The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea (1961-1986) and China
(1980-2008): Nationalism, Modernity, and New Identities
by
Myungji Yang
M.A. Yonsei University, 2003
B.A. Yonsei University, 2001
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Sociology at Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
May 2012
Copyright © 2012
Myungji Yang
This dissertation by Myungji Yang is accepted in its present form by the Department of
Sociology as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
Patrick Heller, Chair
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
John R. Logan, Committee Member
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
Melani Cammett, Committee Member
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
James Mahoney, Committee Member
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
Paget Henry, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date _____________________________
_________________________________
Peter M. Weber, Ph.D
Dean of the Graduate School
iii
EDUCATION
CULICULUM VITAE
Ph.D. Sociology, Brown University, May 2012
Dissertation: “The Making of the Urban Middle Class in Korea and China:
Nationalism,
Modernity, and New Identities”
Committee: Patrick Heller (Chair); John R. Logan; Melani Cammett; and James
Mahoney
Exams:
Political Economy of Development; Comparative-Historical Methods;
and
Political Sociology
M.A.
B.A.
Sociology, Yonsei University, South Korea, 2003
Thesis:
“Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle
Class Inclusion during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea.”
Sociology and Korean Literature, Yonsei University, South Korea, 2001
RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS
Political Sociology
Comparative Historical Sociology
Comparative Development
Civil Society and Democracy
Globalization and Political Economy
East Asia
PUBLICATIONS
“The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: Discipline, NationBuilding, and the Creation of Ideal National Subjects.” Sociological Inquiry. In Press.
“What Sustains Authoritarianism? From State-Based Hegemony to Class Based
Hegemony during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea.” 2006. Working
USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 9, Issue 4 (December 2006): 425-447.
“Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle Class
Inclusion during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea” (in Korean). Journal
of Social Development Studies, Vol. 9 (2003): 163-191.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
“Making Revolution from the Middle: Middle-Class Formation in Democratic
Movements in South Korea and the Philippines (Co-authored with Celso Villegas).”
Under review.
“The Disciplinary Revolution? Middle Class and Economic Development in South
Korea and China.”
“The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective
Imagination to Frustrated Aspiration.”
iv
AWARDS, GRANTS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
2012
International Conference Travel Grant, Office of International Affairs,
Brown University
2011
(With Irene Pang and Derek Sheridan) Graduate International Colloquium
Fund, Office of International Affairs, Brown University
2011
Conference Travel Grant, Department of Sociology, Brown University
2010
Travel Grant, XVII International Sociological Association World Congress
of Sociology
2009
Travel Grant, SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop
2008-09
Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School, Brown University
2008
Financial Aid Award, Princeton in Beijing, Princeton University
2008
Beatrice and Joseph Feinberg Memorial Award for Graduate Education,
Department of Sociology, Brown University
2008
Research Fellow, S4 GIS Institute, Brown University
2007
Summer Fieldwork Grant, Graduate Program in Development, Brown
University
2006, 2007 Conference Travel Grant, Graduate School, Brown University
2004-05
Graduate School Fellowship, Graduate School, Brown University
2003
Best Thesis Award, Graduate School, Yonsei University
1998-2000 Merit Scholarship, Yonsei University
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“The (Un)Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: From Collective Imagination
to Frustrated Aspiration.”
Korean Studies Symposium (Selected Participant). State University of New York,
Binghamton, NY. May 2012.
“Making Gender and Nation? The Construction of Housewives Discourses in South Korea
in the 1970s.”
Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Toronto, Canada. March 2012.
“Making Revolution from the Middle: Construction of Middle-Class Narratives in
Democratic Movements in South Korea and the Philippines (with Celso Villegas).”
Social Science History Association Annual Meeting. Boston, MA. November 2011.
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Las Vegas, NV. August 2011.
“The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea: Discipline, Nation-Building, and
the Creation of Ideal National Subjects.”
International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology. Gothenburg,
Sweden. July 2010.
Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Boston, MA. April 2010.
“The Illiberal Path to Development: The Urban Middle Class and the State in the Making of
Development in South Korea (1963-1987) and China (1980-2007).”
SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop (Selected Participant). Monterey, CA.
July 2009.
v
“Democracy without Labor? The Dynamics of Labor Politics since Democratization in
South Korea.”
Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA. April 2008.
“Contested Politics of Economic Reform in South Korea and China.”
GPD Summer Fieldwork Workshop. Watson Institute, Brown University,
Providence, RI. October 2007.
“Biopolitics of Family Planning: Disciplinary Development in South Korea in the 1960s-80s.”
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. New York, NY. August 2007.
“Family Planning in South Korea in the 1960s-80s: Power, Development, and Discipline.”
Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA. March 2007.
“Class Politics as a Ruling Strategy: Working Class Exclusion and Middle Class Inclusion
during the Park Chung Hee Regime in South Korea.”
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Montreal, Canada. August 2006.
Inter-Ivy Sociology Symposium. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. April 2006.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor
Summer Studies Program, Brown University
 Work in the Global Economy (Summer 2010 and 2011)
 Introduction to Sociology (Summer 2011)
Teaching Assistant
Department of Sociology, Brown University
 Globalization and Social Conflict (Spring 2012)
 Organizational Theories in Private and Public Sectors (Fall 2006 &
2009)
 Comparative Development (Spring 2008)
 Corporations and Global Cities (Fall 2007)
 Social Inequality and Exclusion (Spring 2007)
 Introductory Statistics for Social Research (Fall 2005, Spring 2006 &
Spring 2010)
Department of Sociology, Yonsei University
 Introductory Sociology (Fall 2002)
 Social Stratification (Fall 2001)
 Social Psychology (Spring 2001)
Invited Guest Lecturer
Department of Sociology, Brown University
 Authoritarianism and Democracy in South Korea (July 2010 and
2011, Social Change, Democracy and Dictatorship)
vi


Labor and Civic Movements in South Korea (March 2008,
Comparative Development)
Resource Mobilization Theory in Organization (November 2006,
Organizational Theories in Private and Public Sectors)
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Dissertation Fieldwork Research
Seoul (The Institute of Social Development, Yonsei University) and Beijing (The Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences), Aug. 2008- Aug. 2009
Collected primary data including newspaper, magazines, and political
speeches; interviewed state officials, journalists, and local experts;
interviewed white-collar workers, professionals, and managers; collected
existing local research.
Research Assistant
“Globalization and Business Politics” (for Prof. Melani Cammett), Fall 2005.
Reviewed theories of globalization and development in East Asia for Prof.
Melani Cammett’s book project (Globalization and Business Politics in
Arab North Africa: A Comparative Perspective)
“The Origin of Real Estate Investment in Korea (TV documentary),” Supervisor: MBC
(Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation), Seoul, Korea, Jan. 2004- Mar. 2004
Collected data on developing Gangnam areas in Seoul during the Park
regime for a TV documentary
“Impacts of Working Time Reduction in Women’s Employment, Principal Investigator:
Korean Women’s Development Institute, Seoul, Korea, Summer 2003
Reviewed theories of gender and employment for the project
ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE TRAINING
Princeton University, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Summer Coursework for Intensive Chinese Language Training (2008)
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Level III Teaching Certificate: Professional Development Seminar, the Harriet W.
Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, 2010-11.
Level II Teaching Certificate: Classroom Tools Seminar, the Harriet W. Sheridan
Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, 2011-12.
Bridging Knowledge and Power: GIS for Social Science Research Spatial Structures
in the Social Sciences (S4) Institute, Brown University, 2008.
Level I Teaching Certificate: Sheridan Teaching Seminar, the Harriet W. Sheridan
vii
Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University, 2006-07.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE





Occasional Reviewer for British Journal of Sociology, Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy,
European Journal of Development Research
Year of China Social Sciences Colloquia Series Organizer, Brown University, Spring
2012
Student Assistant, GPD (Graduate Program in Development)/IGERT (Integrated
Graduate Education Research and Training) Program, Brown University, Fall 2010Student Assistant, BIARI (Brown International Advanced Research Institute),
Summer 2010
Inter-Ivy Sociology Symposium Organizer, graduate student research conference.
http://www.brown.edu/IISS07, 2006-7.
MEMBERSHIPS IN PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
American Sociological Association
Association for Asian Studies
Eastern Sociological Society
International Sociological Association
Social Science History Association
LAGUAGES
English (Fluent)
Korean (Native)
Chinese (Proficient)
viii
2004-present
2007-present
2006-present
2008-present
2011-present
ACKNOLWEDGEMENTS
While writing my dissertation, I always felt like going through an endless tunnel.
I would not have finished this long journey without much guidance, support, and advice
from a number of people. Though this journey was tiresome and challenging, my
colleagues and friends made the experience enriched and invaluable.
First of all, I am really grateful of my dissertation committee members who
provided critical intellectual and moral support. I was tremendously lucky to have a
patient, encouraging, and supportive mentor Patrick Heller, who read every chapter of
this dissertation with care and enthusiasm and gave insightful feedback at every stage of
this project. Patrick always lent me endless hours to make this dissertation better and
generously shared his vision about democracy and development. He has been a great role
model of a critical intellectual and passionate teacher. John Logan always challenged me
to rethink my arguments in key ways and guided me to draw a big picture. He brought his
expertise on urban China and insights to improve the substance and framework of the
project. Melani Cammett always provided timely, constructive comments, helped me to
make a better research design, and sharpen analytical framework. In addition to feedback
on my dissertation, she always provided much needed support and encouragement. As a
young, female scholar, she has been a great source of inspiration. Last but not least,
James Mahoney guided me closely in my first year at Brown. I learned how to study
history from a sociological perspective from him. Despite being away since my second
year at graduate school, he has continually offered insightful advice. I would also like to
thank my dissertation reader Paget Henry for his critical and theoretical comments.
ix
Critical thinkers and stimulating scholars, they inspired me all along the way toward the
completion of this dissertation.
I am deeply indebted to my fellow graduate students for incessant academic and
moral support during my entire years at graduate school. The members of a dissertation
writing group greatly helped to clarify and refine my ideas. Thanks to Erin Beck, Jen
Costanza, Chris Gibson, Esther Hernandez-Medina, Sukriti Issar, Shruti Mamjudar,
Cecilia Perla, and Oslec Villegas, who showed what friendship and solidarity are. I also
thank to my friends and colleagues in the Department of Sociology at Brown who shared
a countless cups of coffee, lively conversation, and years of company at Maxcy,
including Carrie Alexandrowicz-Shandra, Justin Buszin, Jennifer Darrah, Julia Drew,
Rachel Goldberg, Adriana Lopez, Holly Reed, Gabriela Sanchez-Soto, Dan Schensul,
Laura Senier, Jing Song, Matthias vom Hau, and Hongwei Xu. I am also grateful for
staffs in Maxcy, Joan Picard, Kristen Soule, and Muriel Bessette—especially Karl
Dominey for sending out hundreds of letters of recommendation.
This dissertation is a product of a year of field research in Korea and China.
During my field research, I got enormous help from the Institute for Social Development
at Yonsei University in Seoul and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Special thanks go to Professor Zhang Yi, who shared his ideas about the Chinese middle
class and introduced a number of interviewees in Beijing. I also appreciate useful
comments for a group of SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop held in Monterey,
Cal., July 2009. Professors Bruce Cumings, John Duncan, Laurel Kendall, and
Seungsook Moon shared their regional expertise and provided critical comments on this
project. The group of participants—Dukhyo Choi, Sukyung Han, Nicholas Harkness,
x
Whitney Taejin Hwang, Jaeeun Kim, Monica Kim, Hyunok Lee, Jaeyoun Lee,
Kwangkun Lee, Sangsuk Lee, and Saeyoung Park—discussed my work for days and
provided me with comradeship among Koreanists.
This research would not have been possible without participation and consent of a
number of anonymous people that I interviewed in both Seoul and Beijing. They sat with
me for countless hours to talk about their lives, both achievements and frustrations. Their
life stories are the essential part of this dissertation. It is beyond my expression to
describe how much I appreciate their welcome and warm interests about my research. As
a sociologist, I was enormously fortunate to have an opportunity to observe and write
how ordinary people struggle to make their lives better and how these small movements
transform society.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family for unending love and patience.
To my parents, thank you for emotional and financial support to make me get through
this arduous process. To my only and younger sister Hyunjung, thank you for sending
unwavering faith and confidence. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who made a
lot of sacrifice for their children, endured difficult times, but never lost their hopes. I
hope this dissertation could be a small gift to their unfulfilled dreams.
xi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CURRICULUM VITAE
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
CHAPTER 1. Introduction
1
CHAPTER 2. Bringing the Middle Class Back In: National Modernization,
Developmental Discourse and the Urban Middle Class
31
CHAPTER 3. The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea (1961-1979):
Nation-Building, Discipline, and the Birth of the Ideal National Subjects
59
CHAPTER 4. Cultural Construction of the Chinese Middle Class: Economic Reform,
Urban Consumer Culture, and the National Desire
94
CHAPTER 5. My Home, My Car: Pursuing the Middle Class Dream in South Korea,
1979-1986
133
CHAPTER 6. A Place of My Own: Seeking Privacy and Seclusion of the Urban Middle
Class in Contemporary China
177
CHAPTER 7. Conclusion
215
BIBLIOGRAPHY
228
xii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3. 1. Managerial Resources in the Manufacturing Sector, 1960-1980
73
Table 3. 2. Relative Monthly Earnings by Occupation, 1971-1984
74
Table 3. 3. Ownership Rates of Major Household Goods (by household)
85
Table 4. 1. Occupations of Party Members (1949-2007)
106
Table 4. 2. Education of Party Members
106
Table 4. 3. Per-Capita Annual Disposable Income of Urban Households
114
Table 4. 4. Life in Beijing (1978-2006)
115
Table 4. 5. Annual Possession (Per 100 Households) of Main Durable Consumer Goods
in 3000 Urban Households (1978-2007)
116
Table 5. 1. Population Change and Rate of Urbanization in Seoul
136
Table 5. 2. Rates of Returns per Pyung
151
Table 5. 3. Land Values of Seoul (1963-1979)
152
Table 5. 4. Ownership of Major Durable Consumer Goods
170
Table 5. 5. Surveys of Middle-Class Consciousness
170
Table 6. 1. Housing Survey 1985: Provision of Facilities
181
Table 6. 2. Housing Conditions of 5000 Urban Households
188
Table 7. 1. Characteristics of the Middle Class
217
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 5. 1. The City of Seoul
136
Figure 5. 2. Apgujŏng-dong in the 1970’s
137
Figure 5. 3. Jamwon-dong in the early 1980’s
138
Figure 5. 4. The current Gangnam landscape
139
Figure 5. 5. Apartment Distribution in Seoul
156
Figure 5. 6. Distribution of Cram Schools in Seoul
157
xiv
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Social scientists and journalists have celebrated the “middle-class surge” over the
last two decades. Recently, the Economist claimed, “more than half the world is middleclass—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries.” 1 Many journalistic accounts have
described this new middle class as a global consumer: walking through megamalls,
buying brand-new consumer electronics and a shiny new car in Beijing, Mumbai, or São
Paulo. This particular image of the middle class has resulted in construing the middle
class as an economic category and led to research in measuring the size of the middle
class. Few have focused on how non-market forces—political and discursive— as well as
market forces construct the middle class in developing countries. Instead, the middle
class has been treated as an outcome of economic expansion and industrialization
(Huntington 1968; Lipset 1959). Little attention has been paid to how the state
deliberately produces specific meanings, symbols, and values through the middle class
and how the rise of the middle class in turn influences the political dynamics of
developmental processes.
This dissertation examines how state-sponsored middle-class formation
contributed to new nation-building based on economic development and cultural
civilization in South Korea (1961-1986; hereafter Korea) and China (1978-2008).
Through the creation of the middle class, both these authoritarian states attempted to
generate internal unity and mobilize the entire population for development. The emerging
middle class symbolized new social values of modernity, progress, and civilization that
could make a break with the “backward and stagnant” past. Along with particular
1
Economist (February 14, 2009, pp.3-4).
1
economic policies and institutional arrangements, politico-ideological projects in middleclass formation were also critical in the success of the developmental push that led to
rapid economic growth with relatively little social backlash.
Social Transformations without Revolution? Explaining Disciplinary Development
in East Asia
In the 1950s Korea was a poor, war-shattered nation. Korean society was
characterized by backwardness and misery, and extreme poverty prevailed throughout the
country. Beggars and war orphans were commonplace, and city-dwellers lived in
miserable shacks with other families on the hills. Roads were dusty, and electricity and
running water were still luxuries of the well-to-do. To outside observers, Korea seemed
destined to remain an isolated and agricultural hermit.
After almost three decades of industrialization (1961-1987), however, Korea has
achieved unprecedented economic development and has become a model for other
developing countries. Korea’s growth was explosive, with thirty years of growth
averaging almost 9 percent a year. The country doubled its real per-capita income in 11
years from 1966 to 1977 (Clifford 1998:17). During this period, Korea underwent
substantial social transformation, including rapid urbanization and far-reaching changes
in economic and class structure. Formerly an agricultural country, where farming was the
livelihood of most of the population, Korea became industrialized; manufacturing and
service industries reached 80 percent in total industry in 1987 (Korean National
Statistical Office 1998: 99). The proportion of the new middle class, including
professional, managerial, and clerical workers (not including sales employees), increased
2
from 6.7 percent to 16.6 percent of the population during the two decades from 1963 to
1983 (Koo 1991:485). Over the five years 1962-1967, seven million out of its 36 million
people had left their rural hometowns to work in cities (Choi 1997: 67). The population
of Seoul, the capital city, increased almost five times, from 2.5 million in 1960 to
reaching 10 million by the end of the 1970s (Choi, ibid.).
In a similar vein, after Mao’s death in 1978, China has experimented with
economic reform and has seen the most rapid economic growth of any country, sustaining
double-digit average annual growth rates for almost three decades. The Chinese economy
recently surpassed Japan’s as the second-biggest in the world and economists predict that
China will overtake the United States by 2025 or 2030 (Leonhardt 2010). Only three
decades ago, China was a populous, poor socialist country afflicted by the Great Leap
Forward famine and the dislocations of the Cultural Revolution. Discarding ideological
radicalism after Mao, the Chinese government promoted incremental reform and a
gradual transition to a market economy, privatizing most state-owned firms and
implementing broad structural changes. Many people moved out of poverty or near
poverty and saw remarkable improvements in living standards. Some market research
firms expect that in less than two decades, 350 million people more will migrate from
rural to urban areas, creating an urban population of approximately one billion, about
two-thirds of that middle class (Wang 2010:7).
It is surprising that two different countries with different socioeconomic systems
at two different points in time both experienced great social transformations with
relatively little large-scale conflict and at relatively little social cost compared to other
economies. In particular, both countries underwent dramatic social conflict before the
3
stages of high economic growth. Before promoting developmental projects, both
countries suffered extreme social chaos and economic hardship. The three years of civil
war in Korea not only completely destroyed the social infrastructure, but they also caused
two million civilian deaths and tragic family separations. And the 10 years of the Cultural
Revolution in China brought about massive political violence toward ordinary people and
great social dislocation by sending urban youth to the countryside for manual labor.
Given these “abnormal” conditions, it was remarkable that these two countries could
restore social order and accomplish economic development within a mere generation.
This sustained boom has no parallel in history. It took nearly an entire century for
early European developers to reach the same level. The United States took 47 years
(1839-86) to double its real per-capita income and Britain took 58 years (1780-1838)
(Clifford 1998:17). Britain’s economic growth averaged only 1.2 percent a year between
1830 and 1910. The United States grew 2.7 percent in 1965-80 and 3.4 percent in the
1980s (Clifford, ibid.). Further, late developers in Latin America were not as successful
as China and Korea because massive political and social conflicts erupted in the wake of
social and economic transformation. The miracle of economic growth in Latin America
was sustained only for a short time, and nations there suffered a long period of economic
recession.
By contrast, both Korea and China achieved their development goals in an
ordered way without experiencing political change. Though some resistance and political
crises were encountered (consider the student movements in Korea and the Tian’anmen
Square protests in China), social challenges from below never disrupted the existing
social order. In this sense, the great transformation in both countries was disciplined.
4
What made this particular developmental path possible in these two countries? Under
what conditions did they promote their disciplined economic development? How did the
state reorganize society with this developmental push and how in turn did the societies
react to the state?
Many students of development would say that the role of centralized state power
and a capable, efficient bureaucracy was critical in Korea’s and China’s particular
developmental paths (Amsden 1989; Chibber 2003; Evans 1995; Johnson 1982; Kohli
2004; Woo-Cumings eds. 1999). In order to catch up with more advanced economies, the
late- or late-late developers became actively involved in organizing the market; the state
provided incentives to make private capital become more entrepreneurial as well as
providing a suitable environment for capital (Gerschenkron 1962; Hirschman 1958).
While there is no denying that the role of the state is crucial in designing and
implementing “appropriate” economic policies, the analysis of this institutionalist
approach is always limited to the economic arena and often ignores the sociocultural
aspects: the state not only makes the incentives and prices right, but also shapes particular
cultural norms, identities, and political subjects. To promote economic transformation
and mobilize the entire population, the state must impose a new social order and new sets
of rules and must foster certain dispositions and attitudes. Oftentimes, this social aspect
of development has been taken for granted in the previous literature. However, as
Gramsci noted, domination without consent of the subordinated classes increases the cost
of domination by heightening the possibility of social instability (Gramsci 1971).
Constructing hegemony and political legitimacy for the development project not only
5
reduces the cost of domination, but also provides a cultural framework through which
ordinary people can engage in the state project.
Some culturalists argue that unique “Asian values” explain the East Asian
successes. They claim that the distinct Confucian culture of fervor for higher education,
hard work, and loyalty to one’s superior common in this region has been able to yield
successful economic outcomes without disrupting social order (Seah eds. 1977; Zakarina
1994). Still, this approach seems simplistic and furthermore cannot identify the causal
mechanisms of economic success in this region. For example, the “Asian values” of hard
work and self-help are also long-standing western values claimed by Weber as the
Protestant ethic. Rather than a systematic explanation, the “Asian values” approach has
been an ideological doctrine for authoritarian governments to justify political repression
and lack of freedom in Asia. While culture still matters, this approach fails to explain
how specific values are imposed and practiced because it overlooks the role of agency.
Instead, there are particular social actors that construct an ideological backbone and
through which certain ideologies and cultural values are disseminated and practiced.
In order to explain disciplinary development—orderly and controlled economic
transformation without significant social backlash within the authoritarian regimes—this
dissertation pays attention to how the state engages in creating a developmental subject
and disseminates social discipline through the social body. As Davis notes, the
developmental gains are enormous when a disciplinary ethos infuses both society and the
state (Davis 2004:11). Gorski also argues that the disciplining of groups is an
“organizational and communal process in which the activities and goals of group
members are shaped by institutional restraints and shared values so as to generate highly
6
uniform patters of collective life” (1993:271). The disciplinization process decreases
“administrative costs,” that is, the material and ideological resources necessary to
maintain social order, by effectively educating and controlling the population (Laitin
1985, 1986). The question is now how and through whom the state so effectively
promotes and diffuses social discipline.
Among the various social groups, the new urban middle class is a potentially
powerful protagonist in disciplinary development by being the carrier of the values such
as self-discipline and self-help. The nascent urban middle class could become a model of
economic success and upward social mobility by supporting the state’s vision of national
development and appealing to a larger population. The rising cultural and political
prominence of the new urban middle class gives the state a vital political base for
maintaining state power symbolizing a new nation of urbanity and modernity. By looking
at the middle-class emergence in East Asia, this study explores how the authoritarian
Korean and Chinese states successfully imposed social discipline and spearheaded
disciplinary economic development.
Bringing the Middle Class Back In
The middle class has been missing from the literature on East Asian development.
Most development scholars of late industrialization focus on every social actor but the
middle class: capitalists, the working class, and the state always appear on stage. In
particular, in the context of East Asia, scholars provide explanations of state-business
alliances or state-labor conflicts (Chibber 2003; Kim 1997; Dickson 2003; Koo 2001; Lee
2007; Pearson 1997; Pun 2005; Silver 2003). For development scholars, the middle class
7
was not a key actor in shaping industrial and economic development. This is quite strange
when one considers the important location of the middle class in the wider development
literature. Scholars have paid attention to the middle class’s critical role in retaining
cultural values (Huntington 1968; Lipset and Solari 1967), as a coalition partner of
dependent development in Latin America (Cardoso and Faletto 1979), or as a coalitional
actor for democracy (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). As Davis (2004) points out, many
scholars in the field of East Asian development have assumed that middle classes were
the result of economic modernization and growth. Because of this dominant assumption,
most of the literature fails to analyze the middle class, treating it merely as an
epiphenomenon of economic development. While the middle class is thus absent from the
analysis of developmental processes, it suddenly appears as a (potentially) strong
supporter for democracy and as a central player in consumerism as a result of economic
development.
