Generational Effects in the Chinese New Middle Class

Abstract

A consumer revolution is happening in today’s China. The young generation is acutely aware of the need for educational attainment as a form of cultural capital to boost career and enhance incomes. At the same time, they realise that political and social capital is also crucial to getting well-paid and secure jobs (Coleman 1988, 1990). This cohort is seen as long-term planners of their education. Many tend to map out in advance how to proceed with their first and higher degree studies, and what to do after graduation. Many are ambitious and want to pursue higher degrees at the world’s most prestigious universities. They are generally proficient in English and may even speak a third modern language such as French, Spanish or others. For the younger new middle class, conspicuous consumption is directly related to a way of life and it demonstrates its superiority over other classes and, therefore, legitimises its position of superordination. The young generation progressively seeks to capture the means of cultural reproduction as a way of securing its own social reproduction (Bourdieu 1984, 1996). On the other hand, they are flexible enough to upgrade their competitiveness in the highly globalising China. The lives of many of the young generation are full of challenges and ‘dynamic’, but they are quite anxious and uncertain about their future life chances. They cannot follow the same trajectories of success as the old generation.

A lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian need, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity…

(Pinches 1999: 74–5)