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Essay by Graham Webster
Photographs by Thomas Lee
If there is one thing you can count on in contemporary China, it’s change. The movement of hundreds of millions of people from the countryside to urban environments over the past three decades has been called the largest migration event in human history. Skylines have been built from scratch, and ancient cities have gained new layers of buildings, roadways and information technology. The economic base of the People’s Republic has shifted dramatically from agriculture and heavy industry to precision manufacturing and a booming service sector. In just over a decade, a few thousand Chinese internet users grew to almost half a billion.
For one section of society, a kind of stability is setting in. This segment has been called a new middle class or a bourgeoisie, and it is growing. Relatively wealthy, but not fabulously rich, a cohort of mostly young urbanites with globally-inflected consumer tastes have joined the traditional categories of farmer, worker, government official and intellectual, to both witness and fuel the transformation of Chinese society. As this new group comes into its own, a proliferation of subcultures – represented by niche magazines, recreational activities and entire shopping districts – have emerged. The simple accoutrements of middle-class life in developed countries are still luxuries for many, but they are increasingly accessible.