Unlike in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has retained its political monopoly. While propaganda and coercion are part of the CCP's toolkit, the CCP has been able to recover from the ravages of the era of Mao Zedong and the shock of Tiananmen to rebuild its legitimacy on the basis of rapid economic growth and rising living standards. In the span of three decades, China has metamorphosed from an autarkic and underdeveloped backwater into the world's second largest economy and its largest trader.

A variety of other countries have combined authoritarian rule with rapid economic growth, only to transition to democratic governance after attaining significant levels of development. Yet the sheer scale of China, its economic prowess, and the CCP's organizational strengths have raised profound questions about whether China's political future may take a different path from those countries that industrialized earlier. China's path also has major implications for global development because this country has the wherewithal to possibly make itself a model for others. In one way or another, every political scientist writing on China today is seeking to shed light on the dynamics of its political evolution.

Taking their cue from Barrington Moore's famous linkage between the bourgeois mass party and democratization, a growing number of researchers, both in China and the West, have devoted much energy and effort to the study of whether a bourgeois middle class is emerging in China amid the country's vast economic changes, and what a rising middle class portends for its sociopolitical future.

In view of the large number of writings in this genre, China's Emerging Middle Class, the volume edited by Cheng Li, is especially valuable for its multidisciplinary approach and diversity of perspectives. Most of the authors of the volume's 15 chapters have written their own books on the topic, and it is an achievement to bring them under one roof. One could hear a cacophony of voices on definitions and measurements and read on diverse efforts to untangle complicated data on values and attitudes. The volume also includes chapters that consider the Chinese middle class in comparative perspective and situate the significance of the emerging middle class in the global context. There is much insight to be gained from a perusal of this volume, and selections from it will be excellent material for students in seminars to cut their analytical teeth on.

Homi Kharas and Geoffrey Gertz (Chapter 2) offer a stunning economic projection of the rising middle class in Asian countries and predict that China will assume the mantle of the world's largest middle-class market by 2020. Several chapters help the reader understand how the middle class has expanded in China. Zhou Xiaohong and Qin Chen, and Lu Hanlong (Chapters 4 and 5, respectively) examine the domestic and international factors that have proven conducive to the enormous expansion of the middle class. China's massive housing privatization has made millions of households into owners and helped many of them enter the ranks of the middle class (Joyce Man, Chapter 8). Meanwhile, the enormous expansion of the higher education sector (to some 29 million students in 2009) embodies the aspirations as well as frustrations of the middle class (Jing Lin and Xiaoyan Sun in Chapter 10).

Virtually all of the chapters recognize the complexities in defining, categorizing, and measuring the middle class in China. Marshaling rich survey data, Li Chunling (Chapter 6) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences highlights the extremely diverse origins of members of the middle class in terms of family background and occupational experience. Likewise, Jianying Wang and Deborah Davis (Chapter 7) point to a pattern of increasing differentiation and thus internal divisions within the middle class. Their data analyses reveal that “the lower and upper strata [of the middle class] exhibit distinctive attitudes toward the social reality” (p. 172). With a focus on housing, Luigi Tomba weaves a nuanced tapestry of the social distinctions and apparent contradictions that have characterized China's middle class and the ways in which different forces have contributed to the making of such distinctions.

As a whole, diversity and differentiation make it hard for members of the middle class to become unified in identity (Li Chunling; Tomba; Wang and Davis), and it is not surprising that the contributors disagree on the political implications of China's rising middle class. Jie Chen draws on survey data to show that most members of the middle class hold status-quo-oriented political views and are not about to rock the boat. Similarly, as in his books, Bruce Dickson concludes that “private entrepreneurs defend their new-found wealth not against a rapacious state but against the uncertainty of an alternative regime” (pp. 305–6). Yet Hsin-Huang Hsiao of Taiwan brings in the experiences of East Asia and reminds us that only some segment of the middle class played significant roles in the democratization process and that it would thus be misguided to search for one united middle class. Still, he laments that the emergence of the middle class has not been matched by the growth of civil society in China and thus cautions against optimism about the future of democracy there.

