The next China Studies Meeting will be held on 19 March 2026, in an online format.
This webinar explores the formation of the urban middle class in China since the market reforms of the 1990s, analysing how class identities are constructed and contested in everyday life. Based on ethnographic work carried out in Beijing, the presentation discusses the role of state-party policies, social origins, and lifestyle practices in shaping trajectories of mobility, respectability, and belonging in contemporary urban China.
TEAMS LINK
https://bit.ly/EncChina_Mar2026
ABSTRACT
This webinar examines how China’s urban middle class has taken shape since the 1990s wave of market reforms, and how a new middle-class identity is made and contested in everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with middle-income residents in Beijing (2017–2018), it shows how Party-state policies and official discourse, together with class background and lifestyle practices, shape narratives of mobility, respectability, and belonging. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and social reproduction, the analysis asks whether “the middle class” is best understood as a process of class formation or as a reconfiguration of inherited advantage and privilege. Findings indicate that institutional frameworks and family background continue to shape life chances in Beijing, while consumption, market logics, and cultural distinction increasingly structure class location and how people position themselves and others. The webinar concludes by considering how these dynamics intersect with gender, place of origin, and ethnicity, and what this reveals about inequality and social stratification in contemporary urban China.