their carefully nurtured relationships with government officials, and a disproportionate number of China's newly wealthy are themselves former government or military officials, or their sons or daughters. Richard Pu is a young, middle-class resident of Shanghai who manages the real estate business Eachnet.com, an Internet auction site. He thinks that China is closer to a meritocracy than it was a generation ago, but it still has a long way to go. "City people have a better chance at success," he says. "Kids of government officials have a better chance at success."
Likewise, people frequently complain about the legal system, decrying its inequality. "In China," says another Shanghai resident, "there is a problem when the law meets authority. If a case arises between two normal people, then the law is powerful. But if one person is a company official or from the government, then forget it—there is no power in the law." Andy Xie, an economist at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, predicts that the middle class will gradually push for a stronger rule of law, frustrated by the way the judicial deck has been stacked against them: "To be middle-class means you own property, a house or a car. At some point, these property owners will demand that their possessions be better protected, equally protected."
These quiet middle-class grumblings about corruption, unfairness, and inequality may, in fact, be the first stirrings of a political consciousness—one that might yet take root to bring about lasting political change. Still, anyone looking for political parties or democratic elections to erupt overnight is expecting too much too soon. Elizabeth Economy, director of Asian studies and senior fellow at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, thinks China's middle class is already redefining the political landscape. She points to the real if subtle ways in which environmental organizations, neighborhood societies and other nongovernmental groups are now agitating for change. Indeed, urban dwellers are increasingly taking to the streets to protest seemingly mundane but very personal matters such as housing quality, garbage collection, school curricula and the destruction of neighborhood parks. A sociologist who worked on the CASS study argues that many middle-class Chinese "are not afraid to publicly state their opinions on matters like transportation, urban infrastructure and legal practices relating to the industries they are involved in. Though they stay quiet about larger social issues, they become vocal about anything that directly affects their lives."
But will China's middle class ever feel sufficiently large and powerful to move from demonstrating for buses that will run on time to such issues as free speech, corruption and the right to rule? It is impossible to say with certainty, though the answer to that question will play a crucial role in determining the kind of country China becomes. For now, many people like Charley Qian are too busy earning a living and getting ahead to ponder such matters. In fact, he says after looking at his watch after dinner, he really should be going. He has to be up early for work tomorrow.
—With reporting by Susan Jakes/Beijing and Yin Zi/Shanghai
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