Davis (2004) argues that middle classes actually shaped developmental
trajectories by allying itself with developmental states that promoted sustainable
macroeconomic growth. Rather than treating the particular cultural repertoires of the
middle class, she focuses more on the logic of political coalition building and the
significance of divergent middle-class consumption patterns for political alliances with
the state. While Davis highlights the importance of the middle class by returning it to the
central stage in the literature, her institutionalist focus underestimates the discursive and
cultural role of the middle class in the development process. As Fernandes (2006)
remarks in her case study of the new Indian middle class:
The new middle class is marked by a set of interests that are identified with India’s
embrace of a free-market-oriented approach to development. In other words, the new
8
middle class in late-developing countries such as Malaysia or India serves as a group
that represents the promise of a new national model of development, one with a
global outlook that will allow such nations to successfully compete with the
advanced industrialized countries (xxvii).
Likewise, both the Korean and Chinese cases show that the state called on the middle
class to be a promoter of national development and that widespread middle-class
discourse helped shape the terms of development and national identity, thereby reducing
social conflict and tension.
This dissertation locates the middle class at the intersection of nation-building,
modernity, and development. I ground my analysis of middle-class formation in three
arguments. First, I argue that the middle class is created by a conscious and concerted
state project. While existing studies look at the middle class as a natural outcome of
modernization and economic development, they ignore the deliberate implementation by
states of policies nurturing a middle class. The formation of the middle-class was a
political-ideological project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and
strengthen the regime’s political legitimacy. Second, the middle class plays a key role in
the politics of state hegemony. As a bearer of the ethos of opportunity and mobility, the
middle class forges national unity by promising other aspiring segments of the population
the benefits of economic development. Third, once the middle class is produced and
begins to grow by state sponsorship, the middle class reproduces its privileged position
through everyday class practices. Through exclusionary gate-keeping practices in
everyday life, the middle class seeks to advance its interests against the other less
privileged, lower classes in the name of citizenship. This exclusive form of citizenship
9
prevents the expansion of citizenship rights or of further democracy by supporting the
existing social order.
Middle Class Formation as an Ideological Project
When Korea and China launched their development projects, each faced serious
obstacles: stagnant economies, political turmoil, persistent poverty, and mental trauma
resulting from the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution. In both countries, political
leaders believed it imperative to break through these crises by enacting new systems and
reconstructing the nation. Economic development, in this sense, was important as a
means of building new nations that would be differentiated from their backward and
inefficient past. The new nations that political leaders in both countries aimed to build
symbolized the ideas of modernity—progress, science, and rationality. By abandoning
and denying the past of poverty, inefficiency, and backwardness, both the Korean and
Chinese regimes emphasized that their countries would fall behind in the competitive
world unless thorough reform was launched. The reform not only included institutional
changes to increase overall efficiency and competitiveness, but it also demanded changes
in the mentalities of the ordinary people. Identifying the traditional social body as
backward, undisciplined, and unruly, the political leaders believed that only new people
with self-discipline, responsibility, and autonomy could create a new nation. In the eyes
of state officials, both passive socialist men dependent on state welfare and the
undisciplined traditional social body would delay national development in post-Mao
China and post-war Korea.
10
The making of a middle class was equated with the making of a nation—strong
and modern. The creation of a middle class in a relatively classless society did not imply
the appearance of social conflicts or differentiations, as among other social classes.
Instead, it meant ultimate social homogenization: improving the overall standard of living
of the entire nation. In contrast with the “backward and humiliated” national past, the
comfortable lifestyles and mass consumption of the urban middle class represented the
prosperous and modern nation. In order to achieve the goal of national modernization and
civilization as soon as possible, the state needed an economically productive and
politically docile social body that it could manage and govern easily and efficiently. In
other words, the state required self-disciplining citizens, who would not only contribute
to stimulating economic growth and entry in the global market, but also maintain the
existing regime without disrupting the social order. Thus, the rise of the middle class was
an important political-ideological project for the state that would showcase its economic
modernization to the world and further legitimatize state developmental projects.
Dual Processes of Middle Class Formation
This dissertation examines two concurrent processes of middle-class formation by
which the state actively engaged in nurturing a middle class. One was the discursive
production of urban middle-class norms; the other was a growth of the middle class in an
objective sense, as a result of state-directed economic development. As an ideological
project for constructing societal support for development, the state disseminated cultural
norms and official discourse on the middle class before the middle class actually existed.
Nevertheless, the middle class was not merely an illusion manufactured by the state; it
11
became a substantive entity as the state provided favorable conditions for some groups of
people.
Nurturing middle-class norms
The state actively engaged in creating the middle class as a desirable social
subject in a new society. In order to create new social subjects that would build a
civilized and modern nation, the state and mass media disseminated official discourse
about comfortable lifestyles and good citizenship that reflected particular middle-class
values and images. The mass media and academics alike addressed the political role of
the middle class in promoting social stability and gradual social change. The construction
and dissemination of middle-class ideals as a mainstream social force contributed to the
emergence of an esprit de corps. In the economic arena, the dominant discourse
described middle-class citizens as wise consumers who, by striking a balance between
saving and consumption, would contribute to stimulating economic growth. By
consuming advanced modern household commodities, the middle class also showcases a
prosperous economy and modern lifestyles. The images reflected in cars, high-rise
apartments, and summer vacation trips, which were specifically associated with middle
class, identified increasing purchasing power and a rising standard of living as points of
national pride. Dominant discourses on middle-class lifestyles and consumption gave
hope for a better future and a specific vision of national development. By doing this, the
state successfully generated widespread societal support for its development project by
suggesting what modern lifestyles would be for the majority of the population.
12
The state also promoted images of a politically docile middle class as maintaining
existing social order and stability. The middle class was described by the mass media and
academics as a moderate, rational social force advocating gradual social reform, not
radical social changes. As an educated social group, the middle class reflected “good
citizenship”; not only were they hard working and civilized, but their balanced worldview
would contribute to social stability without being agitated by any oppositional ideologies.
In a society in which the entire population had recently experienced extreme political
chaos, war, and social conflict, the middle force between the upper and lower classes
could be expected to become a strong buffer that would decrease social tensions and class
polarization. In this sense, the middle class did not necessarily represent a class category
that created a growing disparity in the nation between the haves and have-nots. Rather, its
upward social mobility and the overall upgrading of the nation in the world economy
reflected in the middle class embraced social homogenization and harmony.
State provision of a material base for middle-class lifestyles
Class is not merely an illusion or ideology manufactured by the state or
government officials. When a particular group of people has a material base, it can be
called a class (Marx 1978). Unlike the West, where social classes were formed over the
long term without strong state intervention, the state in the developing world could
engineer class structures and class interests. As the developmental state literature
emphasizes the state’s role in envisioning the macroeconomic landscape, the expansion
of the middle class resulted from state subsidy of the purchasing power of government
employees and private-sector professionals. Since there were no organized social classes
13
or groups that could resist state power, state structures and state policy-making power
tended to be highly centralized. Davis suggests that the state in developing countries
plays a critical role in middle-class formation in three ways: as the source of employment,
as the institutional regulator of social and economic policy, and as the site for expressing
political preferences and channeling political conflicts (Davis 2010: 253). The state itself
was a major employer that provided an array of jobs in the public sector for citizens at all
skill levels. In both capitalist and socialist contexts, the state usually offered salaried jobs
with lifetime job security and pension benefits that gave government employees a
middle-class status. Because of these advantages, the government or public sector jobs
absorbed most college graduates from elite universities in the developing world. In
addition, as the overall regulator of the market, the state’s extensive economic policies
shaped income distribution and class structure. The government bureaucracy and state
officials decided what kind of industrial, labor, welfare, and tax policies they would adopt,
and these would affect the pattern of income distribution and social inequality. For
example, unbalanced industrialization that favored big businesses (chaebol) in Korea
produced a widening gap between big and small-to-medium businesses and thus between
employee welfare in big and small businesses. In post-socialist China, market reform and
privatization eroded the socialist principle of egalitarianism and strengthened the meritbased system, emphasizing competition and educational credentials. Employment in the
private sector provided higher income and better benefits for those with higher education
and professional skills.
Another noteworthy state policy surrounds housing. Housing is the major item of
expenditure for most people and indicates their social status. Homeownership is a long-
14
standing dream for most people and they spend a large sum of money in buying their own
houses. Becoming homeowners gives a great sense of security and relief as well as
indicating wealth. For these reasons, housing policy is an important tool in redistributing
overall wealth and shaping class identities in a given territory. Housing privatization and
urban redevelopment plans created a real-estate boom, spurred by a coalition between the
state and developers, that boosts certain groups’ wealth and clusters different groups in
specific geographical locations. A real-estate boom and increasing housing prices
disadvantage those unable to afford their own houses and achieve the dream of becoming
homeowners but enables the homeowners themselves to accumulate wealth from rapidly
increasing housing prices. In particular, some employees who received significant help
with housing costs from employers could benefit greatly from a real-estate boom. These
advantaged employees were usually government employees or upper-tier employees in
big business firms offering handsome housing subsidies. The subsidies supported by the
state (or local governments) provide crucial material conditions for these people to
approach middle-class status and realize middle-class lifestyles through their power to
consume (Tomba 2004).
The Politics of Exclusion of the Middle Class: Kicking the Ladder Away?
During the first phase of economic reform and industrialization, the state tried to
create and nurture a new middle class as a social group that would produce its future
modern, affluent country. The state contributed to creating a new middle class through a
top-down process by which some groups of people enjoyed higher income and welfare
benefits provided by either government or employers, and above all, could become
15
homeowners and later benefit from skyrocketing housing prices. Through specific images
of a middle-class lifestyle, such as modern high-rise apartments and advanced household
goods, the state and mass media produced aspirations for social mobility. While middleclass identity was fabricated by the state and the mass media in the beginning stages of
economic reform and industrialization, the growing number of people who benefited
from new economic policies and accumulated material wealth developed their own
identities from below through distinctive cultural practices (Bourdieu 1984).
The appeal of the new middle class is precisely its projected openness and
inclusiveness, which allow other segments of the population to envision themselves
living such a life one day (Fernandes 2006). Yet, paradoxically, the social distinctions the
middle class enjoyed were often produced through exclusionary practices. Once those
who could take advantage of the new market economies went up the ladder of social
mobility, they “kicked the ladder away” so that the rest of the population would not be
able to enjoy their distinctive and privileged lifestyles. In particular, the urban space is a
showcase of middle-class practices that exclude other unprivileged classes. While before
urban redevelopment housing and residential areas were relatively homogeneous,
afterwards living space became more stratified and segregated between the relatively
well-to-do and the urban poor. These processes not only included rearrangement of
housing and community production, but also cultivated new lifestyles, mentalities,
dispositions, and aspirations among those who came to inhabit the new places (Zhang
2010:4).
In societies in which most welfare benefits came through employers or work units
(danwei), people’s socioeconomic status was partly shaped by their employers; if firms or
16
work units were relatively stable and had large resources, employees got many benefits;
if not, employees did not benefit greatly from their employers. In the early phase of
economic change, ordinary people achieved homeownership through employer-provided
subsidies. As the real estate market developed, the homeowner early birds enjoyed
owning increasingly valuable properties. At the same time, rapid growth in the
construction of private housing and the development of a real-estate market offered
various choices in size, style, and location for residents of different socioeconomic status.
While residents of the same neighborhood pursued similar lifestyles, they practiced social
distinctions toward other social groups of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Residents in a neighborhood shared similar backgrounds in income, educational level,
and even cultural tastes. In particular, residents in the upper- and middle-class
neighborhoods engaged in particular consumption practices in order to validate their own
status and gain their neighbors’ respect (Lett 1998; Zhang 2008). Unspoken competition
arose among residents to display their greater cultural taste and personal wealth. Through
watching and comparing their own homes and consumption practices with their
neighbors’, the residents ‘kept up with the Joneses’ while constructing similar lifestyles
and class identities. E.P. Thompson (1966) posits that class is made and remade by
sharing daily experiences. Just so, middle-class identities in urban Korea and China were
constantly cultivated and performed through everyday consumption practices.
The efforts of the middle class to defend their property and interests often
excluded the socially disadvantaged in their neighborhoods. Street vendors and migrant
workers were often considered harmful to urban beautification and public order, and their
presence in middle-class neighborhoods aroused fears of decreasing property values. In
17
the name of public order and crime prevention, middle-class residents built walls and
gates to prevent “strangers” from invading their paradises. Gate-keeping by the middle
class made class boundaries more sharply visible in the urban space. The exclusionary
spatial practices of the middle class created a tension between social harmony as an ideal
and social inequality as an actuality.
Development, New Class Hegemony, and Political Change
A number of scholars have considered the rise of the middle class in the
developing world and its political implications, in particular whether an educated urban
middle class leads to democracy in developing countries (Jones 1998; Koo 1991).
Conventional wisdom has supported a strong correlation between the presence of a
middle class and democracy in both developed and developing countries (Lipset 1959;
Huntington 1968; Prezeworski et al. 2000). Looking at democratic transition in Korea,
some argue that the educated middle class joined protests for democracy and eventually
led to liberal democracy (Han 1989; Koo 1991). While I do not completely disagree with
this argument, I find that it does not acknowledge the middle class vis-à-vis the
construction of a state hegemony during Korea’s three-decade high growth period. So far,
no signs of political change have been seen in China. In addition to political repression
and coercive power as an important tool in controlling society in an authoritarian regime,
the cultural politics of middle-class norms and values can contribute to strengthening
authoritarian regimes while effectively blocking counter-hegemony.
18
State hegemony through middle-class formation has both cultural and material
bases. 2 Both Korean and Chinese states treated the middle class as sites of certain values
such as merit, autonomy, and self-help. By emphasizing these middle-class values, the
states tried to create new, proactive social subjects that sought their own opportunities
and were responsible for their own lives. The making of neoliberal subjects could become
a cultural justification for increasing the social inequality brought about by rapid
economic growth. Recent scholars have pointed to the paradox of the neoliberal subjects:
these entrepreneurial subjects were free to seek personal freedom and private interests in
the new economy, but always within the political limits set by the state not touching the
essential (Ong and Zhang 2008; Singley 2006). The authoritarian states invoked
individual desires for economic well-being and private consumer choices, but produced
an apolitical social body that accepted unquestioningly.
As Gramsci noted, hegemony can be maintained only when it has material as well
as an ideological-cultural bases (Gramsci 1971:161; Przeworkski 1985). Without material
conditions, delusions cannot be perpetuated on a mass scale (Gramsci 1971:105). When
an ideology expresses people’s interests and aspirations, hegemony can be maintained. In
this sense, the presentation of middle-class lifestyles could be strong evidence for
authoritarian states by suggesting that anyone could achieve middle-class status by
working hard and making efforts for self development. The booming housing market,
modern department stores, and consumer products were not merely dream images;
comfortable middle-class lifestyles and consumption patterns appealed to a larger
2
Gramsci’s hegemony has often been regarded as ideological and cultural (Miliband 1969; Scott
1985). However, hegemony can be maintained only if it has a material basis (Przeworski 1985).
Gramsci pointed out that “whereas hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must
necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive
nucleus of economic activity” (1971: 161).
19
aspiring segment of the population. The continued economic upturn and growing middle
class not only signified national reconstruction and development, but made people’s
anticipation of upward social mobility seem more promising.
While the rise of the middle class was effective in constructing state hegemony in
the short term, it can produce tensions and ruptures over the long term due to the
increasing differentiation and disparities among social groups (Fernandes 2006: xxxiii).
On the state’s part, the new urban middle class and its lifestyles were beneficial in
symbolizing westernization and globalization and highlighting the success in building a
strong and modern nation. Furthermore, the fluid and broad definition of the middle class
and its open membership encouraged ordinary people to believe in the possibility of
upward social mobility and a better livelihood. The widespread aspiration and confidence
in the future could be translated into support for the existing regimes. On the other hand,
however, the increasing social disparities and exclusionary practices of the middle class
in daily life perpetuated social inequality and notably failed to improve the lot of the
unprivileged. Lacking social security systems, differentiation and disparities based on
education, income, and consumption allowed only a small number of people to gain
middle-class status. Due to these contradictory characteristics embedded in middle-class
formation, the politics of the middle class are shaped by the interactions between
historical legacies and everyday practices.
20
Conceptualization of the Middle Class 3
Conceptualizing and defining the middle class has long been a controversial and
debated issue in the social sciences. Not only is the concept of the middle class
ambiguous, but the heterogeneity of the middle class itself makes it difficult to classify it
as one social class. As Wacquant has noted, “the epistemic ambition of defining the real
boundaries of the middle class is doomed to failure because it rests on a fundamentally
mistaken conception of the ontological status of classes: The middle class, like any other
social group, does not exist ready-made in reality” (1992: 57). Yet, if one is interested in
understanding the political dynamics of the “middling sector” and the state in the course
of development, tone must begin from some vantage point. Neo-Marxist scholars have
defined the middle class by objective economic characteristics (e.g. Abercrombie and
Urry 1983; Burris 1992; Wright 1985). As Wright (1985) pointed out, the middle class is
in a “contradictory class location” because it belongs to neither the bourgeoisie nor the
working class. The middle class is distinct from the bourgeoisie since it does not own any
means of production. Rather, middle-class people derive their economic opportunities
from organizational authority or possession of scarce occupational skills (Fernandes and
Heller 2006). Moreover, as distinguished from the working class whose labor is reduced
to commodity form, the middle class has more autonomy and capacity to reproduce the
relative scarcity of their own skills (Fernandes and Heller ibid.).
3
The term “middle class” is not used in the same way in all contexts. The Chinese meanings of
the middle class are identified as “middle propertied class (Zhongchanjieji)”, “middle propertied
strata (Zhongchanjieceng)”, “intermediate class (Zhongjianjieji)”, “intermediate strata
(Zhongjianjieceng),” or “white-collar workers (Bailing).” The Korean meanings of the middle
class are interchangeable with “middle propertied strata (Jungsanchung)” or “salaried employees
(salary men)”.
21
According to this definition, the middle class has three broad strata. The first
includes professionals and technical elites with professional credentials or advanced skills.
Because of their upper position, this group of people might align closely either with the
bourgeoisie or the ruling class. The second category includes salaried employees in both
private and public sectors, who are mostly white-collar workers. The last group is small
employers or petty bourgeoisie, including small business owners, merchants, and farmers.
In neo-Marxist terms, the last category is also identified with the old middle class.
The category of the middle class embraces a variety of social groups, such as
white-collar employees and professionals, the self-employed, and intellectuals who do
not engage in manual labor. We can list a myriad of occupational groups making up the
middle class, including bank clerks, school teachers, shopkeepers, lawyers, government
functionaries, doctors, engineers, accountants, managers, military officers and journalists.
However, the category of the middle class shares a state of mind oriented to a dynamic
social and economic arena that is not reducible to a specific occupational group
(Owensby 1999:8-9). The middle class consists of people that earn educational
credentials, engage in office work, gain respectable status, and enjoy upward social
mobility as a result of hard work and individual effort.
As previous scholars have pointed out, however, social classes are not fixed; class
boundaries and identities are constructed and reconstructed every day as people perform
cultural, symbolic strategies (Bourdieu 1984; Fernandes 2006; Thompson 1966). From
this perspective, class is not a fixed term based on objective socioeconomic conditions, as
Marx (1978) assumed. Instead, class is created as people arrive at awareness of class
through engaging in particular collective actions and consumption activities on a day-to-
22
day basis. The lived experience in daily life creates a class boundary. Yet, a particular
point of view from the middle outward can also come to articulate the notion of class
(Owensby ibid.). In other words, the middle-class boundary is shaped as it is thought,
talked about, presented, discussed, and imagined in particular ways in newspapers, books,
magazines, advertisements, radio shows, and public meetings. The middle class is an
arena in which people interpret and construct meanings, representation, and discourses in
a specific historical context.
Some scholars have questioned the ambiguity and theoretical impracticality of the
middle class (Tsai 2007) and have instead used the term “new rich” as an alternative
(Robison and Goodman 1996; Goodman eds. 2008). Particularly in the Chinese context,
these studies focus on enriched cadres and private entrepreneurs. Identifying the new rich
as private entrepreneurs and professionals, the concept of the “new rich” covers only the
uppermost sector of the elites or ruling class, not encompassing ordinary white-collar
workers who predominate in the middling sector. The concept of the “new rich” might be
misleading in limiting analysis to elite groups and excluding the broader groups of the
middle class. This concept also fails to highlight the broader political and cultural
implications of social class in its sole focus on the objective and economic conditions of a
particular social group. The concept of the middle class is still useful in looking at how
varying segments of people create collective aspirations and influence the broader
political landscape.
23
Methodology and Data Collection
This dissertation examines how two different societies started at very different
points, yet converged to a common model. In class relations, politics, ideologies, and
socioeconomic conditions, Korea and China are vastly different societies. China had
much in common with other Leninist states that implemented the Soviet model; Korea
had much in common with other East Asian developmental states strongly allied to
businesses. I chose to compare Korea and China because they are extreme cases: no other
states experienced such swift growth of the new middle class starting from egalitarian,
classless societies. China’s recent economic success and its maintenance of one-party
system can be compared with Korea’s developmental pattern three decades ago.
Comparing these two cases helps to understand the formation of hegemony and middleclass identity in two different contexts and by two different processes.
Both Korea and China were exceptionally homogeneous countries in terms of
class structure. Korea was an officially classless society. The confrontation with
communist North Korea made the use of class language taboo in South Korea.
Furthermore, after the war, Korea was quite an egalitarian society in which small
peasants made up most of the population. In socialist Chinese official discourse, only the
working class existed due to the emphasis on egalitarianism and collectivism. Though the
strong state was crucial in creating a class, the two different states allied with different
social actors to create a middle class in both countries. While the Korean state allied with
big business groups (chaebols) and created a middle class through growth of the private
sector, the Chinese party-state created a massive middle class in the public sector by
providing job security and homeownership as well as opening up the private sector.
24
In constructing middle-class identities and consciousness, the two cases also
differ: only a few Chinese identify themselves as middle class, while many do in Korea.
In China, the prevalent working-class identity (regardless of objective socioeconomic
status) prevented potential social conflict and relative deprivation from becoming severe
and made state hegemony stronger. The prevalent though false middle-class
consciousness in Korea was effective in consolidating state hegemony in the short term.
Yet, as opposition groups mobilized socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups,
state hegemony was more unstable than its counterpart Chinese state. While recognizing
these variations across the Korean and Chinese cases, this dissertation systematically
traces the process of state-directed middle-class formation in times of economic
transformation.
This dissertation combines comparative historical analysis and qualitative
methods in order to demonstrate the political processes through which the middle class
ascended to become a national representative and conferred legitimacy to state-directed
economic development. During a year of intensive field research in Seoul and Beijing I
conducted archival research and in-depth interviews. The archival research enabled me to
examine the top-down process of middle-class formation as a state project. I collected a
wide range of data, including government documents, newspapers, academic and popular
magazines, and political speeches. While official statistical data confirmed the numerical
expansion of the urban middle class, newspapers and other magazines helped illuminate
what official and popular discourses on the middle class were created and appropriated.
On the Korean side, I examined the three major newspapers, Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo,
and Donga Ilbo, during the authoritarian regimes from 1963 to 1986. Though all mass
25
media were severely censored by the government at the time, facts about state policies
and official discourses could be reported with relatively little distortion. As supplemental
materials, I also used some smaller newspapers such as Kyunghyang Shinmun and Maeil
Gyungje using a particular search engine. For China, I investigated mainly two
newspapers, Renmin Ribao and Nanfangzhoumo. All Chinese newspapers belong to the
Party and represent its official opinions, and thus differences in opinions across various
newspapers are few. I chose Nanfangzhoumo because it is relatively liberal and targets
more educated people. I also used some other newspapers such as Beijing Qingnianbao
as supplemental sources. For both China and Korea, I also examined some popular
magazines, including Sasanggye, Sedae, and Sindonga in Korea and Zhongguo
Xinwenzhoukan in China, to see what specific discourses and images were constructed
around the middle class. Finally, I also explored secondary sources and academic
discussions by Korean and Chinese scholars. Middle-class formation has been a popular
topic among social scientists and intellectuals, and along with the official discourse
disseminated by the states, academic circles actively examined the middle class. These
latter sources make it possible to look at how academic scholars constructed particular
knowledge about facts and events and influenced a broader society.
My interviews with middle-class citizens effectively illuminate the bottom-up
process of middle-class formation. In each city I conducted 30 interviews, including
white-collar workers, professionals, government employees, and managers. The
interviews allowed me to discover key mechanisms through which the individuals came
to accumulate wealth, how they identified themselves, and how they came to have
specific attitudes or dispositions toward the government and its policies. Furthermore,
26
they also allowed me to discover the cultural narratives that were produced and circulated
about the class. There is, of course, a gap between the official discourse disseminated
from above and subjective understandings of class identification. Examining how people
perceived these disparities helped figure out how people reconciled their lived realities
and their own expectations. By analyzing both official discourse and people’s own
narratives, this dissertation revolves around the creation of a new class as a constitutive
sociocultural process.
