From ‘Class’ to ‘Social Strata': grasping the social totality in reform-era China

Reform era China has witnessed the simultaneous production of a middle class and increasing socioeconomic inequality. The ideological counterpart of this development is a new form of cultural nationalism that stands in striking contrast to Maoist developmentalism and in striking conformity with neoliberal logics. This article explores this shift in Chinese nationalism and national ideology by looking at the rejection of the language of class and the adoption of social strata as the language of social analysis. This shift has produced a new model of citizenship which seeks to manage the newly stratified society by articulating inequality as cultural difference in a hierarchy of national belonging. At the same time this neoliberal ethos is in dialogue with calls for social responsibility by left-liberal intellectuals in the wake of a rising number of popular protests and a growing concern about social inequality. This essay will discuss aspects of middle-class formation in China's economic reforms, first, by exploring its textual production as a category for social scientific analysis and social critique. Then it will explore how middle-classness becomes represented in mass media forms such as advertising as a new form of identity that is staged in anticipation of its realisation as a widespread social phenomenon.