ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have dealt with how the middle class respondents medi ated their identities and their roles, and their political aspirations in the context of China’s changing economic and sociopolitical environment. This chapter consid ers their approach to some of the most socially divisive topics, such as the question of gender, and attitude towards homosexuality and migrant workers. These ques tions are important because they can prove most revealing. While these middle class respondents readily admitted the need and advantage for progressive values such as liberty, freedom, tolerance and social justice, they do not necessarily act according to these values, and they rationalise their non-action n the context of self-interest and pragmatic concerns at large. This chapters throws further and sharper light on such contradictions and paradoxes in the respondents’ thinking, and illustrate how these middle class respondents try to negotiate a space between the self and the imagined ‘collective’.