A Look Ahead
Chapter 2 reviews major theories of developmental states and class formation and
constructs a theoretical framework from these literatures. I reconcile both the politicaleconomic and the cultural-anthropological approach. The mainstream study of political
economy has much to gain from a cultural approach that analyzes the social construction
of a group and the dominant discourses that served to consolidate political legitimacy
during a time of social transformation. By the same token, a cultural analysis will also
benefit from a discussion of socioeconomic conditions and institutional practices. The
making of a social class lies in the intersection of objective socioeconomic factors and
subjective discursive practices. Furthermore, considering both socioeconomic conditions
and discursive practices lets us fully explain middle-class formation from above and its
reproduction from below.
Part II looks at how both authoritarian countries implemented specific state
policies and created official discourses in order to bring about the urban middle class as a
state project. Chapter 3, “The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea, 1961-
27
1979: Nation-Building, Discipline, and the Birth of Ideal National Subjects,” explores
how the authoritarian state (the 1961-1979 Park Chung Hee regime) tried to cultivate an
urban middle class. Making the urban middle class into a mainstream social force was an
important project because the rise of the middle class and its comfortable lifestyle
showcased successful economic modernization, which could draw societal support and
legitimatize developmental projects. Through governmental documents, political
speeches, and academic articles addressing the importance of the making of the middle
class, this chapter looks at how the values of autonomy and austerity embedded in the
middle class were viewed positively by the state as a promoter of national modernization.
The “imagined” middle class was thus created by the state in the early stages of
industrialization.
Chapter 4, “Cultural Construction of the Chinese Middle Class: Economic
Reform, Urban Consumer Culture, and the National Desire,” investigates how the
dominant middle-class discourses were created consciously by the Chinese government
and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) in order to create a strong ally for economic
reform and strengthen the image of a civilized and modern country. The growth of an
urban middle class that enjoyed economic well-being and comfortable lifestyles could
exemplify successful economic reform and national prosperity. In fulfilling official
discourses of a “xiaokang” (well-off) and “harmonious” society, the urban middle class
represented the social values of self-help and autonomy. Drawing evidence from Chinese
academic documents, political speeches, and news articles, this chapter highlights how
the middle -class values of efficiency and productivity have replaced the old and stagnant
socialist egalitarian vision.
28
Part III looks at how nascent middle-class identities are cultivated, staged, and
contested at local levels. By examining urban redevelopment and housing policies, this
part explores the massive increase in homeownership and middle-class spatial formation,
thus legitimatizing the authoritarian states. Chapter 5, “My Home, My Car: Pursuing the
Middle-Class Dream in South Korea, 1979-1986,” uses urban redevelopment in South
Korea to examine how ordinary people strived to benefit from the state policies, improve
their standards of living, and claim their social status on a daily basis. I argue that statedirected urban redevelopment plans and apartment construction projects provided the
material conditions under which the urban middle class could improve its standard of
living. Through the apartment lottery system, the authoritarian states provided apartments
at less than market value and allowed ordinary white-collar workers to become
homeowners. While in the 1970s the urban middle class existed only in the arena of
discourse created by the state and mass media, it finally materialized in the 1980s real
estate boom in Gangnam, Seoul. The state-led development of Gangnam not only
transformed the desolate area into high-rise apartments and modern skyscrapers, but also
spatialized the concept of social class. The popularization of apartment living that
originated and prevailed in Gangnam served to identify the urban middle class in Korea
as educated, comfortable apartment owners.
Chapter 6, “A Place of My Own: Seeking Privacy and Seclusion of the Urban
Middle Class in Contemporary China,” argues that the state-directed megaproject of
housing reform has favored public employees by subsidizing homeownership and has
created a Chinese urban middle class. I examine how state intervention in the housing
sector provided a vehicle for the middle-income public employees to improve their
29
material conditions and enhance their social status. Exploring housing consumption in
Beijing, this chapter looks at how the urban middle class is spatially formed, how class
cultural practices and place-making strategies are enacted, and how middle-class
identities are cultivated on a daily basis.
The final chapter of this dissertation summarizes the major findings and presents
the contributions and limitations of this research. I will also discuss the post-trajectories
of middle-class formation in both countries, particularly the implications of middle-classbased development for democracy and citizenship.
30
CHAPTER 2.
BRINGING THE MIDDLE CLASS BACK IN: NATIONAL MODERNIZATION,
DEVELOPMENTAL DISCOURSE AND THE URBAN MIDDLE CLASS
This chapter builds on a theoretical framework bringing the urban middle class in
as an important social actor during the developmental processes in developing countries.
The rise of the urban middle class produced consumerist dreams and created an urban
imagination of a particular lifestyle that could rationalize unbalanced economic policies
and emerging social inequality. Adding the middle class to the existing literatures helps
to revisit the developmental states and class formation literatures in three ways by linking
institutional and cultural approaches. First, I am challenging the developmental state
literature by highlighting the cultural politics of development. As Weber drew attention
to a Protestant ethic as one of important factors to bring about the rise of capitalism in the
West, culture is a crucial component to shape a developmental trajectory, along with
institutional factors. Looking at how states played around cultural values or discourses, I
will argue that state is not only administrative but also ideological and discursive. Second,
this chapter also complements existing literature of middle class formation. Whether it
emphasizes structural conditions or daily practices, class has been treated separately from
the state or political institutions. In the context of developing countries, the state or
political institutions play a crucial role in shaping class interests and actions. By adding
the institutional practices to class formation, this chapter tries to reconcile between
developmental state and class formation literatures. Third, middle-class narratives based
on hierarchical differentials become a powerful means to justify emerging social
31
inequality. Middle-class narratives represent social distinctions characterized by the
middle class, the markers of cultural capital and consumer taste, which serve to produce
the “others” that do not acquire those characteristics and to reproduce hierarchical social
order.
By bridging a theoretical gap between the political economic and the cultural
approaches in class formation, this chapter suggests that there are three intersecting,
intertwined processes in middle class formation: structural formation of the middle class
(class-in-itself); discursive production of the middle class (class-for-itself); and class
reproduction through daily practices. Through processes of middle class formation during
the time periods of economic transformation, this chapter tries to understand how the
authoritarian state promoted an exclusionary, but compressed development model
embedded in the middle class in Korea and China.
Revisiting a Weberian Concept of Developmental States
The developmental state literature has contributed to explaining East Asian
development by providing extensive empirical evidence. Currently, developmental state
literature is the most influential explanation of East Asian development. Inspired by
Weber and neo-Weberian approaches, this perspective emphasizes the nature of the state
as an autonomous actor (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985). The origin of the
developmental state approach dates back to the work of Gerschenkron (1962), who
argued that as late-late developers, follower countries needed a more organized initiative
from banks or financial institutions to help industry take off by mobilizing capital and
facilitating technology transfers. This approach is mainly concerned with the role of the
32
state and bureaucratic capabilities in strategically promoting economic growth. By
exploring the cases of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, Johnson (1982), Amsden (1989), and
Wade (1990) have developed this approach. In order to promote economic growth, they
argue that the state actively engaged in the economy. The Ministry of International Trade
and Industry (MITI) in Japan was a classical example of the plan-rational capitalist
developmental state which made rapid and sustained industrial growth possible (Johnson
1982). Amsden (1989) argues that the state acted as entrepreneur, banker, and shaper of
the industrial structure in Korea: the state not only actively promoted the growth of
business groups, it also controlled their use of subsidies and other supports. Similarly,
Wade (1990) also argues that Taiwan’s industrial success lay in the “governed market,” a
series of policies that “enabled the government to guide market processes of resource
allocation so as to produce different production and investment outcomes than would
have occurred with free market” (p. 26-27). These authors describe the state as something
omnipotent, deciding which particular economic policies would be implemented as the
state planned and designed.
While scholars in this line of research agree that the nature of the state is crucial,
the “second generation of developmental state literature” provides more sophisticated
explanations. These scholars found that state autonomy itself is not enough to produce
successful outcomes of economic development. For example, Evans (1995) argues that
not only the efficient state bureaucracy but also the non-bureaucratic bases of internal
solidarity and the nature of ties to the surrounding social structures contribute to the
economic success (p. 51). Some other authors have focused more on the long-term
process of development by exploring the historical conditions under which the
33
developmental state could implement industrial policies effectively (Doner et al. 2005;
Kohli 2004; Waldner 1999). Waldner (1999) argues that the developmental state is an
outcome of state building in which elite conflict was less intense, and thus state elites
could exclude the lower classes from the political coalition because the state elites did not
rely on societal support. In a similar vein, Doner et al. (2005) focus on systemic
vulnerability as the origin of developmental states in the newly industrialized countries
(NICs). Contrary to the common view that developmental states were built by state
autonomy, they argue that ruling elites in East Asian countries constructed coherent
bureaucracies and public-private consultative mechanisms in response to a similar set of
political-economic constraints. All were pressed to build and maintain broad coalitions
and to address security threats without easy access to revenue. Kohli (2004) also traces
the historical origins of particular state types (particularly their colonial histories) that
brought about different patterns of industrialization and developmental outcomes. In
Korea, a highly authoritarian and competent regime as an outcome of Japanese
colonialism could facilitate industrialization by allying with dominant classes, and thus
discipline workers.
Similarly, some scholars look at Chinese economic development since market
reform from the theoretical perspective of the developmental state. China’s economic
reform has been driven by the party-state that deliberately implemented piecemeal and
gradualist economic reform. Like other developmental states in East Asia, the Chinese
Communist leadership has pursued economic development and technological
modernization as an indispensable means for national power, and as a new legitimacy
principle for the Communist party (Castells 1998:306). While commonly arguing for the
34
central role of the state in initiating economic reform, different authors emphasize
different aspects of the developmental state. Some scholars argue that local states have
driven rapid economic development (Blecher and Shue 2001; Oi 1992), whereas others
highlight the “entrepreneurial” business activities of China’s local governments and
agencies (Blecher 1991; Duckett 1998). Despite these efforts to extend the developmental
state model to China, some scholars claim that this approach is not convincing because a
Chinese party-state is not as coherent, bureaucratically disciplined, or supportive of the
private sector as the original developmental state model requires (Tsai and Cook 2005).
However, this critique of the developmental state cannot continue to ignore the important
role of the state in supervising the economy.
In sum, the developmental state literature provides ample empirical evidence and
elaborates explanations. Yet, this perspective has some limitations that this dissertation
aims to build on. Firstly, this elite-centered perspective ignores social dynamics that have
led to particular developmental trajectories in these countries. Since the focus of these
analyses is limited to state elites (and bureaucrats) and their linkages with private
business, the literature often fails to incorporate the majority of society from its analyses.
Therefore, developmental patterns are assumed as being imposed from above as a result
of decision making by state elites and bureaucrats, regardless of the actions of social
groups from below. Even if specific industrial and developmental policies were largely
implemented by strong states and autonomous institutions in East Asia, we cannot
assume that the developmental outcomes were always produced as the institutions
intended. Rather, political contestations and concessions among different social actors
also affect the developmental outcomes (Heller 1999). This implies that we need to look
35
at how the developmental state legitimatized its development project in the first place and
how it brought other social actors on board with its agenda.
Secondly, the role of the state in the developmental state literature is limited in the
arena of political economic institutions. This approach understands development as an
economic and material condition of capital accumulation. While promoting economic
growth and sustaining specific political regimes are political and administrative
processes, they equally involve disseminating social discipline and knowledge through a
social body (Gorski 1993: 266). Social discipline helps power operate productively as
well as repressively (Foucault 1977). As Gorski (2003:165-66) notes, “states are not only
administrative, policing and military organizations. They are also pedagogical, corrective,
and ideological organizations.” The developmental state literature does not pay attention
to how the state exploits and imposes specific ideologies and discourses to legitimize
developmental projects, how capitalist discourses/knowledge are diffused and how they
discipline a social body. While the developmental state literature helps understand how
capable and autonomous states efficiently implemented policies and promoted economic
growth, it is still unable to explain how the state is also involved in transforming an
unproductive and backward social body into a productive and industrious one by
capitalist imperatives and techniques (Ong 1987; Pun 2005).
In this sense, Bourdieu’s symbolic power and Foucault’s disciplinary power help
to address the problem of a Weberian concept of the state. As recent works on state
formation point out, existing studies of state formation have adopted materialist
conceptualization of the state (Gorski 1993; 2003; Loveman 2005; Scott 1998). However,
this materialist approach fail to recognize cultural and symbolic dimensions of state
36
power, which serves the legitimate exercise of military, economic, and political power
altogether.
Symbolic power is the power to create things with words, the power to consecrate
or to reveal things that are already there (Bourdieu 1989:23). It is the power to make
groups by imposing and inculcating a vision of divisions (Bourdieu Ibid). In other words,
this power provides categories and cognitive schemes through which the dominated
understand and experience the social world. 4
The construction of the state is accompanied by the construction of a sort of
common historical transcendental, immanent to all its “subjects”. Through
the framing it imposes upon practices, the state establishes and inculcates
common forms and categories of perception and appreciation, social
frameworks of perceptions, of understanding or of memory, in short state
forms of classification. It thereby creates the conditions for a kind of
immediate orchestration of habituses which is itself the foundation of a
consensus over this set of shared evidences constitutive of (national) common
sense (Bourdieu 1991:68).
Symbolic power makes individuals recognize the given power or regime as “natural”
without questioning the legitimacy of power. The operation of symbolic power is a
process through which people are ‘tamed’ in a given territory. Through practices of
classification, codification, and regulation, modern states mold mental structures and
help constitute particular kinds of people, places, and things (Bourdieu 1999; Loveman
2005). For example, by universally imposing and inculcating a dominant culture as
legitimate national culture, the school system inculcates the fundamental presuppositions
of the national self-image (Bourdieu 1999:62). The concept of symbolic power can be a
4
Mara Loveman (2005) notes that symbolic power is not equivalent to cultural or ideological power. While
ideological power is exercised through the use of specific symbols, the promotion of specific cultural
messages, or the inculcation of particular beliefs, symbolic power is exercised through naturalization of the
practices and cognitive schemes that make it possible for such messages to resonate with their intended
audiences (1656).
37
powerful tool to understand how state power produces and imposes categories of thought
that we spontaneously apply to all things in the social world.
In the context of developmental states in East Asia, this implies that state-directed
development project could be effectively implemented in the name of national
development and modernization by inculcating and legitimatizing state visions of
development. However, while the concept of symbolic power helps to understand topdown process of development, it is still unclear about how the state makes the social body
productive for capital accumulation and how state power can be reproduced as a bottomup process.
Foucault argues that state power could be transmitted through much finer,
ambiguous channels on a small scale through institutions of social discipline (Foucault
1981: 71-72). Modern disciplinary power, Foucault argues, makes subjects assume
responsibility for “self-discipline” through the discursive practices of various institutions
(e.g., penal, medical, industrial, educational) (Foucault 1977). Modern power, which is
differentiated from earlier repressive powers, is held to be effective in that it traverses
and produces things: it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, and produces discourse
(Foucault 1980: 119). Power is exercised in a subtle and lenient manner instead of in the
form of torture. The true objective of penal reform was not to punish less, but to punish in
a more efficient way (Foucault 1977: 82). Thus, the strategy of power changed in such a
way that power was inserted into the social body more deeply and thoroughly by
diminishing the economic and political cost of punishment.
Foucault understands power in a triangle between sovereignty-disciplinegovernment (Foucault 1991: 102). The first is governance through state bureaucracy in
38
the conventional sense. The second form of power is governance through intermediate
disciplinary institutions such as schools, hospitals, armies, and prisons. The third form of
power is self-governance by individuals of themselves, which is often promoted and
guided by states and professional experts (Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005:23). The
process of governmentalization has steadily led towards its pre-eminence over older,
separate versions of state sovereignty, institutional discipline, and self-cultivation
(Foucault 1991:102-103). Since the process of governmentalization does not completely
eliminate the old form of power, it includes both institutional and discursive practices.
While including building formal organizations for regulating behavior through politicaleconomic mechanisms such as monitoring and sanctioning, it also embraces the
development of various mentalities or rationalities of government—bodies of knowledge
and expertise—and the elaboration of sociocultural discourses and practices for such
governance (Greenhalgh and Winckler Ibid). Foucault’s approach provides insights on
how particular norms and discourses are disseminated through social body, working to
constitute population, politics, and programs.
By drawing theories of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, Gorski challenges the
predominant Weberian state theories by demonstrating that the state is also an institution
penetrating deeply into the population through disciplinary techniques and ethics.
Through case studies of Holland and Prussia in early modern Europe, Gorski (1993)
claims disciplinary revolution was a necessary condition for the formation of a strong,
centralized, monarchical state under conditions of relative backwardness. Complementing
a prevalent understanding that state formation was a process of an administrative and
political centralization, Gorski emphasizes the role of religious ethic—in this case,
39
Calvinism—that disciplined not only civil servants but also the popular classes, which
resulted in cementing state domination. Gorski points out:
[a] successful disciplinary revolution contributes to state formation directly in two
ways: (1) it forges a disciplined ruling group capable of and committed to
imposing social order, and (2) it creates disciplinary institutions through which
the larger population can be more effectively educated and controlled. Not all
types of state formation, then, involve disciplinization. All disciplinary
revolutions, however, involve processes of state formation (Gorski 1993:273).
Gorski’s perspective on the concurrent top-down and bottom-up processes of
disciplinization helps to understand how the developmental state could be successful in
mobilizing the entire population to the state development project so rapidly without
encountering a large scale social conflict. Looking at only state bureaucracy and
institutional arrangements does not give a fully satisfactory answer about why Korea and
China came to succeed in rapid economic development by overcoming the prevalent
political chaos and economic backwardness. Instead it demands a more careful
observation of how the state successfully managed the population and imposed social
discipline throughout society.
Middle Class Formation in Developing Countries
Karl Marx and Max Weber, two social class theorists, though they define social
classes in different ways, are preoccupied with “objective” classifications of social
classes, whether it is money or authority. Most comparative historical sociologists, who
explain class alliance and social change, adopt a class analysis from this Marxist or
Weberian perspective (e.g. Collier and Collier 1992; Luebbert 1991; Moore 1996;
Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). In this literature, the essential assumption has been that class
40
behaviors and actions are derived from a class structure; in other words, class-in-itself as
a structural condition will indeed lead to class-for-itself as class actions. What these
theorists miss out is how to think about the linkages between specific class structures on
the one hand and thought, culture, and action, on the other (Katznelson 1986:5). These
theorists, primarily structuralists, overlook the ways in which social interactions based on
workplaces or communities shape people’s thoughts and actions in class-based ways.
Thompson criticizes this structural, econocentric scholarship and forcefully argues that
class structures and actual lives of working people cannot be thought separately:
Class formations…arise at the intersection of determination and self-activity: the
working class “made itself as much as it was made.” We cannot put “class” here
and “class consciousness” there, as two separate entities, the one sequential upon
the other, since both must be taken together—the experience of determination,
and the “handling” of this in conscious ways. Nor can we deduce class from a
static “section” (since it is a becoming over time), nor as a function of a mode of
production, since class formations and class consciousness (while subject to
determinate pressures) eventuate in an open-ended process of relationship—of
struggle with other classes—over time (Thompson, 1978:299; emphasis in
original).
This relational approach of class advocated by Thompson inspired later scholars
and they started to pay attention to the intersection of class structures, way of life, shared
dispositions, and collective actions (Katznelson ibid.). In a similar vein, Bourdieu
emphasizes the primacy of relations by linking class structures and class practices. For
Bourdieu, class is not reducible to economic wealth, level of education, or cultural
knowledge but rather is realized and reproduced through the interaction between
objective conditions and subjective experiences, and between economy and culture. In his
famous book, Distinction (1984), Bourdieu argues that cultural taste reflects economic
stratification and class position. Through a concept of habitus, he claims that the largely
41
unconscious dispositions or lifestyle choices are actually the outcomes that people
internalize in the course of their lives by their class positions in society (Bourdieu 1984:
169-172). In this approach, class is not a simple category assigned by its characters;
rather it is a practice. Class and consumption have to be seen as mutually constitutive
cultural processes (Liechty 2003:30).
Students of class formation have applied this approach to the formation of the
working class (see Katznelson and Zolberg 1986). While many scholars have addressed
working class formation in their works (e.g. Katznelson and Zolberg eds. 1986; Somers
1992; Steinmetz 1992; Thompson 1966), middle class formation has not been illuminated
to the same extent in part because of a vague and controversial concept and its definition
since middle class has been believed to include the rest of the population except
capitalists and workers as a residue category.
Classical sociologists have explored the rise of the new middle class in the
context of industrialization and urbanization. C. Wright Mills’s pioneer study of the new
middle class in the US, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, argued that
American society saw the rise of the new middle classes as a result of the growth of
corporations and rapid bureaucratization. Ezra Vogel was the first scholar to pay close
attention to the emerging middle classes in Asia. In his seminal work, Japan’s New
Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (1963), Vogel argues
that Japan’s high economic growth during the post-war period created the new middle
class, the white-collar employees of the large business corporations and government
bureaucracies, replacing the old middle class. Both studies assume that the new middle
class is a product of modernization that changed industrial structure and thus provided an
42
array of high skilled jobs. Therefore, the new middle class is defined as a category of
specific occupational groups that shape a particular lifestyle and culture.
In line with this research, various case studies have examined the rise of a new
middle class in developing countries. This classic Weberian approach focuses on
structural processes of income- and occupational-based group formation (see Hsiao ed.
1993; Pinches 1999; Robinson and Goodman 1996). In this approach, particular
occupational groups such as highly educated salaried professionals, technical specialists,
managers and administrators assume powerful positions in large corporations and state
agencies. This occupational grouping leads them to share a particular lifestyle, including
political orientation and consumption pattern.
The Bourdieusian approach, on the other hand, focuses more on middle-class
cultural and consumption practices (see Fernandes 2006; Leichty 2003; Lett 1998; Zhang
2010). While the Weberian approach sees class as shaped by structural conditions such as
similar occupations, incomes, and educational levels, the Bourdieusian approach is more
interested in how a distinct form of social life and culture arises and is reproduced by
class practices at the local level. Though this approach does not deny the fact that similar
socioeconomic backgrounds produce a class, it argues that a class is made and remade
through everyday practices. As E.P. Thompson succinctly put it, “I do not see class as a
‘structure,’ nor even as a ‘category,’ but as something which in fact happens (and can be
shown to have happened) in human relationships” (1964: 9). Because of this theoretical
orientation, recent scholars adopting this approach maintain that a range of practices
produces the boundaries of a particular class. These practices are the outcome of a
dynamic set of processes that are both symbolic and material, and that are shaped both by
43
longer historical processes as well as by the temporality of the everyday (Fernandes 2006:
xxx). As Bourdieu has argued, individuals and social groups engage in “classificatory
practices” by using strategies of conversion of different forms of capital (cultural,
political, and economic) in order to preserve their relative social standing and capacities
for upward mobility (Bourdieu 1984).
For example, Li Zhang (2010) examines how middle class in urban China is
cultivated and performed through class practices under a new regime of property and
living. While housing reform produced a new social group of homeowners in urban areas,
this material condition did not automatically lead to form a class. Rather, everyday
consumption practices and exclusionary practices toward migrant workers formed a sort
of solidarity among middle-class residents in gated communities. Similarly, Fernandes
(2006) explores how the politics of spatial purification based on middle-class urban
residents produced a sanitized middle class civic culture targeting the urban poor. The
politics of distinction of the middle class reproduces the sociospatial distance between the
middle class and the urban poor or the working class. This symbolic process of a middleclass making is more fragmented and localized rather than structured. Mark Liechty
(2003) examines the cultural practices of the middle class in Kathmandu to be fully
intertwined with both transnational processes through satellite television, music videos
and magazines, fashion, and mass tourism, and local cultural narratives. Negotiating
between the transnational and local, and traditional and modern, people in Kathmandu’s
social middle strive to produce middle-class culture in Nepal.
These two dominant Weberian and Bourdieusian approaches have contributed to
elucidating the political, economic, and cultural nature of the middle class by closely
44
looking at the bottom-up processes of class-making. Such studies, however, overlook the
role of state bureaucracy in shaping the middle class. Although recent case studies of
India and China consider the role of state bureaucracy in class-making (e.g. Fernandes
2006; Zhang 2010), most studies have not considered how institutional factors affect
class-making. In the context of developing countries, in particular East Asia where states
power is strong and autonomous, the role of state bureaucracy was critical in shaping
middle class formation in two ways. First, the state retained strong power to allocate and
redistribute resources and to restructure class relations. Second, the state also retained
ideological power to produce cultural norms and dominant discourses by disseminating
particular images of a social group. In this sense, adding institutional and bureaucratic
practices to middle-class formation process will be helpful to see how the state affects the
making of the middle class in East Asian countries and how the rise of the middle class in
turn shapes the developmental trajectory.
