Chinas Emerging Middle Class - Road to the Middle Class

WHEN WE CAN take a moment from the delicious pleasure of bashing the other guys on the Iraq war, the evil Bush, hurricane Katrina, and right-wing ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court, we often turn to thoughts of China. What will happen when China takes over the world in 2050?

Here’s a little look at the emerging Chinese middle class, the “xiao zi” or “little bourgeois” that is beginning to fill China’s bursting cities. Writes Trudy Rubin,

Wander through some of Beijing’s many malls and watch crowds of young Chinese chatting on cell phones, roaming in and out of Nine West, Mr. Klein, Givenchy, Rolex watch stores, Starbucks, Pizza Hut or the local cineplex, and you realize Americans have paid too little attention to the world’s biggest story

That’s hardly fair. We’ve been delighted to read about China’s amazing progress from the miseries of the Cultural Revolution.

Of course, the xiao zi like this young woman, Jie, understand that they are living in the middle of a remarkable change.

"When my father was 30, he couldn’t imagine owning a car or an apartment or going abroad," Jie said. When she was a child, her family lived in one tiny room, assigned to her father by his state-owned employer. Jie and Yeu are now pushing 30; they own a two-bedroom flat, a vacation home and two cars, and can afford to travel overseas.

But of course, nobody knows where China will go from here. That is the great question that is coming up. What will the Chinese do with their power and their wealth half a century from now?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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