ABSTRACT
At the outset of the economic reform, Deng Xiaoping had famously declared that ‘to get rich is glorious’. Since then, and especially following the reaffi rmation of this message on his milestone trip to the southern provinces in the early 1990s, millions of China’s citizens took him at his word and grasped the opportunity to ‘become rich quick’ or at least to become more prosperous. Now, to be a millionaire overnight is quite a common dream and millions are working very hard in the hope of new riches. Within and outside China much media and market attention has been given to the ‘swelling numbers’ of the ‘newly affl uent’, ‘high-income’ or ‘moneyed strata’ who are frequently labelled China’s ‘new elite’ or ‘nouveau riche’. In a sense, given the previous absence of material wealth and disposable income and the disdain for monetary accumulation or exchanges during the revolution, all affl uence could be said to be novel and riches ‘nouveau’. Such was the novelty of high incomes, the individual accumulation of assets and conspicuous lifestyle consumption that all these features have been seized upon as evidence of the rapid economic growth, the success of market reform and China’s new wealth. Indeed it is the elite lifestyles and growing accumulation of goods and assets that have constituted the most important yardstick measuring China’s economic success and emerging market. The newly affl uent seem to be living out the expectations inherent within Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of ‘letting some grow rich fi rst for others to follow’. The lifestyles of the super-rich or elite fi ll the pages of the many new glossy magazines and are on nation-wide display on television. Although it can be argued that China’s elite have an importance beyond their numbers, such is the attention given to the conspicuous lifestyles of the rich that any bystander could be forgiven for thinking that much of urban and suburban China already belongs, or could soon belong, to this category of high or at least middle-income consumers. In fact an analysis of this category suggests not only that it is a much smaller proportion of the population than presumed but also that it is not necessarily paving the way or even becoming the model for an upwardly mobile or expanding middle class.