Developmental Discourse and Subject Formation
The developmental process of industrialization and modernization in Korea and
China can be seen as a process through which both institutional and discursive power
were implemented and expanded. While capitalist development and transition to a market
economy required more capable state-bureaucratic systems to promote economic growth
and implement policies efficiently, it also entailed professional discipline and selfgovernance. Though there is no doubt that the transition to modernity was a violent
process to exploit the dominated (Moore 1966), at the same time, it was an expansion of
capitalist discipline and techniques imposed on the social subjects by legitimatizing
45
unequal social relations. In fact, the operations of power through state institutions and
professional discipline/self-governance are intertwined: while the state bureaucratic
system sets up and regulates the rules of the game, the particular social norms and ethos
are internalized and reproduced through the social body; the techniques of the “gaze” in
assembly lines monitor the body of factory workers and produce the docile body to adapt
itself to the organized system (Pun 2005; Yan 2008), but the operation of capitalist
discipline is backed up by state bureaucracy including law and the judicial system.
During the time periods of economic development, the state needs specific
rhetoric or discourses to empower and justify particular institutional practices. Dominant
discourses legitimatize state activities, strengthen social and cultural norms, and help
people share and internalize those norms. By disseminating particular developmental
discourses, the state tries to mobilize the entire population to achieve “national
modernization” as soon as possible.
Both Escobar (1995) and Scott (1998) analyze development through which (state)
power made the social subjects the “other” and controlled them to promote efficiency. In
their works, power/knowledge regimes play a critical role in turning the poor and
backward social body into the object of “government” and “management.” Scott’s (1998)
seminal work links Foucault’s insights with statecraft: how rationalization and
standardization enhanced state capacity to more easily control society, but focusing on
more tragic aspects. The state’s increasing concern with productivity, health, sanitation,
education, transportation, mineral resources, grain production, and investment was less an
abandonment of the older objectives of statecraft than a broadening and deepening of
what those objectives entailed in the modern world (Scott 1998: 52). That is, the state
46
attempts to reorganize and manage society more efficiently and thoroughly in the name
of “science and modernity.” In Foucault’s words, all these strategies and techniques of
the state are based on the goal of “better domination,” not less domination.
Many modern state projects, according to Scott, usually combine with an
authoritarian state that is “willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to
bring a high-modernist design into being” (Scott 1998: 5), and were also promoted by the
hierarchical knowledge regime of the “hegemonic imperium of scientific knowledge”
(Scott ibid). While science, modernity, and development have successfully structured the
dominant discourse, local and traditional knowledge is regarded as backward, inferior,
and static “subjugated knowledge” (Scott 1998: 331). High modernism has needed the
“other” which is identified with backwardness and inefficiency, in order to remove any
obstacles to achieving its goals. By combining the universalist pretensions of epistemic
knowledge and authoritarian social engineering, there is no room for mutuality and
practice (Scott 1998: 349).
Escobar (1995) would also agree that development is a political process based on
hierarchical and binary knowledge regimes—that is, a belief that archaic traditions and
underdevelopment should be replaced by efficiency, progressiveness, and modernity. He
argues that the systems of relations—established between institutions, socioeconomic
process, forms of knowledge, technological factors, and so on—govern the poor countries
and decide what is to be done (41). Development in the Third World proceeded by
creating “abnormalities (such as the “illiterate,” the “underdeveloped,” and the
“malnourished”),” which it would later treat and reform (Ibid).
47
Both Scott and Escobar consider development to be a process through which
power is imposed on the social body through professional knowledge and policy
implementation of certain institutions. In exploring discursive practices, however, it is
necessary to consider through whom or which social subjects particular discourses and
disciplinary power were imposed, circulated, and diffused upon. Through practices of
creating particular categories and identifying the categories with certain characteristics,
the states naturalize those distinctions, which Bourdieu would call a form of
“misrecognition” and “the operation of symbolic violence.” As the developmental
apparatuses and their discursive practices have made industrialized nations of North
America and Europe appropriate models that the Third World countries should follow in
Escobar’s case, same mechanisms also work at the national and local level. By creating a
category of the “urban middle class” and identifying it with desirable social subjects
embodying discipline and self-help, the states educated and administered this ideal to the
“others” who did not embody the social virtues.
Discourses of “national modernization” and “civilization” in both Korea and
China identified the difference between modern citizens and feudal subjects. While
feudal subjects represented the backward past to be overcome, modern citizens with selfdiscipline and social responsibility were the ones leading to the bright future of the nation
by contributing to economic prosperity and social order. More specifically, peasant
bodies, the majority of the population in both countries, were the objects of
enlightenment and discipline efforts because their backwardness and unruliness were
considered a hindrance to national development. By contrast, the rise of the upwardly
mobile and educated urban middle class reflected the heightened value of the nation.
48
State-directed developmental projects identified the “other” who impeded economic
development and thus produced a hierarchical and normal knowledge regime. The
hierarchical and exclusionary process of development could be politically justified in the
name of national development and modernization by promising people various kinds of
benefits. In this sense, “development” is not only limited in the arena of economic
policies; instead, it embraces the arena of a knowledge regime.
State, Class, and Development in East Asia
Recent scholarship has investigated the relationship between class and state in
shaping developmental trajectories in developing countries (Chibber 2003; Koo 2001;
Lee 2007; Tsai 2007). However, these existing studies have tended to focus on the
relationship between either state and business or state and labor, mostly neglecting the
role of the middle class in development. For states, the burgeoning of the middle class not
only provides strong evidence of successful industrialization, but is also used to ensure
that the majority of the population believes in the promise of access to socioeconomic
mobility and future benefits (Fernandes 2006: xix). The creation of “hegemonic
aspirations” through economic modernization produces societal support for economic
reform (Fernandes and Heller 2006). Therefore, the absence of the middle classes in these
studies not only leaves an empowering social force politically and economically invisible,
but misses the role of an important social actor that can influence political configurations.
Diane Davis (2004) in her seminal work successfully bridges the gap between the
middle-class and developmental state literature by looking at how rural middle-class
discipline promotes state-directed economic development. Adopting a political-economic
49
approach, she seeks to find a particular political configuration between the state and the
middle class in East Asia and Latin America. She argues that the rural middle class’s
cultural embrace of and political support for austerity measures helped sustain the state’s
capacity to discipline capitalists and laborers. Not only does she provide a fresh
perspective by adding a class-embedded developmental pattern to existing state-centered
studies, she also brings in cultural aspects—specifically, the self-discipline of the middle
class—as important to sustaining and supporting particular developmental patterns. In
another piece, Davis (2010) also emphasizes the link between the state and middle-class
formation: the state as “the source of employment, as the institutional regulator of social
and economic policy, and as the site for expressing political preferences and channeling
political conflicts” (253). In many countries of the global south, she points out that states
and political institutions play a critical role in organizing interests or identities and
representing the middle classes vis-à-vis other classes (254).
Despite her new perspective and theoretical contributions, Davis’s work has some
limitations. First, she focuses solely on rural middle classes. However, most developing
countries had experienced rapid industrialization and seen the flow of the population
from rural to urban areas. Without considering changes of the urban sector and
population, it is difficult to grasp a complete picture of middle-class formation. Second,
by employing an institutionalist, political-economic approach, Davis underestimates the
role of cultural/discursive practices of both class and state. For example, though she
implies that certain middle-class values produced positive outcomes in East Asia, her
emphasis on material conditions ignores the fact that the middle class could be a carrier
of specific symbols or ethos that served to state goals. As Fernands (2006) points out,
50
“the rise of the new middle class is a cultural and normative political project because it
helps shape the terms of development and national identity” (xxvii). By embracing
particular cultural norms, the middle class could in fact shape the substantive content of
development.
Recent studies on the Chinese middle class complement with a predominant
political-economic approach in development. China anthropologists have drawn their
works from a Foucauldian perspective and highlighted how new forms of discourses form
a particular social subject and how they in turn serve to Chinese economic development
(Anagnost 2004, 2008; Ren 2010; Tomba 2009). All these works pay attention to the role
of suzhi (literally meaning quality) discourse and examine how suzhi became the key to
produce middle-classness vis-à-vis migrant factory workers and rural population.
Anagnost (2004) argues that the politics of suzhi produced and legitimated a hierarchical
social order along a division between mental and manual labor, that is, educated middle
class and uncivilized rural migrants (193). The emergence of the middle class body
embodying economic and cultural capital is distinguished from the “other” backward
subjects not having those values, while naturalizing and sustaining unequal relations
between the two. From a similar perspective, Tomba (2009) looks at how the rhetoric and
practices of the urban middle class contributed to strengthening the Chinese
governmental discourse of “building a harmonious society.” He argues that the middle
class embodying the values of autonomy and self-improvement becomes an exemplary
yardstick for social mobility, which, as a result, contributed to maintaining social order.
While Tomba focuses on how middle-class values serve to the maintenance of a
harmonious society, Ren (2010) focuses on the governing strategy of the neoliberal
51
Chinese state based on the middle class. Ren claims that the project of middle-class
formation is critical for the neoliberal Chinese state: self-governing middle-class
consumers-citizens help the state manage risks by making individuals take responsibility
of their own life-building. These case studies illuminate how governmental discourses in
China were successfully circulated through a particular social subject, the urban middle
class. Though it is obvious that the Chinese state is repressive, these studies demonstrate
another dimension of the Chinese state in addition to repressive or physical state power:
how the state employs different techniques of government. Through the urban middle
class, a responsible and autonomous social subject that reflects on the vision of the state,
the postsocialist Chinese state could enjoy remarkable social stability.
Studies on the relationship between the state and middle class in shaping a
development trajectory in Korea and China illustrate an interesting gap. While Korean
case studies adopt an institutional approach, Chinese studies heavily draw from
Foucault’s governmentality. In this dissertation, I will reconcile both the political
economic approach and cultural-anthropological approach. The mainstream study of
political economy has much to gain from a cultural approach that analyzes the social
construction of a group and political discourses which served to consolidate political
legitimacy in a time of social transformation. In similar vein, a cultural analysis will also
benefit from a discussion of socioeconomic conditions and institutional practices. The
making of a social class lies in the arena where objective socioeconomic factors and
subjective discursive practices are intersected. Furthermore, when considering both
socioeconomic conditions and discursive practices, middle class formation from above
and its reproduction from below can be fully explained. Specifically, I will focus on three
52
major factors shaping the rise of the urban middle class: institutional practices of the
state, dissemination of dominant discourses about the middle class, and the politics of
social distinction practiced by the middle class.
Middle Class Formation: A Top-Down Process
Institutional practices of the state
Any given nation state has important repercussions on the contours of class
formation: through implementation of specific state policies, the state might reinforce or
undermine specific economic conditions of particular occupational groups. Of course, the
developmental state literature has clearly made this point, though the policies they
analyzed were mostly limited to industrial policies.
One of the most crucial areas in which state intervention affects middle class
formation is the state’s role in educational provision (Savage et al. 1992:29). Educational
attainments and credentials are the key to get better jobs and to attain social status. In
contrast to Western countries where social-class background is the main determinant of
higher educational attainments, meritocracy was more dominant in both Korea and China
and thereby increased more opportunities for social mobility, which paved a path for
becoming middle class. In the early stage of development, many children of poor
peasants, who got high school or college education, could attain middle-class status with
the help of the expansion of primary education that the state provided.
The state can nurture the middle class by being an employer. Generally, in the
developing world, the state has historically functioned as the employer of first resort for
many, in part because it has played such a large role in building both markets and
53
institutions in newly independent countries (Davis 2010:254). State employment usually
comes with job security and pension benefits, even if it does not usually have higher
income compared with the private sector. Because of this, government employees usually
enjoy middle-class lifestyles. For example, China as a socialist country has a large
number of government employees despite the recent massive privatization. Though the
wages of state sector employees lower than those in the same rank of the private sector,
the perks of government employees make them enjoy lifestyles as comfortable as those in
the private sector.
Wage policy in the labor market also affects economic conditions of each social
group: the state has the ability to increase or decrease the differentials between the
professional middle class and other social groups. For example, heavy industrialization in
Korea promoted the rise of engineers and scientists through the provision of economic
rewards, while leaving most rank-and-file workers in miserable conditions. Similarly,
China witnessed the rise of professional workers in finance or the IT industry since
economic reform. Though market mechanisms influence wage differentials among
different occupational groups according to demand/supply principles, the state also plays
a vital role in shaping the wage structures (Logan and Bian 1996).
Another noteworthy state policy relates to the housing market. In China, housing
reform (privatization and sales of public housing) and the reform of neighborhood
institutions have contributed to the zoning of urban populations based on census counts
and consumption ability, which is different from the earlier cell-structured spatial pattern
organized around the work-unit (Tomba 2009). This change moved away from the utopia
of a “democratic” urban space divided into self-reliant work-units, to one where different
54
social groups concentrate in different parts of town. In Korea as well, urban
redevelopment plans initiated by the government produced a “progrowth coalition” of
local government, real estate developers, and homeowners in those areas. As a result of
this collective effort under the slogan of urban modernization, residential spaces and the
traditional social arrangement of cities have been radically transformed. These processes
will be explained in greater detail in chapter 5 and 6.
As Tomba (2009) points out, the creation of a new subject, the middle class does
not just happen spontaneously (p. 4). Instead, they are being engineered, stimulated and
rewarded, cuddled in the arms of economic opportunities provided by the state. This is
why we should pay attention to particular institutional practices of the state, which paved
the path to social mobility for particular groups of people.
Discursive production of the middle class
Though social classes are based on similar structural, material conditions, class
identity is not only from this material condition; it also comes from sharing similar
experience, ideas, dispositions, and attitudes. Historian D. S. Parker (1998) argues that
classes are products of the mind and a class identity requires a vision of what classes are
and what one’s own class looks like (9). He writes:
These ideas of class are invented constructs that serve ideological ends: they place
people in an imaginary hierarchy, exalting some and stigmatizing others, and they
negotiate the rule by which some people deem themselves better than the rest.
Ideas of class must compete for acceptance; they must appeal to those whom they
would unite by explaining reality in a convincing way. Like all ideas, ideas of
class have their producers and consumers. They may be created by intellectuals,
by opinion makers in the media, or by potential leaders hoping to build a base of
support (Parker 1998:9-10; emphasis in original).
55
As he points out, language and discourse about the class is as important as material
conditions in shaping a class identity. The questions arise are who is at stake in this
game? Who has the ability to constitute class identity? In developing countries, the state
and other kinds of authorities have the capacity to define, to debate, to name, and to
disseminate class.
By producing and appropriating official discourses about the middle class, the
states attempted to cultivate particular values of self-discipline and autonomy that would
eventually serve to modernity and national progress. In Korea, frugal and self-disciplined
middle class lifestyles were believed to break vicious cycles of destitution and achieve
national modernization. In China, the socially responsible and smartly consuming middle
class symbolized global competitiveness and Chinese civilization. By circulating these
specific ideal images of the middle class in mass media, including advertisements,
newspapers, magazines, and even academic debates, the state could successfully created
the middle class as a national representation. The middle class was discussed, touted,
imagined, and aspired throughout society.
The middle class as an ideal social subject in the time of social transformation
denounces traditional social bodies, such as factory workers in the Mao era and peasants
before the Park regime. While educated and cultured middle class citizens were believed
to be the yardstick to elevate the nation’s standing in the global economy, workers
dependent on the state in state-owned firms in China or uneducated and traditional
peasants were looked down on by the society as the target of being enlightened
(Anagnost 1997; Hsu 2007). These dominant discourses were circulated in society,
shared by ordinary people, thereby producing widespread aspirations for upward mobility.
56
Middle Class Formation: A Bottom-Up Process
Politics of social distinction practiced by the middle class
As E. P. Thompson (1966) puts it, collective experiences on a daily basis among
individuals lead to the formation of a “class.” While institutional practice and
developmental discourses make the social class from above, daily practices of the middle
class reproduce a social class from below. Once economic rewards and privileges are
endowed to specific social groups, the given social groups try to reproduce their own
benefits, refuse to include other social groups, and maintain the boundaries between
themselves and others through practicing social distinctions in daily life (Bourdieu 1984).
In this sense, the middle class formation arises from the process through which particular
groups of people form and articulate the identity among themselves, trying to exclude
other groups of people from their boundaries.
Human capital, rather than property, has long been the asset specific to the middle
class in Korea and China. The acquisition of a college degree or higher education
represented a primary means for entry to the middle class, a new elite social group that
was emerging distinct from traditional elites and other less privileged social groups. As a
vanguard of the new economy representing global competitiveness and innovation, the
middle class continues to secure its position through the strategic deployment of social
and cultural capital. Particularly, the urban spatial politics is the arena where we can see
the exclusionary class practice of the middle class. Local spatial practices are an instance
of a broader range of strategies, associational activities, and everyday politics that shape
middle class civic culture (Fernandes and Heller 2006:516). Middle-class homeowners
are concerned with keeping the real estate prices of their homes as valuable economic
57
assets and making their neighborhood segregated from bustle urban environments and all
kinds of urban crimes. Middle-class communities build high walls and mobilize security
systems (Caldeira 2001; Zhang 2010). These gate-keeping practices of the middle class
confront with the interests of migrant workers, the urban poor, or street vendors.
A politics of “spatial purification” (Sibley 1995) is based on middle class vision
over public spaces through building a cultured and beautified social space. In the name of
public order and civic culture, informal housing and urban squatters are demolished and
the urban poor, street vendors, and migrant workers are relocated. Alliance by social
actors with different, but corresponding interests produces the middle class-based vision
of a beautified, globalizing urban development: both the state and local government
trying to build a modern, globalized cityscape, developers gentrifying old neighborhoods
and making profit from constructing new buildings, and middle-class residents wanting to
live in aesthetic space without any signs of poverty and disorder. State and middle class
practices create the underpinnings of exclusionary models of urban development
targeting the marginalized groups such as the urban poor. Through daily class practices at
the local level, the middle class reproduces sociospatial distance from the urban poor and
working classes.
58
CHAPTER 3.
THE MAKING OF THE URBAN MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH KOREA (19611979): NATION-BUILDING, DISCIPLINE, AND THE BIRTH OF THE IDEAL
NATIONAL SUBJECTS
Introduction
In a 1966 press conference, the Korean government for the first time addressed
the importance of the middle class. This press conference was followed by heated debate
among intellectuals, politicians, and state officials about which members of society
should be considered “middle class.” They also debated how the middle class should
behave, what characteristics they possessed, and whether they should play a critical role
in Korean national modernization. Ironically, 1966 was long before Korean society
witnessed the rise of the middle class; the majority of the Korean population was destitute
and focused on rising out of poverty. One might ask, then, why did the state tackle this
issue at this time? How did the state recognize, just at the beginning of Korean
industrialization, that the middle class could and should become an important social
group? How did the state create middle-class discourse prior to the existence of the
middle class?
This chapter explores how the authoritarian Park Chung Hee regime (1961-1979)
created the urban middle class as the foundation of its hegemonic nation-building project
during the early stages of industrialization in Korea. The making of a middle class was
equated with the making of a nation—strong and modern. The making of a middle class
in a relatively classless society did not imply the appearance of social conflicts or
59
differentiations, as among other social classes. Instead, it meant ultimate social
homogenization: improving the overall standard of living of the entire nation. By contrast
with the “backward and humiliated” national past, the comfortable lifestyles and mass
consumption of the urban middle class represented the prosperous and modern nation.
This chapter argues that urban middle-class formation was a political-ideological
project of the authoritarian state to reconstruct the nation and strengthen the regime’s
political legitimacy. In this chapter, I am interested in illuminating the process through
which a specific class category of the “middle class” was formulated by the state: how
the middle class was framed by different groups of people, including the state, political
parties, intellectuals, and mass media; what kinds of discourses the state formed around
the middle class; what meanings and implications this class category carried; and how
middle-class discourse served to promote national modernization. This chapter draws
attention to the formation of the urban middle class as a cultural and ideological basis for
the state’s national vision of development and as an important source of societal support.
In the name of development and nation-building, the state could translate the ethos and
culture of the urban middle class, characterized by modernity and urbanity, into the entire
population so as to enhance state power.
New Nation Building for Realizing a National Dream
The historical legacy of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War was actually
advantageous for the Park regime in promoting new nation-building because it endowed
the state with considerable capacity to penetrate and control society. The American
military, which occupied the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 after Japanese
60
colonialism, made full use of the repressive state apparatuses of the colonial era in order
to counteract potential uprisings from communist organizations (Cumings 1981). Since
the Korean War, the confrontation between North and South Korea provided the latter
with a justification for enlarging its repressive apparatuses and armed forces. The threat
of a war in the Korean Peninsula allowed the state to mobilize all necessary human and
material resources from society in the name of national security. Furthermore, there were
absolutely no social groups who could challenge or resist the state’s industrial policy
since the land reform and the war had completely destroyed the landed upper class who
might have opposed capitalist industrialization (Choi 1996). These factors combined
provided a favorable climate for the Park regime, which did not encounter any resistance
and could implement policy autonomously. 5
The Rhee Syngman regime fell by April Student Uprising in 1960, one of the
most turbulent political events in Korea, which began with protests against Rhee’s
scheme to prolong his rule through rigged elections. Rhee’s ouster was followed by the
Chang Myon government, the nine months’ short interregnum, which was eventually
replaced by General Park Chung Hee’s military coup in 1961. Though the military coup
was not legitimate, it was relatively welcome by intellectuals, students, and ordinary
citizens. Both the Rhee and Chang government made ordinary people upset and frustrated
with politics, since corrupt and incapable politicians only focused on factional strife and
did not care about people’s livelihood. Particularly, the new Chang government was not
much different from the previous Rhee regime overthrown by student protests. Thus, this
5
These conditions might explain why Korea could be more successful in promoting
industrialization than its Latin American counterparts. There was a minimal degree of social
conflict and the entire population was roughly of the same social class. Because of this, the
Korean government faced relatively little social backlash in the course of industrialization.
61
made people distrust the government and politicians in general. What was worse was
economic situation around 1960. Inflation was serious: the price of rice had increased by
60 percent for four months from December 1960 to April 1961; the price of oil and coal
by 23 percent for the same period; GDP had decreased by 12 percent from November to
February (Hanguk Ilbo 1961.4.23.). Moreover, the unemployment rate had reached 23.4
percent in 1959 and 23.7 percent in 1960, respectively (ibid.). Peasants suffered from
extreme poverty. While people wanted to see radical reform, the political leaders did not
correspond with the political demand from below.
General Park Chung Hee came to power in 1961 through a military coup. Park
justified the coup as necessary to save the nation: it would eradicate corruption and social
evils and establish new and sound social morals (Supreme Council for National
Reconstruction 1961, title page). In the midst of economic crisis and political disorder,
Park emphasized that national survival required widespread and thorough social reform.
He compared his military revolution to an essential surgery to remove diseased flesh.
Park identified Korean history as one of reliance on and exploitation by others (Park
1962: 166). He believed that, because Korea had been a weak country, it had always been
vulnerable to military attacks and political intervention from other countries. Thirty-six
years’ Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, and the national division into two Koreas
had caused national humiliation. Park recognized that only strong leadership could fix the
prevailing problems, rebuild the state, and lead to national unification. To survive in the
midst of world powers like Japan, China, the U.S., and the Soviet Union, Park believed it
urgent to build a strong and modernized nation-state. This recognition appealed widely to
62
the entire population, including even liberal progressive students and intellectuals (Kim
Bohyun 2006; Kim Hyung-A 2004). 6
The construction of the new nation, including economic development and national
modernization, entailed two different but complementary projects: institutional reform
and spiritual revolution. The Park regime condemned the previous Rhee and Chang
regimes as incompetent and corrupt governments that took care of their own factional
interests and failed to improve people’s livelihood. The Park regime maintained that the
most imperative task was to build a social system resistant to corruption and inefficiency
that would lead to political stability, a new social order, economic development, and
ultimate victory against Communism (Park 1962: 164). In the beginning of Park’s rule,
he implemented a populist anti-corruption policy by imprisoning corrupt politicians,
army officers, and businessmen and regulating smuggling, the black market, dance clubs,
and prostitution (Park 1962: 92-95). Furthermore, prioritizing economic development, the
Park regime began in the early 1960s to spearhead export-oriented industrialization.
Instituting the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Economic Planning Board
composed of a number of technocrats, the Park regime tried to implement economic
policies efficiently (see Amsden 1989; Chibber 2003; Kohli 2004; Waldner 1999; WooCumings ed. 1999).
