China’s new ‘common prosperity’ policies have attracted great discussion, as has the restructuring of real estate giant Evergrande. These policies target audience is the growing Chinese middle class, as the national economy expands its geographical and demographic depth. Who are the Chinese middle class?

1.China’s middle class has historical roots, but is fundamentally a modern class.

Shanghai’s 1920s saw the rise of a literati- Qian Zhongshu, Zhang Ailing, Lu Xun- with a fundamentally modern and urban attitude, who understood themselves as individuals, whose choices and lives weren’t necessarily dependent on their families or hometowns. In the modern economy of Shanghai, these writers and the economic world to which they were natives, created a new way of life. Instead of traditional family compounds, nuclear families (two parents and a child or two) lived together in smaller housing units, like Shanghai’s 弄堂; alongside the rise of a proletarian working class, a white collar class emerged. Not coincidentally, the CCP was founded in the same time and place; arguably, the contrasts and inequalities of the modern city catalyzed political movements, bringing China into a new era.