A Study of Class Competition and Interpersonal Patterns in the Urbanization Process

In the process of urbanization, a large number of agricultural migrants have entered the emerging urban business, promoting a rapid transformation of the urban and rural class structure in China. With the arrival of economic downward pressure, class interactions have taken on new characteristics, causing corresponding adjustments in interpersonal relationship patterns. Based on the reference group theory, the study analyzes the reality of class competition and the corresponding interpersonal interaction strategies in the takeaway industry as an example. The study finds that there are two kinds of interaction strategies: differential positioning and homogeneous competition within the middle class, mainly the shopkeepers; the social underclass, mainly the rural migrant population, is in a state of “controlled atomization” and there is invisible competition; between the middle class and the social underclass, there is both class collaboration based on the division of labor in the industrial chain and class collaboration based on the temporal order. In the middle class and the bottom of the society, there is both class collaboration based on industrial chain division of labor and class competition based on time order. Therefore, good industrial policies should be designed to mitigate the competitive conflicts between different strata.