In parallel with this institutional reform, the Park regime also encouraged people
to change their mind-sets and attitudes, what Park called “spiritual revolution.” Park
6
What was interesting was that liberal, progressive intellectuals, even if they did not necessarily
agree on the military rule in Korea, viewed the current situation in a way similar to the military
group. For example, Ham Suk Hun, a respected public intellectual, recognized that factionalism
and toadyism were the biggest problems that made Korea fall behind and argued that revolution
was necessary to break through the prevailing problems. Though both liberal intellectuals and
military force had contrasting political orientations, they adopted the same language.
63
insisted that Korean history was nothing but a repetition of retrogression and depression
and that, because of this history, Koreans were lethargic and felt inferior to Western
countries (Shin 1970: 287). In order to overcome the sufferings of the backward and
shameful past, the Park regime aimed to create a new social body that was disciplined,
compliant, and enthusiastic about building a new nation-state. Park argued that the
people’s active engagement in state-promoted economic development would hasten
prosperity. Though reshuffling the institutional political system was important, even more
important was revamping the whole social structure, including people’s attitudes, in what
Park called the “revolution.” He believed that the ups and downs of a nation depended
completely on the mentality and willingness of the citizens trying to begin a new era. In
this logic, the new material wealth could be produced only after transforming society’s
value system and individuals’ thinking (Kim, Bohyun 2006: 130). Park called upon
people to undergo a “spiritual revolution” and develop “the spirit of self-government and
self-determination,” while avoiding melancholy, depression, and pessimism (Shin ibid:
286-290). Through slogans such as “Foundation of advanced Korea,” “Creating Korea in
the world,” “Pioneers who create tomorrow,” and “New vigor for modernization of the
fatherland,” the Park regime tried to disseminate hopeful messages and confidence (Baek
2004: 215-6). And through the National Reconstruction Movement (gukmin jaegŏn
undong) to mobilize youth groups, women’s associations, and other semiofficial
organizations, the Park regime also promoted a “self-help spirit,” the “elimination of
empty courtesies and rituals,” “rice saving,” and the “rationalization of living” (Garon
2006: 172). In this sense, Park’s national development project was a disciplinary
64
revolution since the state tried to impose new societal values and create new social
subjects to overcome the traditional and backward past.
As Gorski (2003) points out, the social discipline imposed by the Protestant
Reformation strongly influenced the formation of the European state. The same logic can
be applied to the Korean case. By creating more obedient and industrious subjects, the
state could manage its population with less coercion and violence. This is not to say that
the state was not repressive. Rather, through employing specific discourses, the state tried
to achieve its goals in a better and more efficient way. It exemplified not less domination
but “better domination,” borrowing Foucault’s term (Foucault 1977: 82). The problem
was how the state could effectively impose discipline on society. While the state targeted
the entire population, a particular “carrier” group—in this case, the middle class—helped
discipline extend more efficiently and deeply into the population (Gorski 1993, 270-1). In
Korea’s case, the state and intellectuals paid attention to the role of the middle class in
promoting national modernization as a disciplined and productive citizenry, an alternative
to backward and traditional peasants.
Discovery of the Middle Class
In the early 1960s, Korea was a completely agricultural country with more than
half its population living as farmers in rural areas. For the state, which saw
industrialization as the path to national modernization, this largely agrarian economic
structure had to be transformed. Traditional peasants, who made up the majority of the
population and symbolized traditional society, could not be the future of the Korean
industrial nation. The state needed a new and progressive social body to represent a new,
65
modern nation-state. Many intellectuals participated in this modernization project by
producing discourses on development and modernization. Though some liberal
intellectuals were critical of the Park regime’s dictatorship, they did not disagree with its
overall image of national modernization (Kim, Bohyun 2006). Instead, a number of
intellectuals, including university professors and journalists, actively engaged in
discourse about national modernization and modern citizenship in the new Korea. 7 In the
mid-1960s, progressive intellectuals were concerned that Koreans’ own culture was
subordinate to the strong influence of Japanese culture (Sasanggye, May 1965). Both the
state and the intellectual circle agreed that the colonial mentality had to be overcome
through national modernization and economic development. Intellectuals believed that
the rise of the middle class would enlighten the rest of society and develop Korea’s own
culture in opposition to commercial and foreign concerns (Sasanggye, May 1965).
In 1966, the state and political parties began seriously to address the issues around
the middle class. The opposition party first paid attention to the middle class
(jungsanchŭng) in a speech in early 1966 by arguing that the growth of the middle class
was an urgent issue. Through this speech, the leader of People’s Party (Minjungdang)
asserted that, since the middle class was the driving force for democracy and national
unification, protecting and serving the economic interests of the middle class should be of
primary concern (Joongang Ilbo, Jan. 21, 1966). The middle class they referred to meant
small-scale merchants, mid-scale farmers, salary men and intellectuals.
7
Eun Heo (2007) argues that two different groups of intellectuals were engaged in molding the
discourse of national modernization supported by the state: traditional-conservative and liberalpro-American intellectuals. The former group, a strong supporter of the Park regime, emphasized
national identity and patriotism. The latter group, most of whom studied abroad, emphasized
moral and modern citizenship in nation-building. Despite the different ideological-political
orientations of these two groups, they both supported anti-communism.
66
Similarly, the ruling Democratic Republican Party (Minjugonghwadang) also
tried to embrace the interests of the middle class. By promoting a social welfare system
and supporting small- and mid-sized firms, the DRP argued that it had nurtured the
middle class (Chosun Ilbo, Jan. 28, 1966). This “middle-class” debate between the ruling
and opposition parties grew into debates among social scientists in newspapers and
intellectual magazines dealing with such issues as how to restructure industries to foster
the growth of the middle class, the role of the middle class in modernization, and the
definition of the middle class itself (Chosun Ilbo 1966; Joongang Ilbo 1966; Chŏngmaek
1966; Jŏngkyŏng Yŏngu 1966). The definitions proposed by intellectuals varied widely,
as did the strategies put forward for development of the middle class. Despite the
different ideological and political orientations of each scholar, consensus was reached
that the middle class needed to grow and should be expanded in order to promote
modernization and social stability.
Many scholars emphasized the role of the middle class as central in reconstructing
and building the new Korea. Both the upper and lower classes, by their very nature, were
dangerous candidates as carriers of nationalism and national identity: the upper class
could potentially ally with foreign powers in promoting market expansion to serve its
self-interest, while the uneducated and poor lower class might easily be agitated by
communist rhetoric (Chosun Ilbo, Oct. 27, 1966; Go, Y. 1966). Instead, the middle class
was perceived as capable of unwavering nationalism, avoiding both communism and
economic colonialism (Cha 1965). According to these scholars, the middle class was an
ideal social body to build a new nation with moderate political orientation and rational
thinking:
67
In our society, which social group is the one that can promote national
independence and unification, pursue both freedom and equality, and negotiate
between tradition and reform? The upper class would prefer freedom to equality,
whereas the lower class would appreciate equality more than freedom. Given that
the upper class in Korea depends on or is allied with foreign powers, nationalism
supported by the upper class might easily lead to toadyism. On the other hand,
nationalism supported by the lower classes might be too radical: since they are
ignorant and not socially mature, they might sympathize with communism. From
these facts, we can conclude that the carrier of Korean nationalism should be the
middle class. Facing an urgent situation under which we must increase productive
power and build a welfare state as fast as we can, we should recognize that neither
upper nor lower class can promote national modernization. As the group that can
represent the majority of the Korean population, the middle class can contribute to
creation of nationalism by which every member of society can be unified (Go, Y.
1966, 130-33).
Furthermore, the middle class could lead a “quiet revolution” that would reduce social
inequality and build a wealthy nation by strengthening social stability:
The middle class has the potential to be hard-working and high-quality citizens.
They are not bound by short-term self-interest, like the ruling elites, and they can
foresee given situations with rational reasoning better than the working class does.
We should disseminate these characteristics of good citizenship through our entire
society. Through the nurture and growth of middle-class values and improvement
of their socioeconomic conditions, we will reach national modernization. The
middle class, which is increasing through the creation of enormous corporations
and the expansion of government activities, is a product of modernization, and at
the same time it is the promoter of modernization as well (Kim, Chaeyoon.
Chosun Ilbo, Jan. 28, 1966).
The middle class, a good citizenry (as many intellectuals pointed out), could also serve
the interests of the authoritarian state. This good citizenry would serve the state’s aims of
national modernization through their everyday industriousness. More importantly, they
were politically docile, willing to endure sacrifice and hardship for the sake of national
gain without challenging the authoritarian order. 8 Intellectuals and the state believed that
8
This meant a certain work ethic where workers were required to work hard without any
complaints about low wages and long work hours. Workers’ demands for higher wages or shorter
working hours were interpreted as obstacles that delayed modernization of the fatherland.
68
the middle class, with rational reasoning, would have little incentive to advocate
communism or radical social reform. Thus the middle class would stably maintain the
existing social order. In sum, the middle class was interpellated by the state and
intellectuals as a new social body that would contribute to the nation-building project.
The socially responsible and politically compliant middle class was an ideal partner for
the authoritarian state, which wanted to spearhead rapid economic growth without
disrupting social stability. By defining the middle class as possessing such characteristics
as self-discipline and civility, the state attempted to facilitate its national vision of
development and modernization through its middle-class subjects.
In fact, this characterization of the middle class as a mainstream force was far
from the objective case in 1960s Korea. Not only was the creation of occupational groups
like professionals, managers, and white-collar workers in its infancy, but most people
were struggling just to meet the basic necessities of daily life. United Nations reports
classified South Korea as among the world’s poorest countries, and the average percapita annual income was less than U.S. $150 (United Nations 1962). In this sense,
discussions of the growth of the middle class reflected wishful thinking by the state and
intellectuals. However, the payoff of the 1960s middle-class debate was the
popularization of the term “middle class” and the conveyance of hopeful messages of
economic development and modernization. The term “middle class” embodied images of
the modern and affluent nation. It also delivered new images of comfortable lifestyles as
the national standard for all Koreans in the near future.
Therefore, labor disputes or political demonstrations were branded as unpatriotic and even procommunist. The government claimed that such actions could lead to social instability and make
the country vulnerable to military attack from North Korea.
69
Heavy and Chemical Industrialization (HCI) Drive and the Rise of Salary Men
While official discourses about the middle class created abstract visions of what
this class should be, state industrial policies led directly to the actual growth of a new
urban middle class. In particular, the formation of the middle class in Korea paralleled the
1970s HCI drive and the expansion of chaebols, large family-owned business
conglomerates. The transformation of economic policy from light toward heavy industry
created an alliance between the state and chaebols that led to the employment of a large
number of white-collar workers with high incomes and substantial benefits. Though
Korea’s 1960s success in exports was based on light industries such as textiles and wigs,
Park Chung Hee did not want to be known as the leader of a nation that flourished by
exporting wigs, plywood, cotton fabrics, and knitwear (Clifford 1998: 58). Instead, he
believed that economic development should be based on heavy industries like steel and
machinery. For Park, promoting heavy industry was synonymous with building a selfsufficient economy, modernization of the fatherland, and national revival, and this led to
his emphasis on HCI as a developmental model. The nurturance of engineers and
technicians, the leaders of modernization of the fatherland, was an important policy of the
Park regime. Thus, the regime’s promotion of HCI led to the expansion of the science
and technology sectors and the rise of armies of engineers and high-skilled workers.
In the 1970s, Park Chung Hee’s Heavy Industrialization Plan paralleled the
growth of chaebols. In this period, Park favored key business groups, particularly
Hyundai and Daewoo, because of their willingness to invest in heavy industry (Clifford
1998: 113; Kim, E. 1997). Since heavy industry was capital-intensive by nature, small- or
medium-sized firms found it difficult to compete against the larger chaebols. Chaebols
70
also benefited from aggressive state policies of corporate growth using the “investment
license,” which granted corporations monopolies over particular commodities (Lie 1998:
92). Furthermore, chaebols enjoyed better access to capital at subsidized interest rates and
benefited from tax and trade policies. This chaebol-favoring state policy boosted big
businesses’ share of the national economy. In 1974, sales of the ten biggest business
groups were equivalent to 15 percent of the GNP. By 1980, however, this share had
increased to nearly half, and by 1984 it grew to more than two-thirds (Lie 1998: 91). The
rapid growth of chaebols also affected the Korean labor market as the corporations
launched massive recruiting drives. In the 1960s, the educational elites had entered
government service, but by the 1970s business attracted increasing numbers of top-flight
graduates (Clifford 1998: 124).
In 1968, Park emphasized the role of engineers and technicians in economic
development:
In the late 20th century, the nation whose scientific technology develops will
dominate the world. It is a common sense that the relationship between economic
development and technological innovation is indivisible. Particularly, highlyskilled workers are the driving force of economic development. Without
technological development, we also cannot defend our country. Engineers and
technicians are the arms and the shields of the country. From this perspective, we
should spur science and technology development (Park Chung Hee 1968
conference speech, quoted from Oh 1999: 90).
This state vision of development also transformed a traditional view about occupations.
While farmers were respected and craftsmen or artisans were despised in the past,
farmers were not respected any longer. Engineers and technicians were the new groups
that the state started to appreciate. In fact, the government provided a number of
71
incentives with scientists and engineers as it thought they were the driving force of
national modernization. Clifford explains:
Park also helped engineer an extremely unusual reverse brain drain. Thousands of
Koreans had emigrated to the United States, or had gone for graduate training and
simply not returned. A master list let Park know where they all were. When he
decided that most scientists were needed, he lured them back to the motherland
with attractive packages. They wanted housing, cars, schools, and salaries
competitive with what they were making overseas. Park saw that they got all of
what they asked for. This is how the Korea Institute of Science and Technology
(KIST) was built in the 1970s and how Postech (Pohang University of Science
and Technology) was built in the 1980s. The top ranks of South Korean industry
are filled with men who studied—and often worked—abroad, at some of the best
universities and biggest corporations in the United States. (Clifford 1998: 110)
Not only did the state nurture higher education in science and engineering, but it
also established a number of technical high schools to produce a huge group of technical
experts (Oh, Woncheol 1999). These people majoring in science and engineering could
easily get good jobs and salaries in big firms. Some statistics prove this fact. For example,
among Seoul National University’s graduates in 1967, the rates of employment in science
and engineering were much higher than others. The employment rate among people
majoring in engineering was 100 percent (Yeowon 1968, Mar.). Their salaries were 23000 won higher than those of humanities and social sciences. For this reason, scientists
and engineers were the most popular occupations of potential husbands among female
college students (Yeowon 1968, Mar.). Along with professionals and mid-level managers,
engineers as economic warriors had become the occupation in the limelight with the
departure of Heavy Industry Promotion.
Many scholars have confirmed that Korea’s state-directed industrial development
brought about a significant rise of salaried managers and engineers (Amsden 1989; Koo
1991). In contrast to other developing countries, the increase of white-collar workers in
Korea resulted from the growth of the private sector. During the two decades between
72
1963 and 1983, there was a rapid increase in the numbers of professional, managerial,
and clerical workers (not including sales employees), from 6.7 percent to 16.6 percent of
the entire workforce (Koo ibid., 485). During the same period, the number of engineers
increased tenfold and that of managers doubled (Amsden ibid., 171).
Table 3. 1. Managerial Resources in the Manufacturing Sector, 1960-1980
Employment Category
1960
1970
1980
Engineers
Managers
Sales
Service
Clerical
Production
Total
Administrativea/Production
Administrative,
clerical/Production
4,425
31,350
5,025
13,660
17,330
404,735
479,735
0.13
0.18
16,252
47,166
27,778
22,740
143,849
1,188,406
1,447,520
0.10
0.22
44,999
69,585
68,716
49,522
356,362
2,206,851
2,797,030
0.10
0.27
Increase
1980/1960
10.2
2.2
13.7
3.6
20.6
5.4
5.8
---
a
includes engineers, managers, sales, and service workers.
Source: Korean Institute for Educational Development (1983), as cited in Amsden (1989).
And as the number of managers and engineers grew, so did their economic
rewards. On average, between 1972 and 1980, managers (including engineers) earned
about four times more than production workers (Ministry of Labor, various years).
Moreover, white-collar workers’ wages were twice as much as production workers’.
While production workers occupied more than 70 percent of total employment in
manufacturing, their wages were at the bottom along with service workers. This wage
gap is stunning when compared with other advanced countries such the US and Japan.
The wage gap between managers and production workers in the US is not as wide as that
of Korea (on average, the wages of manager were 1.79 times higher than those of
production workers).
73
Table 3. 2. Relative Monthly Earnings by Occupation, 1971-1984
Year
Technicians
1971
1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
280
253
266
271
256
230
241
Earnings (won/month)
Clerical
Managers
Salesmen
Workers
428
243
140
406
206
151
458
215
123
439
206
131
436
176
107
367
163
96
343
155
129
Service
Men
107
99
104
100
97
100
101
Production
Workers
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
Source: Ministry of Labor, Yearbook of Labor Statistics, 1972-1985.
While national social welfare spending was less than one percent of GNP in
Korea, the social welfare benefits that white-collar workers and government employees
received through their employers were substantial. Since state provision of universal
social welfare benefits did not exist in the 1970s, all benefits were employer-provided.
The benefits received by white-collar workers included housing loans, retirement benefits,
and subsidies for their children’s tuition as well as health insurance. Though governmentemployee incomes were not as high as in the private-sector, they had relatively good
welfare benefits, resulting from state initiatives to transfer the burden of welfare
provision to enterprises. However, small- or mid-sized firms were unable to provide these
extensive benefits to their employees; only big enterprises could do so. Thus not only did
chaebols employ many high-skilled workers, including managers and engineers, but they
provided employees with income and security both.
The actual increase of educated middle-class employees, including engineers and
technicians, symbolized national development. Not only did they increase domestic
production through their hard work and dedication, but they earned foreign currencies
abroad by building infrastructures in Middle East and North Africa. By showcasing their
74
technological excellence and disciplined workforce, these high-skill workers served as
“industrial warriors” who enhanced Korea’s global position.
Enforced Social Disciplines as Embodied in Middle-Class Women
While the middle-class workers, mostly engineers and white-collar employees,
promoted industrialization in the sphere of paid work, housewives had to support their
hard-working husbands in the domestic sphere by practicing frugal lifestyles and
managing household finance. A high-skilled worker contributing to the national economy
paired with a housewife practicing thrift and austerity at home epitomized an ideal
national subjectivity as a middle-class family. This economically efficient and productive
social body would allow the national economy to prosper.
Throughout the course of industrialization, the state emphasized discipline in
everyday life. By frequently citing Germany’s rehabilitation as an exemplar, 9 Park
claimed that Koreans should also endure long years of diligence, economy, patience, and
unity for national glory, just as the Germans had done (Shin 1970: 20):
They did not eat or dress well through a solemn determination to rebuild Germany
again. Housewives saved cloth by cutting another inch from their skirts. To save
matches, only when three met together did they light a match. Workers once
resolved not to strike until the day of the rehabilitation of the German economy,
and not to raise their own salaries until their factory became healthy. Germans ate
very frugal food even after economic rehabilitation, and invested their savings for
production and construction. (Shin ibid: 25)
Thus discipline, both economic and political, was regarded as a patriotic act that could
contribute to national reconstruction. Frugality was essential for the welfare of the nation
9
Instead of citing Meiji Japan as a model of development, the former Manchurian military general
Park used Germany as the official example that Korea should follow. This was due to the antiJapanese feelings that ordinary people shared as a result of Japanese colonialism.
75
as well as of each household. Park emphasized that frugality as a proper manner of living
was not so much an end in itself as a strategy for achieving abundance (Nelson 2000:
150). Austerity and frugality in everyday life were portrayed as precious values that
would lead to rapid economic development; extravagance and luxury were regarded as
social evils to be abolished. Though it was true that the majority of the population
struggled to meet daily necessities, the Park regime always condemned conspicuous
consumption as if it were a serious social problem. Excessive consumption was
consistently linked with moral decay and unpatriotic acts and became in itself an object
of blame.
In fact, most of Koreans’ lives were distant from luxury and rather they lived
extremely austere lives. Ordinary products such as color TVs, imported autos, chocolates,
and cigarettes, which eased life for the ruling elites in other countries, were even not
easily available in Korea (Clifford 1998:130). Clifford introduces one banker’s remark
about disciplinary Korean lifestyles in his book:
There wasn’t any neon. [It was illegal.] There were black cars, no shop lights,
very dingy street lights and traffic lights. The midnight curfew really ordered
people’s lives. If you lived in the suburbs of Seoul and you hadn’t caught a cab by
10:30 you wouldn’t get home. The whole scale was quite different. You didn’t see
many vehicles. To drive your own car was an extremely exotic thing to do.
(Clifford 1998:130)
Through political campaigns and propaganda, the state extolled the values of thrift,
austerity, and discipline. In 1969, President Park created within the Bank of Korea the
Central Council of Savings Promotion, which sought to promote a “voluntary savings
movement” and the people’s “enlightenment in the spirit of thrift” (Garon 2006: 173).
These national campaigns were strongly gender-based, chiefly targeting women in charge
76
of household finance, i.e. middle-class women. By contrast, extravagant upper-class
women and traditional rural women were the targets of state discipline. In the state’s
logic, these two social groups, which had not undergone “spiritual revolution,” were the
ones delaying national modernization.
Upper-class women, the consumers of foreign cosmetics, luxurious furniture, and
high-end clothing, were criticized by the state and intellectuals as self-indulgent and
extravagant, damaging to the Korean economy. Women who preferred Japanese products
were criticized for their lack of austerity and patriotism. Consumption of foreign
cosmetics was an immoral and unpatriotic act that would make the Korean economy
vulnerable to Japanese or Western infiltration (Yŏwon, September, 1965). And
extravagance was viewed as not merely an upper-class problem: the Park regime also
portrayed consumption habits in rural areas as unnecessarily extravagant, claiming that
most rural households wasted money on unnecessary traditional customs such as wedding
ceremonies, funerals, and ancestor worship. The government actively suppressed what it
viewed as excessive consumption by implementing in 1969 the Family and Ritual Code
(Nelson 2000), for example, banning wedding invitations and also encouraging the
simplification of other ceremonies. Moreover, large families were regarded as a barrier to
sustaining economic growth. Through fertility control and family planning programs,
these undisciplined and uncivilized women with many children were a prime target for
disciplinary apparatus. Only when these unproductive and inefficient behaviors were
eradicated, Park believed, would economic development finally be achieved.
Ultimately, the state and mass media identified middle-class housewives as the
agents who would introduce the disciplined lifestyle into their households and society as
77
a whole. Middle-class housewives were to play both economic and moral roles. First, the
frugal and intelligent middle-class housewives, in contrast with extravagant upper-class
women and unenlightened rural women, were believed to manage the household
economy rationally, which was the key to national economic development. The role of a
wise and rational housewife in managing her household to save money and accumulate
wealth was considered critical in constructing a self-sustaining national economy. By
practicing this exacting economic life, housewives became advocates of state-sponsored
economic development. Popular women’s magazines often featured articles promoting
economical and wise middle-class housewives as desirable modern women (Yŏsŏng
Donga, Yŏwon, various years). Leading magazines published housewives’ stories about
how they achieved “frugal lifestyles.” Educated middle-class housewives knew how to
save money and to manage the household finances rationally. By paying attention to
small, almost negligible things, such as electricity and water costs, they could cut
unnecessary expenses.
Many articles in these magazines also described how ordinary housewives could
purchase their own homes by living frugally and saving money. A number of articles in
popular women’s magazines wrote of frugal middle-class housewives who became
homeowners after pinching pennies for a few years. Except for basic living expenses,
young wives of white-collar workers or engineers usually put aside most of their
husband’s income in savings accounts or gye (rotating credit associations). 10 Step by step,
10
Usually translated as rotating credit associations, gye generally involved members making
contributions to a common fund and then each taking a turn in using the funds. Although most
people would claim that the primary reason they belonged to a gye was social, there were usually
economic benefits as well. People would participate in various gye in order to receive a lump sum
of money for a special event, such as a child’s wedding, buying a home, taking a trip, or starting a
78
they approached their long-held goal of home ownership. Women’s wisdom in running a
household on a meager income was considered vital in creating household wealth.
The most common money-saving strategy that “exemplary” housewives
recommended was to keep a daily written record in a household account book. In 1967,
state officials formed the Women’s Central Council for Savings Life (Yŏsŏng
Jŏchuksaenghwal Junganghoi), incorporating some twenty women’s associations (Garon
2006: 174), and launched a campaign encouraging housewives to keep a household
account book (gagyebu) on a regular basis. By fastidiously tracking all household
expenses, a housewife could carefully analyze her consumption patterns and trim
unnecessary expense. The household account book was a crucial tool in motivating
households to contain consumption and increase savings. With government support, some
women’s magazines held an annual competition for women’s household account books
and even published the best one. These officially recognized “good housewives” not only
meticulously recorded everything they spent in the household account books, but they
also put aside almost 30 percent of their monthly income in savings (Yŏwon, various
years). Printing and publicizing these private household account books made these “good
housewives” into leading examples for other women. As a result of political campaigns
urging Koreans to save money and adopt frugal lifestyles, the saving rate in Korea
became extremely high compared with other developing countries (Kohli 2009). Personal
saving rates steadily increased in the 1960s and by1979 reached 22.2 percent (Korean
National Statistical Office 1998), showing the considerable success of the state’s
campaign to normalize the practice of saving.
business. These gye tended to dissolve after one or two years when everyone had had his or her
turn at receiving a lump sum (Lett 1998: 71).
