China's middle class emerges, to spend more

"It is a myth. Many middle class people in the West do not own cars and cannot afford foreign vacations. Some choose not to," she said.

"My sister-in-law is a professor in Boston. She doesn't have a car. She prefers to use the public transit system and save money on parking and maintenance."

Gerth at Oxford University said what it means to be middle class in China has radically changed in recent decades.

"I have been going to China for 26 years and then if you had a nice pair of blue jeans and a bicycle, it made you middle class and comfortable. I don't think that passes anymore. No Flying Pigeon (famous Chinese bicycle brand) is going to get you a date," he said.

The academic said the current Chinese class system may appear to be more like that of the US where it is often defined on income and not other social factors but he thinks that this is likely to be just a "temporary blip" relating to its stage of development.

"I live in England where class is something of an obsession but the longer I live here I begin to think that it is more similar to China and that it is America that is an exception," he said.

"I think factors such as which foreign school or university your children went to will begin to matter more in China and the class system will begin to ossify like in Europe."

Some see the queues outside Apple stores in major cities in China as being indicative of China's growing middle class.