China’s middle class
May 3rd, 2006In his comment to my post Frequent Naps or la Mort!, Jason Kropsky writes
“…The Chinese will whine. Not now, maybe, but in due course. First the sexual revolution will hit (which it has in coastal cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou) and then the worker’s revolution. (sexuality/the breakdown of family culture has a funny way of working as a catalyst for change)…”
The sexual revolution is surely hitting in the cities I visited in 2002 (I didn’t spend any time in the countryside for comparision.) See my
photographic evidence, mostly taken in Beijing and Shanghai.
A huge wildcard will be the imbalance between the male and female populations. Will women be idolized and fawned over at birth, rising to a new social status? Or will they be subjugated, bride-kidnapped or traded like chattel in China’s new market economy?
I’m optimistic that the burgeoning middle class will continue to fuel democratic stirrings. Look how many fewer people spend dusk ’til dawn in
the fields versus 1952, leaving them more time and more people to network with.
Houllebecq sounds like he reads too much Camus. Luckily, I think it’s been banned in China. Unfortunately, most young chinese people have never even seen a photo of The Tank Man (not yet google-able in China).
See Frontline’s excellent documentary about this time, viewable online.
Jason notes that parents in China must now worry about paying for their children’s education. This is great! It will shift resources to private alternatives - parents won’t passively chug Commie propaganda if they have to pay for education with their hard-earned money. And when private education flourishes, censorship will be far harder to impose.