79
Middle-class housewives also epitomized “moral” modern women. While the
husband worked abroad as an engineer or technician to earn foreign currency, a middleclass housewife had to save as well as take care of housework without wasting money or
cheating on her husband (Kim Yerim 2007: 361-2). In doing this, the middle-class
housewife could practice patriotism: her domestic commitment allowed her husband to
dedicate himself to work without any worries. As a strong advocate of “sweet homes,”
the middle-class housewife was distinct from “debauched” women who abandoned their
families. Given that the divorce rates were particularly increasing among couples whose
male partners worked abroad, it was the “normal” middle-class housewives who
sacrificed themselves in order to maintain happy families. These images were also
differentiated from uneducated and poor factory or domestic workers, who were seen as
ignorant and sexually depraved. Often in the movies, housemaids were portrayed as
dangerous and wicked, as home wreckers who seduced their landlords (e.g. The
Housemaid 1960). By contrast, the middle-class landlady (wife) was represented as a
good housewife and wise mother trying to protect her family; suffering the loss of her
husband, she was an innocent victim of the wicked housemaid.
In sum, the state and mass media imposed social discipline on middle-class
women and reproduced it through the body of middle-class women. On the one hand,
educated middle-class housewives had to manage the household economy wisely through
rational consumption and savings that would ultimately contribute to the national
economy. Writing household account books, saving money, and living frugally were
described as waging a war in the domestic sphere. While middle-class housewives were
called upon by the state to actively engage in economic activities, they also had to be
80
traditional women in their domestic lives, loyal wives and wise mothers who did not
disrupt family life. By circulating images of middle-class women as frugal and moral
housewives, the state successfully turned middle-class women into ideal social subjects
embodying the virtues of discipline and austerity that would lead to national wealth and
prosperity.
Living a “Modern” and “Cultured” Life
The middle class represented not only idealized productive, ascetic lifestyles, both
at home and work, but also symbolized improved living standards and national affluence
through images of home electric appliances and leisure activities. In fact, from the time
that the government implemented the Five-Year Plan of Economic Development in 1962,
Korea saw remarkable economic growth. Per-capita GNP per capita rose from $82 in
1961 to $266 in 1970, an average annual growth rate of 12.6 percent (Economic Planning
Board 1978). The most remarkable growth was in exports, which grew from $10 million
in 1964 to $10 billion in 1978 (ibid.) This rapid economic growth also transformed the
urban landscape into high-rise buildings and apartment complexes, further visual symbols
of the modern middle-class lifestyle.
From the 1960s onward, the government supported apartment construction in
order to relieve the lack of housing. Though the government also encouraged apartment
construction for the lower classes, housing for them was mostly shoddy buildings. By
contrast, “middle-class apartments” with better facilities located in better neighborhoods
were built with the support of the city government of Seoul. The mayor of Seoul
announced in 1966 that the city government would build 40,000 apartment buildings for
81
the middle class (Joongang Ilbo, May 25, 1966). Residents in these new apartments were
mostly young, educated white-collar families. According to the statistics, more than half
were college educated and working at business firms, government, and schools. 11 Even if
not rich, they had stable incomes (Kim, Ok-seok. 1967). Because the urban middle class
made up the majority of apartment residents, apartments and apartment living were
automatically linked with images of the middle class and its cultured modern lifestyle.
These modern apartments replaced old kitchens and dirty toilets with convenient,
sanitary ones. They were also located in environments equipped with supermarkets,
parking lots, and children’s parks. While conventional Korean-style houses (hanok)
represented a traditional way of life with an outdoor kitchen and toilet, the newly built
apartments guaranteed the privacy of each family member. New apartments incorporated
indoor kitchens and bathrooms with the convenience of electricity, cooking gas, and
running water. New apartment complexes became a symbol of modernity and the new
culture of the middle class:
Compared with our traditional and old houses, the apartment seemed much more
cultured and even romantic. Whereas our traditional houses did not guarantee any
privacy for big families, apartments meant freedom and modernity. Residents are
usually so-called intellectuals, not factory workers or the poor. In contrast to
maintaining a traditional lifestyle in a house that has not been improved since the
premodern period, apartments with gas, hot water, electricity, phones, and
mannered neighbors symbolize culture and civilization (Kim, Jinman. 1963: 61,
emphasis added).
As factories symbolized industrial development, apartment buildings embodied urbanity
and modernity. Moreover, living in an apartment also represented a revolution in lifestyle
11
According to a survey conducted by the Korean Housing Corporation (Kim, Ok-seok. 1967), 73
percent of apartment residents were college educated. In occupation, 35 percent were ordinary
white-collar workers, 11 percent were government employees, and 11 percent were teachers or
staff at schools.
82
that improved the quality of life by heightening energy efficiency and liberating
housewives from unnecessary labor. After moving into a new apartment, one housewife
reported:
[s]leeping in the bed is much more comfortable than on the floor. Since the inside
temperature is always around 22°C, we do not need to wear a lot of clothes in the
apartment. It is also possible to use hot water whenever I want. Furthermore, the
heating system runs on oil instead of briquettes, so I do not need to worry about
coal poisoning. I do not need to hire housemaids to help do chores around the
house, and going out is really convenient as the apartment is watched by a guard
(Chosun Ilbo, Dec. 11, 1970).
As pointed out by many apartment-dwelling housewives, the biggest advantage of
apartment living was the convenient lifestyle. They did not need to worry about the
security of their homes or coal poisoning and, because they could get on without hired
help, they actually cut household expenses. Furthermore, apartments were much easier to
keep clean than other kinds of housing. As modern apartments were not heated by coal
briquettes, they did not have the same storage and dust problems (Lett 1998: 116). In
contrast to other kinds of housing, which were dark and dingy, middle-class modern
apartments were bright and clean (Lett ibid.). The convenience and cleanliness of living
in apartments rather than traditional housing became associated with modernity and
became more popular among the well-to-do. In 1964, when construction of the Mapo
apartment complex was completed, Park gave a speech asserting that modern apartments
were instruments of national modernization, an alternative to the old feudal system and
rural backwardness (Gelézeau 2007: 130).
Living in modern apartments also meant using modern household goods, such as
refrigerators, stoves, and televisions. The washing machine, the refrigerator, and the
83
black-and-white TV, called “the three sacred treasures (samsin’gi),” 12 symbolized from
the late 1960s the revolutionized daily lifestyles of domestic electrification and mass
consumption. This expression became a symbol for validating the identity of the
individual household as a “modern family” (Yoshimi 2006: 77). Although these electric
appliances were quite expensive for an ordinary family at that time, they rapidly entered
Korean homes, especially those of urban middle-class families. According to a 1978
newspaper survey whose respondents were long-term (more than 10 years) employees in
government, banks, and business firms, every respondent had television sets at home; 96
percent of respondents owned refrigerators; 64 percent owned washing machines; 42.7
percent owned pianos; and 2.7 percent owned cars (Kyunghyang Shinmun, Nov. 17,
1978). And what were luxury items in the 1960s, such as televisions, refrigerators, and
washing machines, became more common among urban middle-class families throughout
the 1970s. For example, while in the 1960s television sets were yet the luxury among
urban households, they became more universal in the 1970s and 1980s. As seen in the
Table 3.3 below, in 1970, less than 5 percent of urban households had refrigerators, a
proportion that jumped to roughly 50 percent by 1980. There were no washing machines
in 1970, less than 2 percent owned them in 1975, and by 1985 about 33 percent of the
households owned washing machines. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, having these
consumer goods became more universal and common, and this phenomenon became
national.
12
This phrase was originally introduced in Japan in the 1950s. Inspired by high economic growth
and rapid increase in ownership of home electric appliances in Japan during the post-war period,
Korean intellectuals used this phrase frequently (see Lee, Jongsu. 1967).
84
Table 3. 3. Ownership Rates of Major Household Goods (by household)
TV
Year
1970
1975
1980
1985
Whole
Country
6.4 %
30.2%
86.7%
99.1%
Cities
14.5%
44.4%
90.9%
99.5%
TELEPHONE
Whole
Country
4.8%
9.6%
24.1%
48.7%
REFRIGERATOR
Cities
Whole Country
Cities
8.9%
13.5%
30.3%
56.3%
2.2%
6.5%
37.8%
71.1%
4.6%
11.7%
51.5%
78.7%
WASHING
MACHINE
Whole
Country
1.0%
10.4%
26.0%
Cities
1.9%
16.1%
33.7%
Sources: National Statistical Office, Population and Housing Census, citied from
Nelson 2000 (87).
The increasing availability of these household durables provided strong evidence
that not only was consumerism emerging as a way of life, but also that the extreme
poverty of the early 1960s had dramatically decreased. Remarks in the mass media about
the increasing use of modern household goods demonstrated both the social and cultural
prominence of the urban middle class and the prevalence of consumer culture. While in
the official discourse of the 1960s the urban middle class contributed to national
modernization by its frugality and discipline, in the 1970s it again became the nation’s
savior through its consumerism and adoption of the cultured, modern lifestyle.
Aspirations to the Middle Class
Although the image of the urban middle-class and its comfortable lifestyle
signified a bright side of high economic growth in Korea, the majority of factory workers
still suffered from low wages and long working hours under miserable conditions.
Industrialization led to expansion of the whole economy over these two decades, but the
benefits of economic expansion were far from equally distributed. It is well known that
Korean workers were subject to extreme capitalist exploitation, forced to work long hours
and paid low wages. Korean workers worked the longest hours in the world: 52.3 hours a
85
week in 1970, up from 50.3 hours a week in 1960. However, wages did not keep pace
with the increase in hours. In 1970, average monthly wages had grown to only $45.16
from $35.85 in 1960 (Kim, E. 1997: 122-3). Though the government trumpeted the rapid
increase in real wages during these two decades—around a 10 percent increase in annual
real wages in the 1970s alone (Choi 1997: 332)—the wage increase of production
workers resulting from rapid economic growth was extremely small. Nonetheless,
throughout the Park regime, there were no signs of massive worker resistance (Choi
1997). 13 While the repressive regime had tight control over labor, this authoritarian state
promised such ordinary workers upward mobility and improved living standards after
they suffered pain and sacrifice in the short term. By emphasizing the trickle-down effect,
the state and intellectuals argued that the growth of national wealth would in the end
benefit the entire population evenly (Lim 1973: 60). The slim hope of upward mobility
and exit from miserable work conditions sustained factory workers living in poverty. 14
Despite rising social inequality, the increased consumption of leisure and new household
commodities by the small but growing middle class symbolized what modern life could
be for those not yet a part of it. The rapid increase in real wages during the two decades
of industrialization seemed to promise them middle-class lifestyles in the near future.
13
Hagen Koo argues that educational ideology has been a powerful tool to justify the
mistreatment of workers: lack of education was associated with being inferior and thus
undeserving of decent treatment. Even workers who struggled with social discrimination were
always self-conscious about their lower educational attainments. Most factory workers expressed
a strong desire to “exit” their current situations by talking about their factory employment as a
temporary phase in their lives (Koo 2001: 134). The strong association of images of dirty or lowstatus work with factory workers prevented these workers from developing a working-class
identity; instead, they invested in individual improvement, attending night school to acquire
cultural skills in order to dissociate themselves from the stereotypical images of factory workers.
14
Borrowing Hirschman (1970)’s concept, Koo argues that, while “exit” options were prevalent
among workers in the 1960s and 1970s, workers started to voice their rights only later in the
1970s. Supported by church organizations and student movement groups, workers were able to
form a class identity and challenge the injustice and discrimination they had experienced.
86
Images of the urban middle class played a dual role in accomplishing state aims.
On the one hand, the urban middle class served to disseminate official state ideology
through images of the frugal, disciplined, and self-reliant middle-class lifestyle. On the
other hand, this middle class also created consumerist dreams through its use of consumer
and leisure goods, which showcased the improved living standards and bolstered the
regime’s political legitimacy. Although the state and some intellectuals were concerned
with excessive middle-class consumption, widespread consumption of the latest scientific
gadgets and modern leisure goods by the middle class led the Korean nation into the new
modern world. The urban middle class was in the vanguard in introducing and
disseminating cultured, rationalized lifestyles. It was ironic that the state promoted
extensive mass consumption as the goal of enduring a life of discipline and austerity. In
this respect, the images of the middle class were contradictory since they were both
frugal and consumerist. However, the message was clear: If you work hard and live
frugally, you will become middle class and enjoy a cultured and comfortable lifestyle.
The descriptions of Korea’s future presented in official state discourse
consistently featured middle-class lifestyles, even when they were not explicitly talking
about the middle class. In a 1967 speech, President Park declared that “in the 1970s,
people will enjoy leisure time with their families, just as housewives will frugally manage
their households in modern houses with up-to-date kitchens” (Park 1968: 47). In another
speech, he also argued, “By the end of the Third Economic Development Plan, the typical
Korean lifestyle will allow salary men to buy their own cars and go to suburbs during the
weekends” (Park 1972: 240). Furthermore, the DRP (the ruling party) described Korea’s
future as follows:
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As economic growth accelerates and industrialization matures, the basic
necessities of life will be fulfilled. Beyond simply meeting the basic necessities,
everyone will enjoy a higher quality of life. We expect that by 1991, not only will
the housing problem be totally resolved, but all citizens will also enjoy decent
lives in “cultured houses” (Munhwa Jutaek). In the 1980s, our lives will be closer
to the level of advanced civilization with a ready supply of various durable
consumer goods, including color TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, electric
ovens, and air conditioners (Minjugonghwadang 1978: 186-187).
Though the state did not adopt the language of class, its idealized images of the future
nation were equated with a society where the majority of the population could enjoy
middle-class lifestyles; they would own homes and modern household goods and enjoy
leisure activities. Around the end of the 1970s, many newspaper articles also reported on
the transformed social landscape, focusing on the weekend leisure boom and car
ownership in particular. Commonly, these articles celebrated the improvement in the
living standards of ordinary people, detailing how they escaped from poverty and
obtained better lives. “My car” and “my home” were the most common phrases appearing
in newspapers or magazines around the late 1970s and people dreamed of having their
own cars and apartments soon. News articles about the increasing number of people
taking driving tests and the increasing number of private cars on the streets showed how
soon the age of “my car” was approaching (Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 1978; Maeil Kyungje,
Dec. 17, 1979). There was a genuine widespread excitement about Korea’s newly visible
domestic opulence:
Since ten years ago, when the phrase “the age of my car” appeared, the term has
been immensely popular. If you go to the DMV in Gangnam, you will be
shocked at the number of people taking driving tests. Well, there are 10,000
people per day taking the driving test this year. (...) Salary man Mr. K, who came
to pick up his driver’s license, told me, “Think about three years from now.
People with ‘my cars’ will not be symbols of high class. It is going to be the
same as purchasing TV sets when they first came out. If in ten years you cannot
drive, people will take you for a fool.” (Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 1978)
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In the 1970s, having “my car” was not common at all. Although production expanded
greatly in the second half of the 1970s, from 9,069 cars in 1974 to 112,314 in 1979,
throughout the 1970s ownership of private automobiles remained very low (Nelson 2000:
94). 15 Nonetheless, a lot of news coverage dealt with “my car” fever, making laudatory
remarks about the rapid increase of car owners and drivers. It was important for the state
to present “my car” aspirations as a national project, since “my car” was a concrete
symbol of an advanced economy. It was said that the popularization of “my car” and the
development of the automobile industry were emblematic of the maturity of
modernization, as in advanced nations such as the United States (Kim Hyung-guk 1989a:
125). Though not many at the time could enjoy the privilege of purchasing cars and
apartments, the dominant discourse of “my car” and “my home” reinforced the fantasy of
being middle class. While income inequality had increased from the start of
industrialization, continued economic growth and visible economic prosperity generated
an image of mass culture and mass consumption. Urban landscapes peppered with highrise buildings and apartments with streets full of cars symbolized Korean prosperity and
modernity.
A poll conducted by the Ministry of Culture and Public Information
(Munhwagongbobu) with 2000 households in the end of 1977 showed that rapid
economic growth led people to identify their current situations optimistically and fostered
self-identification as the middle class (Dong-A Ilbo, Feb. 8, 1978; Kyunghyang Shinmun,
Feb. 8, 1978). According to the poll, the overwhelming majority of Koreans (86.8 percent)
15
Compared to other countries with generally similar levels of income and industrial
development, Korea was unusually short of cars. While there was only one car for every 100
people in Korea in 1985, Taiwan had one per every 50 people, Malaysia one per 20 people,
Mexico one per 17, and Brazil one per 13 (Nelson 2000: 95).
89
thought that their living standards were compatible with being in the middle class. 16
Using relatively objective measures of class like occupation or homeownership, social
scientists estimated that the middle class made up a maximum of 30 percent of the
Korean population (Kim, Kyung-Dong. 1993). The disparity between these two estimates
shows that people were optimistic about their current and future situations. Judging from
this prevalence of middle-class identification, it seems plausible that national economic
progress from the 1960s to the 1980s created an increasing middle-class identity.
Although it would have been difficult to believe at the beginning of the 1960s, the Park
regime succeeded in establishing the national identity of an economically modernizing
Korea as a middle-class one. Public perceptions of comfortable lifestyles shifted from
unobtainable to within everyone’s reach.
The cars, apartments, and summer vacation trips, viewed as specifically middle
class, identified increased purchasing power and standard of living as points of national
pride. The poll mentioned above also found that rapid economic growth led to increasing
national pride among the public: the majority (88.8 percent) agreed that Korean economy
would be self-sufficient soon, and half (52.4 percent) expected that Korean economy
would be comparable to advanced economies. At the same time, there was an increasing
positive perception of the government’s performance: the majority (80.4 percent)
believed that corruption had become less common than 4-5 years before. 17 The promise
16
This is because a number of production workers identified them as the middle class instead of
as the working class. This was due to influential anti-communist rhetoric in Korea. Since the
language of social classes, in particular the working class, was always connected with that of
communism, it made people avoid identifying production workers with the working class.
17
Given that the authoritarian state strongly restricted the freedom of expression and censored all
news articles published at the time, it is difficult completely to trust the contents of newspapers.
Unfortunately, these are the only in-depth data available in that time period.
90
of a better future allowed ordinary people to aspire to the middle class and thus overlook
increasing social inequality. While some radical student groups and intellectuals
criticized state policies for this uneven economic development and advocated
redistribution for greater social equality, their claims did not effectively combat the state
goals of high economic growth and modernization. Anti-regime struggles and resistance
in the 1970s remained at the local level and were unable to mobilize people on a larger
scale. 18
With the help of intellectuals and the mass media, the authoritarian state created
and disseminated a specific vision of national development embedded in middle-class
discourses about comfortable and modern lifestyles. By doing this, the state successfully
generated widespread societal support for its developmental projects. Instead of social
division and conflict, the collectively shared middle-class identity embraced social
homogenization and national identity.
Conclusion
I have investigated how the Korean state created the middle class as a hegemonic
social class through both economic and ideological projects. The Park regime
implemented economic developmental planning programs throughout the 1960s and
1970s to mobilize the whole population in the name of “national development” and
“nation-building” (Castells 1998; Kohli 2004). By looking at the state-fostered formation
of the middle class, this chapter adds to existing literature an exploration of how a state
18
Some might argue that this was due to the high level of repression. Although this might be true,
the situation in the 1980s provides a good point of comparison. Given the similar levels of
political repression during the 1970s and 80s, anti-regime groups could mobilize ordinary people
more successfully in the ’80s (leading to political democratization in 1987) than in the ’70s. This
implies that repression by itself cannot explain the results of anti-regime protests.
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that had economic development goals and objectives also needed to strengthen and
legitimize itself culturally and politically. In addition to economic policies that fostered
chaebols as the driving force for rapid economic growth, the authoritarian state utilized
symbols and discourse that were channeled through the urban middle class and appealed
to the rest of the population that had not reached middle-class status. In the state’s
discourse, the middle class represented a new social group who had obtained college
educations and got better jobs with higher incomes that allowed them to enjoy
comfortable lifestyles. As a carrier of modernity and civility, the growing middle class
was able to strengthen national identity and the political legitimacy of the state. In this
respect, the rise of the middle class was not merely a natural outcome of industrialization,
but also a conscious product of state policy.
Through the top-down state policy of the HCI drive, the Park Chung Hee regime
allied itself with chaebols hungry for white-collar workers, managers and engineers, to
staff the growing heavy chemical industry. It was these workers who formed the core of
the growing middle class and allowed the discourse of the 1960s to become reality. In
addition, state discourses portrayed the ideal middle class as frugal and civilized,
identifying these as the new values of modern Korea. As the vanguard of the new Korea,
the middle class not only supported values that would help overcome the suffering of the
past, but displayed their new affluence by the consumption of advanced consumer goods.
The rise of middle-class identity and the inexorable spread of consumer culture in
the 1970s suggested that Korea was recovering from the tragedy of the Korean War and
moving toward “peace and prosperity.” Increasing middle-class identity did not mean
increasing class tensions or conflicts; rather, it strengthened social homogenization and
92
national identity because of its “open” membership. Because other social segments could
potentially join the middle class through social mobility, the boundaries of the middle
class were fluid (Fernandes 2006: xix). The visibility of the middle class and the promise
of entry to it helped the state smooth the process of development and modernization.
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CHAPTER 4.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHINESE MIDDLE CLASS:
ECONOMIC REFORM, URBAN CONSUMER CULTURE, AND THE
NATIONAL DESIRE
Whenever I told some of my Chinese friends that my dissertation topic was the
Chinese middle class, they responded, half-jokingly, “Oh, you are studying something
that does not exist in China.” The word “middle class” 19 is ubiquitous in China, in
newspapers, books, magazines, speeches, and academic articles. The Chinese middle
class is also a core interest of many multinational corporations and consulting firms that
hope the Chinese middle class will increase their spending and thus the firms’ profits.
Yet, many Chinese people believe that the Chinese middle class is still an illusion or a
myth. This chapter investigates how the idea of the Chinese middle class is being
constructed by the state and mass media and how it has become a buzzword in
contemporary China.
When Chairman Deng Xiaoping said, after Mao’s death in 1978, that China
should achieve a xiaokang (well-to-do) society, China entered a new stage of economic
reform and opening-up. China’s new experiment in moving from a planned to a market
economy brought about rapid economic development, and the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) celebrates this newly created wealth. Material wealth in China symbolizes not the
object of condemnation, but rather something that everyone aspires to. In the post-Mao
19
The term “middle class” in Chinese appears in a variety of Chinese words, for example,
“zhongchan jieji (middle class),” “zhongchan jieceng (middle stratum),” “bailing (white-collar
workers),” “zhongchanzhe (middle-class people),” and “xiaozi (petty bourgeoisie).” These
various terms all refer to middle-class individuals. In Chinese, “zhong” means middle and “chan”
means wealth; hence, “zhongchan” implies middle-level income, or wealth.
94
era, the CCP emphasized the role of the middle class in leading China’s future. Since the
early 1990s, when former General Secretary Jiang Zemin announced that the Party would
recruit its members from all social strata but particularly from such new social strata as
private entrepreneurs and mid-level managers, the middle class has been recognized as an
important social force in China. Political leaders, academic researchers, and journalists
passionately address middle-class issues: Who belongs to the middle class? What is the
average income of the middle class? What are its consumption patterns? How large is the
middle class in China? Measuring the size of the middle class has been extremely popular
among Chinese scholars (Li 2009). Since the working class is officially the dominant
social force in China, the flourishing discourses on the middle class are quite puzzling.
How do the government and the Party, which once supported the Marxist ideal of a
classless society, now form a new class? How did the middle class, a term designating an
anti-revolutionary privileged group during the Cultural Revolution, reverse itself to
become a leading progressive force in the New China?
This chapter argues that the dominant middle-class discourse was manufactured
by the Chinese government, mass media, and academic circles in an effort to create a
strong ally for economic reform and to strengthen the image of a civilized and modern
country emerging from long-term poverty. Though the CCP has officially supported an
idea that the working class as a whole represents China, the new marketized China
needed a new social subject to replace the inefficient and unproductive old socialist
system, and instead represent modern and affluent China. The formation of the middle
class has been critical in both economic and political endeavors in post-socialist China:
economically, boosting urban consumption at the core of the middle class has been
95
important in sustaining economic growth; politically, the government needed a social
body to rationalize the increasing social inequality and to showcase its successful
economic performance. The urban middle class represented the opportunities for social
mobility in the newly merit-based system and had the potential to be an exemplary social
group by epitomizing globalized China.