Whereas the volume edited by Li brims with diverse insights, Teresa Wright zeroes in on the question of why the CCP has been able to sustain its rule by disaggregating state–society relations into relations with different social groups, including “private entrepreneurs,” “professionals,” rank-and-file state sector workers, rank-and-file private sector workers, and farmers. Through a highly disciplined approach, Wright considers in broad strokes how China's socialist legacies, state-led development, and the introduction of market forces have shaped the attitudes and behavior of each social group.

Let us take Wright's discussion of China's professionals. She argues that these professionals have tended “toward greater acceptance of the CCP-led political status quo.” Indeed, she makes the audacious claim that most professionals are “skeptical of majority rule and desirous of close connections to the existing authoritarian political establishment” (p. 83). She further disaggregates professionals into different subgroups. She suggests that intellectuals have become more critical of liberal ideas and “more overtly supportive” of the regime (p. 71). Because a high percentage of lawyers are CCP members, the author deduces that the lawyers are closely intertwined with the party and the state. Accountants have been beneficiaries of the system and thus have incentives to further embed themselves within the party. Even as post-1989 college students face diminished job opportunities, they have “eschewed political dissent, seeking instead to become more closely attached to the political establishment” (p. 67).

In discussing rank-and-file state sector workers, Wright usefully points to the different experiences and interests among still-employed, laid-off, and retired rank-and-file state sector workers, noting that such variations are further complicated by regional variations. While state sector workers, including laid-off ones, have suffered from downward socioeconomic mobility and status declines, they remain dependent on the party-state for handouts, have limited political options, and thus support the central regime even as they have protested against local officials and managers.

Overall, Wright concludes that “relations between the ruling CCP and society have not become increasingly strained.” Indeed, she suggests that “public pressures for systemic political change have been virtually absent and public support for CCP rule has remained high” (pp. 1–2).

Wright thus relies on broad generalizations that are often derived from the structural positions faced by the specific social group or subgroup. This approach is impressionistic, in contrast to the data-driven studies contained in the Li volume. The different conclusions on lawyers are most instructive. Whereas Wright asserts close ties between Chinese lawyers and the party-state, Ethan Michelson and Sida Liu in the Li volume take a microclass approach and use survey data to buttress their conclusion that “Chinese lawyers are strongly inclined toward political reform, attach greater importance to political rights than to economic rights, and are profoundly discontented with the political status quo” (Li, p. 311).

As long as the party and the state remain dominant and few are willing to stick their necks out, Wright captures well the relative quietude in state–society relations, even as she tends to conflate acceptance with support. She does recognize that a very small percentage of professionals has emerged as a small minority of critical elites and has pressed the regime to become more politically liberal. Even in the case of the rights defenders, she claims that they have “no desire for systemic political transformation” (Wright, p. 83).

Yet the limited political options (and tolerance of the regime) referred to by Wright again and again are at least partly due to an oppressive political regime and repression. Some workers found out the hard way in 1989 when they participated in the autonomous workers' federation. One would thus be impelled to ask whether the options Wright refers to would be different with changing political circumstances or the structure of political opportunities, and whether she might have underestimated the degree of discontent in China. Indeed, she ends the volume with a brief discussion of generational transformation and a nod to the possibility of change. In her own words, “these seemingly ‘fixed, fast-frozen relations’ may prove to be both transitory and fragile” (p. 179).

Even though some of the contributors in Li's volume conclude that those in China's middle class are not likely to become the leading agents for democratic change (p. 279), the overall tone of the volume is even more open-ended than Wright's. In his introduction, Li notes that public attitudes can shift with circumstances, and thus the current middle-class inclination toward stability “should not be characterized as pro-CCP, anti-democratic, or even conservative” (p. 21). Drawing on the studies of lawyers, college students, and upper–level professionals, Li points to a growing critical stance toward government policies and performance (pp. 72–79). Should the political circumstances change, many members of the middle class are not likely to be allies of the current regime. Even today, members of the middle class stand out for their defense of property rights and struggle against environmental threats (especially in coastal cities such as Dalian and Xiamen). Thus, the relationship between the Chinese regime and social forces will continue to evolve.