Date: Tuesday 10 May 2022
Time: 5.00pm-6.00pm AEST
Location: Online event
Class in China – A series of webinars on the Peasants, the Middle Class and the Dominant Class
Between Dream and Nightmare in the Chinese Middle Class
The appearance in strong policy terms of the middle class is one of the more intriguing aspects of social change since the end of the 1990. Many Chinese researchers have seen this phenomenon as the promise of China’s entry into the consumer society and the realization of a Chinese dream. Some have even gone so far as to foresee a transformation of the political system under pressure from the middle classes assumed to be naturally liberal and democratic. In China, as elsewhere, the middle class is a collection of diverse groups whose only unity is the desire for a comfortable and increasing standard of living. Structurally though the Chinese middle classes resemble the middle strata of the Maoist era from which they have emerged. Party and government cadres, professionals and a substantial proportion of workers and employees in former and current state enterprises have been able to maintain their social status through opportunity hoarding.
Not less intriguing is the fact that at a time when Chinese society sets out to pursue the myth of the “real” middle class, voices claim that the middle class is entered in a crisis. Those who have already reached the holy grail of the consumer society are struggling to stay there. The second generation of the middle class finds it very difficult to follow in their parents’ footsteps. And migrant workers are experiencing very limited upward mobility. It would be reductive to limit the difficulties of the Chinese middle class to purely material phenomena. The malaise of the Chinese middle class is also existential. In the new generations many people question the meaning of life under capitalism.
About the speakers:
Jean-Louis Rocca is a professor at Sciences Po Paris, France and researcher at the Center for International Studies. A specialist in the study of Chinese society, he is the author of The Making of the Chinese Middle Class (2017), A Sociology of Modern China (2015) and co-author (with Françoise Mengin) of Politics in China: Moving Frontiers (2002). Rocca is a member of the editorial board of The China Quarterly. He has spent 10 years in China and in particular six years as a full professor at Tsinghua University.
Kam Louie FHKAH FAHA (Chair) Before serving as Dean of Arts at Hong Kong University, Kam was Professor of Chinese at UQ and ANU. He has also taught at Nanjing, Auckland and Murdoch Universities. He has studied at USyd, CUHK and Peking University, and held professorial fellowships at the Center for Chinese Studies, Taipei and NTU, Singapore. He is currently Honorary Professor at HKU and UNSW. He served on government committees such as the Australia-China Council, and on leaderships roles such as President of the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities and Head of the Asian Studies Section at the Australian Humanities Academy.
Publications include Inheriting Tradition: Interpretations of the Classical Philosophers in Communist China (Oxford UP), The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (co-authored), (Columbia UP) and Theorising Chinese Masculinity (Cambridge UP). He was also Chief Editor of Asian Studies Review (1998 – 2006).
Class and the Communist Party of China, 1921-1978 : Revolution and Social Change
Class and the Communist Party of China, 1978-2021 : Reform and Market Socialism
20% Discount Available – enter the code FLR40 at checkout*
Hb: 978-1-032-18532-3 | £96.00Pb: 978-1-032-18529-3 | £27.99
* Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased directly via our website.