The New Revolution: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics?
On the eve of economic reform, socialist China was suffering from a stagnant
economy and still feeling the traumatic effects of the Cultural Revolution. At that time,
nobody expected the remarkable economic growth that China is now achieving. In 1979,
the per-capita GDP (constant 2000 US $) was only $175 (WDI 1979) and the singleminded pursuit of (heavy) industrial development in the prior three decades neglected
consumption. Given the slow income growth and high prices for luxuries, rationing was
imposed to limit demand and distribute goods in scarce supply. From 1955 until well into
the 1980s, ration coupons were required to purchase grain and cotton cloth (Naughton
2007:81).
After the defeat of the “Gang of Four,” Deng Xiaoping returned to power, having
survived the Cultural Revolution. Rather than embracing the political doctrines of
collectivism and a classless future, Deng chose a non-ideological and practical approach
to economic reform. In order to restore the legitimacy of the Communist party, weakened
by the disastrous impact of the Cultural Revolution, political leaders had to generate
economic prosperity in order to show that socialism was still a superior system (Castells
1998:305). Deng thought that the intense political and ideological struggles of the Mao
96
era had hindered Chinese development, and that instead, socialism should develop
productive power and improve people’s living standards (Wang and Xuan 2004:40). This
was the context in which Deng first introduced the concept of “xiaokang” (well-to-do,
relatively comfortable) as a new direction for Chinese development and modernization.
By repudiating the centrally planned, autarkic, and capital-intensive economic
patterns of the period, China’s reformers promoted an export-driven, labor-intensive,
consumer-oriented development model close to that of neighboring East Asian societies
(Whyte 2007:28). 20 As a first step, reformers lowered barriers and gradually opened up
the system, giving individuals and groups the opportunity to act as entrepreneurs in order
to fill market demands. Early reformers created pockets of unregulated and lightly taxed
activity within the system, allowing such pockets to come into being because they were
seen as contributing to developmental objectives. For instance, rural communities were
allowed to run township and village enterprises outside the plan because doing so would
contribute to local investment and economic growth. Foreign businesses were allowed to
operate freely in Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which would increase investment in
China and might also convince foreign corporations to transfer technology to China. Such
policies were seen as contributing to growth while not initially threatening the overall
ability of the government to manage and direct the economy (Naughton 2007:87).
In January and February of 1992, Deng Xiaoping made an important trip to the
Shenzhen SEZs in Guangdong province. Deng had approved the establishment of
Shenzhen and other economic zones in 1979, and in 1984 he had traveled to Shenzhen to
20
The reformers paid particular attention to the Singaporean model of economic development
because it was an exemplary case of promoting rapid economic growth while sustaining an
authoritarian regime (Castells 1998).
97
declare the SEZs’ success. Then, nearly a decade later, he returned to Shenzhen to
revitalize the economic reform program. He called for faster economic growth and urged
Guangdong province to catch up to the “four small dragons” within twenty years. At the
Fourteenth Party Congress in Beijing in October 1992, the CCP adopted its most reformoriented platform in history. The goal of reform, the party declared, was to build a
“socialist market economy,” a system whose scope far exceeded that of the commodity
economy pursued by the leadership in 1984.
In addition to its conscious and cautious state policies, some favorable structural
conditions also explain China’s recent economic success. First, China’s neighboring East
Asian “tigers,” which had enjoyed economic successes from labor-intensive industries,
were suffering from the rising labor costs associated with producing consumer goods
cheaply for Western markets. As the World Systems approach argues, when Japan was
moving to high value-added industries from labor-intensive consumer-goods industries,
the East Asian tigers exploited this open niche with their own cheap labor (Deyo ed.
1987; Silver 2003). Likewise, China took advantage of her cheap labor. Second,
investments from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korean business operators played a
key role in successful Chinese economic development as well (Castells 1998; Whyte
2007). This partly explains why China still had capacity and bargaining power vis-à-vis
multinational firms despite depending heavily on FDI (foreign direct investment).
Between one half and two thirds of the total foreign investment now entering China
originates in Hong Kong and Taiwan (Kohli 2009:399).
From a macroeconomic perspective, the Chinese pursuit of a market economy has
been a great success. Average annual GDP growth accelerated from 6 percent in the pre-
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1978 period to 9.6 percent in the 1978-2005 period (Naughton 2007:140). Learning a
lesson from the Soviet case, Chinese leaders knew that radical reform would bring about
political disorder, so instead they implemented gradual reform while preserving the
Communist order. China’s modernization and economic reform was a deliberate state
policy, designed and controlled by the leadership of the CCP (Castells 1998). As previous
developmental state literature has argued, state autonomy and capacity were also
important in China’s success. Once in power, the nationalistically inclined Chinese
communists minimized Western economic and political influence in China, eliminated
China’s capitalist classes, and created a well-organized state that permeated Chinese
society (Johnson 1962; Kohli 2009). Despite the serious costs of state repression and
state-led upheavals, there is no denying that state consolidation laid the foundation for a
nationalist model of Chinese development (Kohli 2009).
In line with market reform, the CCP had to adopt new ideological language to
support its state policies. Most notably, since 1978 the CCP has permanently jettisoned
the Maoist language of “class struggle” and has denounced the privileged position of the
Chinese working class (Lee 2007; Pun and Chan 2008; Rofel 1994). Maoist ideology
enhanced the position of workers with respect to the intelligentsia and managerial
cadres. 21 The working class enjoyed great advantages in political status, wages, welfare,
and employment security (Lee 2007:38). While physical labor was highly valued, mental
labor was not. The intelligentsia was required periodically to engage in productive labor
during the Mao era, sometimes being sent to the countryside for this purpose. At the time,
21
On the eve of the establishment of the People’s Republic, Mao wrote an essay, “On the
People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” in which he outlined two fundamental principles of the new
socialist state: (1) it was organized under “the leadership of the working class”; and (2) it would
ally itself with the world proletariat of socialist countries (Mao 1971).
99
political virtue and loyalty to the party were more valuable than skills or knowledge
(Shirk 1984). Mao argued that social practice and experience were vastly more important
than academic curricula; years of service were equated with ability. Politically
committed, loyal people who served the party and Communism were the desirable
“socialist men” that the party tried to create during the Mao era.
Before the reform, China was an egalitarian system because of the bureaucratic
redistribution system. In the 1970s, the resources of the workplace (danwei), as well as
the wages earned by the head of the household, determined a family’s standard of living
(Bian 1994). Whether a household was headed by a professional or a blue-collar
production worker, their family members lived in comparable homes, took the same
buses to work, confronted similar food shortages, and faced an equally limited choice of
leisurely activities and selection of clothing (Davis 2000:3). Although material
inequalities existed between high-level cadres and ordinary workers, overall, living
standards were remarkably homogeneous within enterprises. Until 1990, most urban
adults worked in state-owned enterprises and enjoyed the “iron rice bowl” of lifetime
employment, egalitarian wages, and generous welfare benefits (Davis 1992).
However, market reform eroded the socialist principle emphasizing egalitarianism
and class leveling. During the initial phases of labor reform, political leaders criticized
the old “iron rice bowl” and “eating from one big pot” (egalitarian wage system) as
serious obstacles to economic growth (Lee 2007:62). Reformers also believed that this
system fostered a lack of competitive mentality and self-motivation, a reliance on the
state, and worker laziness (Lee 2007; Won 2005). Departing from the socialist past
characterized by anti-competitive, collectivist, and undisciplined cast of mind, the CCP
100
emphasized self-reliance and individual responsibility, which were believed to promote
economic growth and global competitiveness. This ideological shift from socialist
egalitarianism to market mechanisms resulted in growing levels of social stratification
and increasing gaps between rich and poor. As Riskin et al. write, “One of the world’s
most egalitarian societies in the 1970s, China in the 1980s and 1990s became one of the
more unequal countries in its region and among developing countries generally”
(2001:3).
The Era of Professionals and Human Capital
In China’s embracing of market mechanisms and competitiveness, human capital
and individual abilities became key determinants of individual economic successes since
economic reform (Goodman and Zang 2008; Hsu 2007). This recalls Nee (1989)’s
market transition theory, which sees increasing returns from human capital, such as
education and skills, as the Chinese market economy became more established. However,
it is difficult to say that the winners of economic reform such as private entrepreneurs are
completely due to the market mechanism Nee suggests. Instead, these market
mechanisms were backed up by government policies emphasizing individual
responsibility and efficiency by rewarding human capital and educational credentials.
From the very beginning of economic reform, Deng Xiaoping emphasized
knowledge and technical expertise as the driving force in modernization, as much as
physical labor of the working class. Though China was able to take advantage of laborintensive industries due to her cheap labor, Chinese leaders have emphasized
technological development in strengthening the country. Deng pointed out that science
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and technology were key to modernization, and that China would fall behind if it did not
develop them adequately:
Even though we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, unless we modernize our
country, raise our scientific and technological level, develop our productive forces
and thus strengthen our country and improve the material and cultural life of our
people—unless we do all this, our socialist political and economic system cannot
be fully consolidated, and there can be no sure guarantee for the country’s
security (Deng 1984:41).
In 2002, General Secretary Jiang Zemin followed Deng’s argument by stressing
the importance of innovation and progress in a country’s prosperity:
Innovation sustains the progress of a nation. It is an inexhaustible motive force for
the prosperity of a country and the source of the eternal vitality of a political
party. We must conscientiously free our minds from the shackles of the outdated
notions, practices and systems, from the erroneous and dogmatic interpretations of
Marxism and from the fetters of subjectivism and metaphysics. We must respect
work, knowledge, competent people and creation. This should be an important
policy of the Party and state to be conscientiously implemented in society at large.
The aim is to raise the quality of the population and thereby serving socialism
(emphasis added). 22
These speeches have two common themes. First, innovation, knowledge, and competence
are critical not only in improving population quality, but also in bringing about national
affluence and modernization. Second, a dogmatic interpretation of Marxism, including
the respecting of physical labor only, is completely abandoned. Whatever contributes to
increasing productive forces or improving a country should be respected, regardless of
ideological inclination. The leaders had practical approaches to reform and also
demanded a flexible mindset toward society. This also implies that the CCP did not stick
to its old policy in which the working class was the only respected social class, but now
22
Jiang Zemin, Report to the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on
November 8, 2002. Available at
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/features/16thpartyreport/16thpartyreport2.html.
102
believed that other social groups should be respected as well if they contribute to
economic development and socialist modernization.
The national emphasis on education and professional skills strengthened the
merit-based hiring system, which extended from elite recruitment at the national level
down to local levels throughout the country (Lee 1991; Walder 1995). Employment is
now education-driven, and employees in public administration are recruited today on the
basis of examinations and educational credentials (Tomba 2004:10-11). This trend
contrasts dramatically with the Mao period. During the Cultural Revolution, the CCP
systematically discriminated against members of the old educated classes, eliminated
entrance examinations, filled university classrooms with villagers who had not attended
high school, denigrated the value of abstract knowledge, sent intellectuals to live in
villages to be reeducated by peasants, and strived to level educational differences
(Andreas 2009: 3). However, the post-Mao era saw the dominance of cultural capital and
those who have knowledge and expertise became better off. Nowadays, most people
believe that educational credentials and individual capabilities are more important in
young people’s success than membership in the Communist Party (Zang 2008).
In terms of material rewards, professionals with specific knowledge and expertise
enjoyed marked salary increases in the 1990s. Public employees in Beijing tertiary
education and scientific institutions, for example, saw their salaries rise by 158 percent
between 1995 and 2000, and their average salaries were 31 percent above the Chinese
average (Beijing Statistical Yearbook 1996 and 2001). The most well-paid groups in
urban entities were people in finance, culture, health, and the IT industry, where
employees could use their specific skills: for example, in 2006, computer engineers
103
(81851 yuan/year), financial analysts (113092 yuan/year), and scientists (54231
yuan/year) (Beijing Statistical Yearbook 2008). According to Lu and his project team, the
income disparity between workers and managers has been increasing since 1979 (Lu ed.
2002). While the income disparity between workers and managers was small between
1979 and 1991 (the monthly wage of managers was respectively 1.18 and 1.13 times that
of workers), it has increased since 1992 (the monthly wage of managers was respectively
1.26 and 1.48 times that of workers in 1992 and 2000).
Due to these educational and income policies that the party-state adopted, postMao Chinese society witnessed the rise of a distinctive social group enjoying higher
income and greater social respect: the educated middle class, mostly comprised of
professionals, managers, and white-collar workers. Surveys on occupational prestige
conducted in 1987, 1993 and 1999 showed that professionals such as lawyers, professors,
doctors, and scientists were highly rated in the prestige hierarchy (Zang 2008:57).
Likewise, respondents in a 1999 survey believed that professional technicians or educated
people should get higher incomes (Lu ed. 2002:97). These results reveal that the rewards
for education and expertise are believed justified by the general population. This
statistical evidence indicates that the middle class, including professionals, managers, and
white-collar workers, was winning out due to economic reform as the status of ordinary
workers declined.
What is noteworthy here is that, in addition to educated people employed in jointventure and foreign-owned enterprises, white-collar workers in state-owned work units
who enjoyed many fringe benefits comprise another group in the urban middle class (Li
104
and Niu 2003) 23. Various fringe benefits provided by the government include cheap
housing, free health care and pension plans. Through the housing reforms of recent years,
many employees in the state-owned sectors became property owners. They could
purchase housing at a discounted price, whereas employees in non-state owned
enterprises had to pay full market price (Wang and Murie 2000). 24 With the support of
the state, they could join the ranks of the middle class. A lawyer employed in the
government sector recounts:
My annual wage is 48,000 yuan but it is equal to 100,000 yuan for an employee
outside the system. This 100-square-metre apartment cost me 100,000 yuan. They
have to spend 800,000 yuan to buy it, or 60,000 yuan for one-year’s rent. The
company gives me the use of a company car and also pays all the expenses for it,
worth roughly 30,000 yuan a year. This car has become my own personal asset.
The company pays me 10,000 yuan a year for telecommunications costs. Every
year, I travel overseas several times because my company has a lot of
international business. As you know, these are partly business trips and partly
tourism at the public expense. If a private enterprise owner goes overseas for
business, he has to travel at his own expense. If we count all of this income, my
annual income is at least 100,000 yuan (quoted from Li and Niu 2003).
Though the wages of government employees were relatively low compared with
employees in the non-government sectors, the extensive welfare and benefits provided by
23
Li and Niu suggest that Beijing has two kinds of middle class, one outside the system and the
other within the system. While the first group of white-collar workers has higher wages in jointventure firms or foreign-owned enterprises, the latter group enjoys extensive social welfare
provided by the government despite its relatively low wages.
24
The massive selling-off of public housing stock at below-market prices gave well-placed
employees a low-cost entry ticket to the real estate market. People currently living in goodquality housing can easily obtain use rights to their houses through subsidized purchase and can
become homeowners. Especially in the public sector, those who have benefited most from the
housing reform are cadres and professionals (Li 2005). Not only were these high-status workers
better informed of market opportunities, but higher income and various in-kind subsidies let them
purchase housing more easily than others. According to Li and Niu’s study, no matter the location
or quality of apartment buildings, high-status workers generally only pay 1,480 yuan per square
meter, whereas non-government employees must pay five times as much. Most residential
buildings for Party and government departments, state-owned companies, banks and institutions
in Peking are within the fourth ring road or in the areas where housing prices have a strong
tendency to increase, such as the Zhongguancun area, popularly known as China’s Silicon Valley.
105
government work units allowed their employees to enjoy comfortable, stable lifestyles.
White-collar workers in government and non-government work units have different kinds
of benefits. However, there is no doubt that both groups were made better off by state
policies that widened the gap between peasants and blue-collar workers generally.
In fact, changes in the composition of the CCP reflect the rise of the middle class
as an important social group. Whereas during the Mao era most party members were
peasants and army men, since economic reform the proportion of professionals and
intellectuals has been increasing (see Table 4.1).
Year
1949
1956
1957
1964
1981
2007
Table 4. 1. Occupations of Party Members (1949-2007)
Total
Workers
Peasants
Intellectuals Army
4.49
2.5
59.6
11.9
10.73
14.0
69.1
11.7
12.72
13.6
66.8
14.8
18
38.8
53.4
39
18.8
45.5
38.0
73.36
10.8
31.5
31.7
Unit: totals in millions, other indicators in percent
Source: Suh 2009, p. 213
23.9
5.2
4.7
7.8
4.8
2.2
Other
2.0
2.4
5+18.8
Given that peasants still make up the majority of the Chinese population, the proportion
of peasants in the CCP is relatively low, whereas intellectuals are overrepresented. Only
4.4 percent of peasants had party membership, while in 1981 12 percent of professionals
and 68 percent of administrative bureaucrats had membership (see Table 4.2) (Lee, Hong
Yung 1991).
Year
1949
1981
1985
1987
2007
Table 4. 2. Education of Party Members
College
High School Middle
School
0.32
0.6
2.42
4.0
13.8
30.0
28.5
29.0
29.0
31.1
-
106
Primary
School
27.66
44.8
42.2
34.8
-
Illiterate
69.0
11.2
10.1
7.7
-
Unit: percent
Source: Suh 2009, p. 215
Similarly, what is notable in Table 4.2. is that party members with higher education have
been rapidly increasing since economic reform. Before the reform, the CCP represented
disadvantaged and revolutionary peasants; after reform, it was drastically transformed
into a professionalized and elitist party.
This change reveals a tension or contradiction between the official ideology of the
CCP and the reality: on the one hand, the party had to maintain its identity as
representing a working-class country; on the other hand, however, the leaders recognized
that China could not become an affluent and modernized country with old and dogmatic
rhetoric that emphasized only class struggles and the importance of physical labor. While
the Party maintained the idea of the working class as the fundamental pillar of socialism,
since Jiang Zemin’s 2002 speech to the Party Congress it has also appealed to the rising
middle class, including technical and managerial elites.
In a 2005 speech, President Hu Jintao redefined the working class in China by
claiming that this class includes not only physical laborers but also mental laborers such
as intellectuals and managerial cadres. Moreover, by adopting a concept of “harmonious
society (hexie shehui),” Hu addressed the importance of closing the income gaps between
the rich and the poor and between urban and rural areas. Hu’s approach differed from that
of former leaders such as Deng and Jiang who had emphasized “getting rich first” and
uneven development plans, in that he paid attention to the increasing social inequality and
focused on social justice. However, his goal of “building a harmonious society” could be
read as a political strategy to prevent social unrest and conflict. The rationale behind this
new rhetoric appears to be that incremental development would take place under the
107
condition of social stability and orderly process (Tomba 2009:14). Through the rhetoric
of “social harmony,” Chinese leaders tried to legitimize the increasingly large gap
between the middle and the working class.
The Making of Middle-Class Discourse
The newly emerging middle-class discourse in China can be understood as the
state’s efforts to build a strong nation and to upgrade its status in the global hierarchy.
While the CCP still recognized workers and peasants as the basic force in China, they
remained a symbol of old socialist China whose economy was backward and stagnant.
The once model citizens now became “disadvantaged groups” (ruoshi qunti) who cannot
take responsibility for their own livelihood, need help from the state, and therefore might
be a potential threat to social stability (Ren 2010). In the eyes of government officials,
policy experts, and scholars, a middle class made up of self-reliant and responsible social
subjects could be the social group that would represent the brand-new China and enhance
social stability.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, most researchers in China criticized the theory of
the middle class as being contradictory to Marxist theory and socialism (Li, Chunling
2009). Since the late 1990s, however, scholars have recognized the middle class as not
contradicting socialism, but rather as symbolizing socialism’s victory by showcasing a
xiaokang society. Although social discourse on the middle class seemed a natural and
spontaneous accompaniment to economic transformation, the formation of the middle
class was in fact a normative and political project. This explains why leading social
scientists at the top academic institutions passionately addressed middle-class issues and
108
considered the role of the middle class. As scholars come to discuss the term “middle
class,” the category of the middle class becomes more visible and important. As
Anagnost (1997: 8) pointed out, these studies on the middle class were proleptic: they
represented something that has not yet come into view as if it already existed in fact.
Though the middle class was still small, it was believed to be an important social force
for social stability (Li Qiang 2001), one that might change the social structure from a
pyramid-shape to an olive-shape (Li Peilin 2004; Lu Xueyi ed. 2002).
In order to make the middle class intelligible in Chinese society, systematic
reports had to be based on tables, figures, charts, and equations―what Susan Greenhalgh
calls “numerical inscriptions” (2005: 357). Social scientists, demographers, policy
makers, and government bureaucrats were involved in this project. For example, China’s
leading sociologists at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) 25 released in
2002 The Report on Social Stratification Research in Contemporary China (Dangdai
zhongguo shehui yanjiu baogao) based on a two-year nationwide survey. With the full
support of the central government, they surveyed over 12 provinces and 72 cities,
counties, and districts, and their findings ran to more than 400 pages. In this ambitious
project, Lu Xueyi and CASS researchers found that contemporary Chinese society was
divided into ten major social strata—state and political elites (guojia, shehui guanlizhe
25
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS, Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan) is a premier
academic research organization in the fields of philosophy and social sciences in the People’s
Republic of China that is directly under the State Council. CASS was established in May 1977,
growing out of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, and now consists of 32 research institutes, three research centers and a graduate school.
The research areas cover as many as 300 disciplines, among which 120 are key. One of the basic
missions of this institution is to provide important research papers and policy suggestions to the
CPC Central Committee and the State Council. For more details, see
http://www.gov.cn/english/2005-12/02/content_116009.htm. Since it is a state organization, its
research directions cannot but reflect the government’s general policies and guidelines.
109
jieceng), mid-level managers (jingli jieceng), private entrepreneurs (shiyingqiyezhu
jieceng), professionals and technicians (zhuanmenjishuzhe jieceng), white-collar workers
(shiwu jieceng), the self-employed (ziyingyezhe jieceng), salespeople and service
workers (shangye jieceng), industrial workers (chanyelaodongzhe jieceng), agricultural
laborers (nongyelaodongzhe jieceng), and the unemployed and under-employed. They
argued that China was moving toward an olive-shaped modern structure of social strata in
which most people belong to the middle and upper-middle positions, with only a few in
either upper or lower positions (Lu ed. 2002:124). Although these scholars agree that
Chinese society has not yet achieved a prototype middle-class society, they believe that,
with the growth rate of the middle-class at one percent per year, the middle class would
be a mainstream force by occupying the biggest total work force within twenty years (Lu
2005).
Hai Ren points out that the research by the CASS sociologists is a highly
important and systematic effort by policy-oriented scholars to conceptualize the middle
class (Ren 2010: 116). The CASS report elaborates on the middle class as follows: “a
group of people who are engaged in knowledge or mental labor, are salaried employees,
and possess not only the capacity to get a relatively well-paying job with good working
conditions, but also the capacity to enjoy leisure; who have some extent of control over
their work; and who possess a consciousness of citizenship and public morality as well as
a cultured manner” (Lu ed. 2002: 292-293). Of the ten social strata identified by Lu and
the CASS researchers, six groups can be classified as middle class (excluding salespeople
and service workers, industrial workers, agricultural laborers, and the unemployed).
Though the middle class was still small in size (although the majority of the population),
110
this classification of social strata in which the middle class encompassed six different
categories can be seen as an effort to put the middle class in the social mainstream.
Most Chinese scholars reject Marxist class analysis, replacing it with a Weberian
analysis of social status and strata (Pun and Chan 2008). Chinese scholars have jettisoned
the Marxist term “class” (jieji) as too reminiscent of the severe social conflicts and
backlash of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, they adopted the Weberian concept of
“stratum” (jieceng), emphasizing social disparities, mobility and social harmony, rather
than a confrontational relationship between the exploiting and exploited. In line with this
perspective, other social scientists addressed middle-class issues. For example, Li Qiang,
a leading sociologist in China, argues that the middle class (or stratum) is an important
social group for three reasons. In politics, they mediate between the upper and lower
classes; in philosophy, they represent moderate and conservative thoughts and also
decrease social conflicts; within the economy, they increase mass consumption.
Therefore, the middle class is the mainstream of society and maintains social stability (Li
Qiang 2001). Although Li Qiang (2001) believes that Chinese society is still pyramidshaped and the middle class does not exist in large numbers, he agrees on the urgency of
nurturing this class in order to resolve social tensions and to achieve economic growth.
Despite different emphases among different researchers, they all agree that the
middle class is an alternative social group that represents successful economic reform and
symbolizes a wealthy China. Scholars agree that the middle class, particularly
intellectuals and technical elites, is the class that has benefited the most from economic
reform (Li Qiang 2000). Their technical skills and knowledge are highly appreciated by
the state and society. Researchers have measured the size of the middle class, taking it as
111
an indicator of a successful transition to modern society and national prosperity.
