The two faces of middle class

By Bai Ping (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-23 09:21

China's growing middle class has often been mocked by critics as being apolitical and lacking interest in democracy. But what's happening in and around those gated high-rises has suggested the new bourgeoisie may well have two faces.

Online and offline protests by middle-class homeowners are now a common phenomenon. Recently, more than 30 residents at Swan Bay Condominium in eastern Beijing blocked traffic for hours by parking their cars near the estate's entrance after they failed to reach an agreement with the management company over high parking fees. The crowd was dispersed only after the police intervened with tow trucks and arrests.

Then since last week, Yiyuanju, a large gated community in western Beijing, has been in turmoil after homeowners learned that a new subway line would be built under their estate.

Yiyuanju offers surroundings of a quiet-flowing river and a large, placid lake that is a picturesque spot to skate in winter. In the current housing boom, the price of the homes in the area has skyrocketed with the cheapest unit costing millions of yuan.

However, homeowners now fear that the underground subway project will be too close to their apartment building and cause depreciation in the value of their homes. They are also angry because they had not been consulted before the project began. Most read about it from notices posted by neighbors on the message boards in the lobbies.

The homeowners have elected representatives who cautiously declare they will always support the city's urban development and will follow laws and regulations on petitioning. However, they are also assertive about their demand: the homeowners will try to make the city planners change the subway route through negotiation and public pressure. If that fails, they will sue the responsible government office as well as the subway company.

The Internet-enabled homeowners are a much more formidable social force than anonymous online vigilantes who wage Web campaigns against corruption and other forms of social injustice. Real communities can be organized to exercise greater power online and offline, with solidarity based on mutual trust and responsibility.

China long ago realized that it should foster a large middle class to help ease conflicts between different social strata through opening up more avenues of upward social mobility. Western research evidence shows that those who move up into the middle class are generally more politically conservative than those born into middle-class circumstances.

The Chinese middle class is considered to be moderate and conservative. They play an important role in supporting the government policies and maintaining the social harmony.

But history has suggested that in difficult times, middle-class people can behave in radically different ways. Now it will undoubtedly be the turn of public officials to lose sleep when they learn that more than 1,000 homeowners in Yiyuanju have signed a petition for the government.

Even worse is that the media is paying attention too, with half a page of coverage on the protest by the Beijing News on Saturday. This is the other face of the middle class and officials should note, this one isn't smiling.