Anxious Private Business Owners: A New Approach and Answer to the Chinese Middle Class Puzzle

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Abstract

Why does the Chinese middle class support a state that makes them anxious? By focusing on private business owners, this paper offers a new approach to study the Chinese middle class. Using interviews of 20 private business owners, I argue that this group has a special concern for the public interests due to their collective identification as a group central to an unprecedented transformation in the Chinese society. And their experiences as parents and business owners let them to evaluate the state’s primarily by the guidance and order it provides for the society. And by using Philip Kuhn’s concept of “constitutional issues”, I argue that the anxiety of the Chinese middle class, especially of these private business owners, results from their indeterminant status in China’s power structure. I call this status as “interlocalness”, which makes this group unable to identify with the state, or with the local community they live in. This approach demonstrates the historical and sociological causes of Chinese middle class’s support for the state and their anxiety. It also frames the emergence of the Chinese middle class as a fundamental challenge in China’s modernization process.

Author

• Hongjia Ge, Northwestern University