Depending on their definition of the middle class, the percentage of the middle class is
found to range from 3.1 percent to 25 percent nationwide and from 8 percent to 48.5
percent in urban areas (Li Chunling 2009:53-54). According to a 300,000-person survey
by the National Bureau of Statistics, the middle stratum currently represents only 5
percent of the total population, but is expected to reach 45 percent in 2020 (China Daily
2005. January 20). Although these figures vary, they point to an inevitable trend: the fast
economic growth and increasing affluence of the world’s most populous country over the
past two decades (China Daily 2004.October 27). Most mass media and researchers are
optimistic about the growth of this new social group and celebrate the material progress
that it symbolizes.
Thus, through “scientific” research on social stratification and classes, active
academic discussions of and research on the middle class have confirmed the importance
of the middle class in China, and major newspapers disseminate this “fact” within the
society by frequently citing these results. By providing knowledge about the middle class,
these academic reports construct the Chinese middle class as an empirical reality that is
actualized by people’s thinking and discourse.
Urban Imagination: the Rise of Consumer Culture
Along with academic discourses on the growth of the middle class, the Chinese
mass media have helped to create stereotypical images of the urban middle class by
reporting their consumption practices. The Chinese mass media has dealt passionately
with the nationwide consumerist movement. In this way, as Jing Wang (2001:85) points
112
out, cultural entrepreneurship is definitely a new hegemonic project in which three
players are complicit: the state, the market, and the media. Similarly, Pun Ngai
(2003:473) argues that consumption has suddenly become a target of national
mobilization in the 1990s in the same way as Mao launched mass mobilization to raise
production in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, widespread advertisements and reports
about advanced consumer products and leisure activities targeting the middle class
projected a new, modern, and affluent social landscape. Just as a robust, productive
working class was a symbol of socialist China in leading socialist modernization, now the
consuming urban middle class is a vivid image of global China “getting on track with the
world” (yu quanqiu jiegui).
While academic discussions discuss the middle class in statistical ways, news
articles and advertisements in the media describe the middle-class lifestyle more visually.
Living in a high-rise apartment in a gated community, the middle-class consumer could
afford a large HDTV screen, a car, and brand-name clothing. She enjoys sipping coffee
and cares about her child’s English education. Once in a while, she goes on holiday travel
with her family to famous tourist sites. She is the target of the high-end goods market.
She is not necessarily rich. However, she or her husband, who is educated and
professional, earns enough money to enjoy modern advanced consumer commodities.
This enticing image circulates on the covers of numerous magazines, TV advertisements,
and popular books. These typical images of the urban middle class represent the “new”
China, a China that has escaped many years of poverty and backwardness and leapt
forward to a promising future in the globalized world.
113
Many marketing research firms have been alert to the purchasing power of this
new group in China, since it has the potential to be a major customer of luxury goods.
Some marketing research has reported that the size of the luxury market in China has
been rapidly increasing, and it has been predicted that China will soon catch up with
Europe or the U.S. (KOTRA 2005). Louis Vuitton, Prada, BMW, and Fendi all regard
China as the center of turbo-growth (Wang, J. 2008:180). Though the urban middle class
does not necessarily consume luxury goods, urban households’ rapid increase in
disposable income shows a high probability that the urban middle class will be
consumers of those products. In urban areas at the national level, the per-capita annual
disposable income of an urban household in 2006 has increased almost seven times over
1978, as indicated in Table 4. 3. While before 1978 people did not have enough funds to
purchase more than their daily necessities, now they have money to spend on items above
and beyond these necessities, including leisure and high-quality goods.
TABLE 4. 3. Per-Capita Annual Disposable Income of Urban Households
Year
Value
(yuan)
Growth
rate
(%)
1978
1980
1984
343.4
477.6
652.1
100
127.0
158.7
1988
1180.
2
1990
1510.
2
1994
3496.
2
1998
5425.
1
2000
6280.
0
2002
7702.
8
2004
9421.
6
2006
1175
9.5
182.3
198.1
276.8
329.9
383.7
472.1
554.2
670.7
Source: The Yearbook of Life and Prices in Chinese Cities Zhongguo Chengshi
Shenghuoyujiage Nianjian 2008, p. 3
The figures for Beijing in Table 4.4 support the general national trend that percapita total and disposable income has increased exponentially over the last 30 years. In
2006, per-capita disposable income in Beijing was well above the average national level.
While through the early 1990s people in Beijing made more than half of their
expenditures on food, currently only thirty percent of their total income goes to food. In
114
addition, urbanites can enjoy a far larger environment than before—nearly twice as
spacious as twenty years ago.
TABLE 4. 4. Life in Beijing (1978-2006)
Year
Per
Per Capita Real
Capita
Disposable Growth
Total
Income
Rate of
Income
(Yuan)
Per
(yuan)
Capita
(%)
Per Capita
Living
Expenditures
(yuan)
Engel
Coefficient
of Urban
Households
(%)
Per
Capita
Usable
Space of
Houses in
Urban
Areas
(sq.m)
1978
450.2
365.4
359.9
58.7
1980
599.4
501.4
14.0
490.4
55.3
1985
1158.8
907.7
11.3
923.3
50.6
1987
1413.2
1181.9
1.9
1147.6
52.7
9.75
1988
1767.7
1437.0
1.0
1455.6
51.1
10.30
1990
2067.3
1787.1
6.2
1646.1
54.2
11.17
1992
2813.1
2363.7
5.4
2134.7
52.8
12.09
1994
5585.9
4713.2
14.9
4134.1
46.4
12.85
1996
7945.8
6885.5
5.1
5729.5
46.6
13.82
1998
10098.2
8472.0
5.9
6970.8
41.1
14.96
2000
12560.3
10349.7
8.9
8493.5
36.3
16.75
2002
13253.3
12463.9
15.6
10285.8
33.8
18.20
2004
17116.5
15637.8
11.5
12200.4
32.2
19.09
2006
22417.0
19978.0
12.2
14825.0
30.8
20.00
Note: Statistics on “per-capita usable space of houses in urban areas” covers the urban
area.
Source: Beijing Statistical Yearbook [Beijing Tongji Nianjian] 2008, p. 173
The increase in disposable income among urban households translates into
increased possession of durable consumer goods. Table 4. 5. confirms that many
consumer goods regarded as luxury goods before reform are now considered necessities.
Washing machines or refrigerators, which only one out of 100 households owned in
1980, have now become a “must-have” item for urban households.
115
TABLE 4. 5. Annual Possession (Per 100 Households) of Main Durable Consumer
Goods in 3000 Urban Households (1978-2007)
Year
AirShower Washing
Color
Refriger
Computer
Cameras Conditio
-s
Heaters Machines
TV
-ators
-ners
1978
7.5
1980
1.9
0.3
11.4
1985
57.5
32.2
41.9
34.6
1987
82.6
57.5
71.9
55.5
1989
89.7
80.5
89.4
62.2
1991
93.0
97.1
101.7
72.7
0.1
1993
23.2
99.8
107.2
100.8
82.4
1.8
1995
45.4
100.4
113.6
1044
86.8
11.8
1997
58.4
100.6
123.8
104.2
88.2
27.2
12.2
1999
67.1
99.6
141.4
102.8
95.0
49.9
23.5
2001
78.1
102.2
148.9
106.6
100.7
89.7
45.3
2003
85.4
99.3
99.3
100.4
103.3
119.3
68.3
2005
97.0
105.0
152.8
104.0
109.1
146.5
89.2
2007
98.9
102.2
147.0
108.1
98.9
157.3
91.6
Source: Beijing Statistical Yearbook [Beijing Tongji Nianjian] 2008, p. 183
Cell
Phones
The modern, comfortable lifestyle of the urban middle class is epitomized in
advertisements, particularly for housing, and it is through such advertisements that the
dreams, tastes, aspirations, and social identities of the urban middle class are circulated.
Although Li Zhang (2008), citing the diverse occupational and educational backgrounds
of residents in upscale neighborhoods, argues that their only commonality is wealth, more
widespread housing advertisements manufacture and disseminate images of educated
urbanites and actively associate potential residents with the urban elite and higher social
status. The advertisements usually adopted the concept of the middle class by using terms
such as “city elites,” “CEO elites,” “the city backbone,” “the new middle class,” and
“successful figures” (Tan Jia 2005). These terms imply that, since such people are the
elites and the backbone of society, they deserve to live in better residential environments.
Real estate developers usually embrace high-end living environments, convenience, and
116
1.2
12.9
62.4
133.7
190.0
207.1
security by calling their apartments names such as “garden” or “villa,” 26 invoking the
affluent and cultured lifestyle of the middle class by reminding typical suburban lifestyles
of the Western middle class. The names “towns” and “cities,” too, portray the modern
lifestyles of young professionals:
Wankexingyuan
The new middle class, the new life
I talk about dignity, comfort
Wankexingyuan is aware of your expectations for your life and will completely
satisfy your expectations! 2600 households have already moved in happily. If you
hurry, you can savor Wankexingyuan’s glamorous atmosphere earlier than others.
The beautiful landscape is before your eyes, and the opportunity is yours.
Enjoy your life: why are you delaying it? (Beijing Youth Daily 9/3/2001)
Fenglin Oasis
One class, three styles. Establish an exemplar of an elegant residential area.
Our CLD Fenglinluzhou, a residential area of spacious, elegant, and wholesome
lifestyles.
Perfectly located in the Olympic Village between CLD (near Zhongguancun) and
CBD (Central Business District), convenient and relaxing living environment,
superb quality, trendy architecture style in Chaoyang, homogenous urban middle
class residents.
This is the capital’s highest-quality residential area (Beijing Youth Daily
9/2/2000).
These advertisements provide models of consumption and potential configurations of
social identity, lifestyle visions (Fraser 2000:32). The exclusivity, security, convenience,
and recreation that these advertisements promote appeal directly to elitism via social
function and economic status. By advertising new ways of life and selling a distinctive
atmosphere, the advertisements make a specific link between the urban middle class and
modern, affluent, and comfortable lifestyles in apartment complexes.
As historian Louise Young (1999) argues, the rise of consumer culture through
department stores in interwar Japan was intertwined with the growth of the new middle
26
The names of middle- or high-end apartments mostly include “jiayuan” or “huayuan,” meaning
“garden.” By using this term, the apartment ads conjure up private space in a bustling urban
milieu.
117
class, burgeoning modern commodities and consumption reflected in the middle-class
lifestyles. Similarly, the rise of consumer culture in its core market of middle-class
professionals and salaried workers, shown in tourism, the entertainment industry, durable
consumer goods, and department stores, has shaped the ethos, identity, and image of the
new urban middle class in China. This not only showcased China’s development in the
modern age, but also served to legitimize the rising social and political importance of the
new middle class.
The urban middle class, who can afford to spend money and enjoy elegant
lifestyles, is no longer the target of political condemnation, branded as bourgeois. Instead,
it is they who embody the slogan “being rich is glorious.” Contrary to Mao’s belief,
overproduction and insufficient consumer demand became an impediment to China’s
incorporation into the global economy, while making consumption a motivating force for
further globalization (Pun 2003:474). Urbanites are seen as ideal citizen-consumers and
active participants in this hegemonic project of “globalizing China” by stimulating
economic growth.
Deborah Davis (2000; 2005) argues that the affluence and new consumerism of
the 1990s have weakened the state monopoly and the hegemonic sureties that defined
urban life throughout the 1960s and 1970s by emphasizing increasing consumers’ agency
and autonomy. However, the urban consumerism reflected in the glamorous middle class
produces widespread aspirations and desires even among the poor, thus obscuring the
increasing social inequality and legitimatizing the reform. 27 This is not the retreat of the
27
Through highlighting the experiences of female migrant workers from rural areas, Pun (2003)
and Yan (2003) point out how the efforts of the migrant workers to be consumers are frustrated
by encountering exclusion and discrimination in urban contexts. Both of them disagree with
Davis that consumption can be democratic terrain in the post-Mao context.
118
authoritarian state from private lives; rather, it is another iteration of governance
disciplining a social subject in a different way. While creating a space for people to
exercise a multitude of private choices, the socialist state did not allow political
liberalization by letting privatization coexist with political authoritarianism (Ong and
Zhang 2008:2). In this sense, urban consumerism demonstrated that the middle-class
lifestyle was another kind of political mobilization implemented by the socialist state.
The Civilizing Process: Cultivating Suzhi, 28 Cultivating Middle-Classness
While the urban middle class is usually identified with the modern and affluent
images displayed by their consumption practices, they also convey particular social
values emphasized by the Chinese government. The Chinese party-state attempted to
bring about socialist modernization and civilization through an economic reform that
included not only economic prosperity but also the spiritual civilization of the Chinese
nation. The high quality embodied in the highly mobile, educated and professional
middle class makes up an important element of China’s contemporary governmental
discourses (Tomba 2009). Though the mainstream interpretation paid less attention to this
aspect by focusing on defining the middle class and the objective material conditions that
identify it, one can clearly see why government, mass media, and the academics in
socialist China care about the middle class.
Suzhi is the physical, psychological, intellectual, moral, and ideological qualities, both innate
and learned, of human bodies and their conduct. Its contemporary usage has become widespread
only since the 1980s (Jacka 2009). Anagnost argues that suzhi is a sign that transects all different
domains: the evaluation of embodied labor; the goal of educational reform (suzhi jiaoyu or
“quality education”); the specter of social disorder; the criterion of cosmopolitan citizenship
(through consumer taste); and the child’s psychological health (xinli suzhi) (1997:192).
28
119
The government, whose ultimate goal was to build Chinese modernization and
civilization, emphasized the importance of “population quality” in realizing this goal.
Since the beginning of economic reform, the Chinese government has called for “highquality” (gao suzhi) subjects who were autonomous and adapted to life in a competitive
global environment, and would thus serve to strengthen the nation (Anagnost 2004;
Sigley 2009; Tomba 2009). National survival and revival were seen as depending on the
citizenry’s physical, mental, and moral attributes, and national development was believed
possible only through improving a backward and uncivilized population quality. The rise
of the urban middle class with “high quality” was believed to raise the population quality,
and the emphasis on “middle-class values” beyond its objective material conditions
should be understood in this context.
Suzhi was first officially designated a political keyword through a resolution
passed in 1986 by the sixth plenum of the Twelfth Party Congress that stressed “the
moral, scientific and cultural suzhi of the Chinese nation” for achieving Socialist Spiritual
Modernization (Yan 2008:112). Later, it was more centrally comprehensively linked with
the modernization project in the Fifteenth Party Congress report presented in 1997 by
President Jiang Zemin. The most prominent party newspaper, People’s Daily, also
supported this official view by underscoring the significance of improving the population
quality as a way to long-term development (Yan ibid: 113). The widespread discourse
about suzhi in China is normative, hierarchical and class-embedded by dichotomizing
“low” and “high” suzhi. High suzhi, indicating cultured, civilized, and modern citizens, is
considered to be something desirable, whereas low suzhi indicates something undesirable
to be improved. Suzhi is a keyword linked with civility, self-discipline, and modernity.
120
For example, migrant workers from rural regions were the symbols of a lack of suzhi and
were characterized as unruly, undisciplined, and uncivilized (Lei Guang 2003; Yan 2003;
Zhang 2001). By contrast, the educated urban middle class was believed to retain high
suzhi, a desirable social subject to speed Chinese modernization.
Though some scholars have investigated suzhi as a governing discourse that
legitimizes increasing social inequality by linking it primarily with migrant laborers
(Schein 1996; Yan 2008; Zhang 2001), the differentials between low and high suzhi
become much clearer by comparing it with the high suzhi of the urban middle class.
Presenting an ideal subject with high suzhi can heighten the distinctions. The images of
the urban middle class, described in popular magazines and reports as disciplined and
law-abiding, were contrasted with unruly and uncouth migrant workers. Typical members
of the middle class are portrayed in popular magazines and reports as modern, educated,
and civilized through a description of their lifestyles and consumption patterns, as
discussed in the previous section:
David Wang pops into a Starbucks near his office in Beijing’s central business
district. Wearing a neat dark blue suit with a gold-colored tie, he picks up a cup of
cappuccino in his roughened hand, and sips. […] Born into a rural family in east
China’s Jiangsu province, Wang says his parents are traditional farmers who earn
a living by planting rice and fishing in the Taihu Lake. Wang studied hard in
school and was finally admitted to the University of International Business and
Economics in Beijing. Fascinated by the capital’s skyscrapers, Wang knew he
would not return to the two-story wooden home where he was born. Now 29, he
earns more than 200,000 yuan ($29,291) a year by working on initial public
offerings for companies looking to list on the stock exchange (China
Daily/Xinhua 11/17/2008).
Despite varied descriptions of middle-class people, typical stories in popular
magazines and newspapers celebrate upward social mobility: how poor people become
successful through good education and hard work. These stories commonly convey the
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message that moving out of poverty and backwardness is dependent on individual efforts
and will. While these reports emphasize the economic lives and consumption patterns of
the urban middle class, the fruits this class enjoys were due to self-development and selfreliance in improving their lives: those who have some knowledge and put in great effort
can change their own destinies, no matter how disadvantaged their beginnings are.
Self-reliance and self-development are new ethics that have emerged in the postMao period with the embrace of the capitalist spirit. Self-reliant people are proactive
subjects who do not depend on the state or work units, and instead actively seek their
own opportunities for success. Those with the opposite, socialist mentality during the
Mao era were no longer believed to have a place in the contemporary competitive global
era. In the post-Mao era, adaptability and risk-taking behaviors in the competitive market
can lead to success. These state gestures introduced the new self-developing subject into
the symbolic-economic order of postsocialist development (Yan 2008:193). Welleducated, disciplined, and self-motivated white-collar workers (bailing) are a symbol of
good suzhi and epitomize the archetype of the modern subject desired by the state and
contrast sharply with the socialist subject symbolized by laid-off workers in state-owned
firms, once recognized as heroes of socialist progress but now seen as lacking suzhi and
potentially hindering Chinese modernization (Rofel 1999; Lee 2007).
While self-developing, self-reliant white-collar workers are distinct from passive
migrant or laid-off workers, they are also distinguished from the new rich (nouveau riche,
baofahu) who have economic capital but not cultural capital, including cultural taste, a
civilized manner, and appropriate etiquette. These baofahu are usually uneducated rural
entrepreneurs and are thus seen in a disparaging light by ordinary Chinese people, despite
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their economic wealth. Indeed, their economic wealth is not appreciated either, since it is
believed to be a result of corruption and bribery of local officials. One of my Beijing
informants, a young white-collar female worker in a Korean firm, told me:
Though economic reform brought them economic wealth, their intelligent and
cultural levels are really low. Though they can enjoy good lifestyles and can
purchase luxurious products, they do not care about morals. Their suzhi is not
high at all. For example, they go to a five-star hotel wearing flip-flop sandals and
an undershirt. Their behavior is not at all appropriate.
Though ordinary people aspire to material wealth, they look down on the rich. People are
usually ambivalent about the legitimacy of rich people’s claims to wealth, considering
them ill-gotten gains achieved by improper, unjust, or even illegal means. Many people
are completely convinced that the new rich had amassed wealth at the expense of
ordinary people and had no sense of social responsibility and citizenship (Jones 2007).
This common belief has led to public anger against the new rich (Wang Jing 2008; Zang
2008).
Unlike baofahu who happened upon accidental fortunes and suddenly became
rich, middle-class people were believed have achieved a certain level of economic and
social status legitimately, through incessant individual effort. Their self-discipline and
social consciousness are respected and considered exemplary:
The middle class should have good lifestyles, including relatively big housing in a
good condition and a good income. However, I do not think these conditions are
sufficient to identify the middle class. There are countless numbers of rich people
these days. Even though some of them may have reached a middle-class level of
wealth, they may not belong to a real middle class in terms of mentality. They
may have been born or grown up in rural areas and do not pursue any important
values. In my mind, the middle class not only has a good education and stable and
satisfactory jobs, but they should also have “healthy” lifestyles. Their lifestyles
and values should match the goal of the country and mainstream culture
(emphasis added).
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As seen above, many of my informants pointed to the possession of values and culture as
one of the necessary attributes of the middle class. Articles in popular magazines and
newspapers also support this view of the middle class as a social mainstream and
vanguard of socialist spiritual civilization:
In the beginning of this year and in May, when we were suffering from a
snowstorm in the South or earthquake in Sichuan, we could observe that the
Chinese middle class followed some values: In the south, car owners put a green
ribbon on the back mirror and gave rides to people who had lost their housing; in
Sichuan, thousands of [middle-class] people brought their own machines and
helped rescue their neighbors. Actually, middle-class people have done many
social activities for socially disadvantaged groups and peasants (Zhongguo
Xinwenzhoukan 2008.12.15).
The cover story, “The middle class (zhongchanzhe): power of beliefs,” in a
famous Chinese weekly magazine, described middle-class citizens who care about
society and the socially disadvantaged. This article showcased socially conscious people
in the middle class: a researcher supporting social rights for the lower classes, a young
English teacher volunteering at the Sichuan earthquake site, a female manager supporting
children in Sichuan, and a retired worker at a Beijing health center who has worked for
AIDS patients, among others. Although these people have few troubles in their daily
lives, they pursue social responsibility in their communities. Similarly, some news
articles strive to link the typical middle class with volunteerism. Introducing a medical
doctor who volunteers at a hotline center to help victims of domestic violence, a news
article described the creation of a new spirit of volunteerism among young professionals
(China Business Weekly 2002.9.5). Volunteering for NGOs became extremely popular
among white-collar workers and professionals, and their socially responsible acts are seen
as setting new moral standards for society (Nanfangzhoumo 2002).
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Thus in the Chinese mass media, the middle class is not merely a social group that
enjoys comfortable lifestyles and advanced consumption patterns. In addition, they are
the responsible citizens who can help socially vulnerable and marginalized groups,
thereby contributing to “social harmony.” This socially conscientious group can be seen
as an embodiment of Chinese modernization and civilization. The middle class that the
state and mass media attempt to cultivate is not just an economic animal embracing a
capitalist spirit, but is also in the vanguard in realizing modernized Chinese civilization
and harmonious society.
An Imaginary Middle Class in China?
Although Chinese mass media, and even the Communist Party, celebrate the
existence and growth of the middle class in China, few people believe that they belong to
the middle class, even if their incomes and occupations would be so categorized in the
definitions of Chinese academics. This became obvious when I tried to recruit
interviewees for my research. Even if they were in safely in the range that would
objectively identify them as “middle class,” 29 they denied being middle-class citizens.
When asked if they would say that they belonged to the middle class, most replied that
they were rather ordinary wage earners (gongxin jieceng). They usually told me they had
a long way to go to reach the middle-class level. One of my informants, who is a midlevel manager in his 30s at a state-owned bank:
I think that, in order to be the middle class, you should own a good house and a
relatively good car and have some money in your bank account. I have all of
these, but I haven’t reached the level yet. My house is relatively small, my car is
29
For example, they earn annual incomes of more than 200,000 yuan, well beyond the minimum
middle-class requirement of 60,000 yuan used by the CASS.
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almost broken, and there is not enough money in my account. To be eligible for
being the middle class, for instance, you should have a house of 100 square
meters and a car worth more than 200,000 yuan, which I don’t have yet. If you
consider that the middle class is simply people who own homes and cars, then
there are many middle-class people in Beijing. However, we cannot say all of
them belong to the middle class as I am not.
In an abstract sense, they seemed to believe that to be a member of the middle
class, one should not worry or have any trouble in meeting daily necessities. However,
the level at which they think they could meet basic necessities without worry was well
above that in academic reports. One of my informants, a young journalist, told me:
We [our magazine] have also dealt with the issue of the middle class as a cover
story and I have interviewed some people, whom I considered typically middle
class. One of them had seven or eight apartments in Beijing, each of which cost at
least 1-2 million yuan. He also had millions in stocks. I asked him, “Do you think
you are the middle class?”, but he answered, “I don’t think so, I am still poor.” He
thought he would become a member of the middle class if he had more money. I
think that one of the most important qualities of the middle class is having a sense
of security. At that time, the economic situation was not that great and the values
of his stocks were decreasing, which made him nervous. This kind of uncertainty
and insecurity led him to think that he did not belong to the middle class.
In ordinary people’s minds, there are some specific numbers that indicate the middle
class—for example, a total net worth of 5 million yuan. In a 2008 survey conducted in
Chinese cities, half the respondents replied that they would have stable lives and feel
secure if they had this amount of money (Beijing Zhengquanbao 2008.5.19). This
response coincided with those in another survey conducted by Yahoo China. When
110,000 Internet users were asked what Chinese middle-class lifestyles looked like, the
respondents answered: They drove Peugeot 307s or Audi A42.4s, earned at least $1,200 a
month, lived in fancy high-rises like “Toronto Forest,” used Sony notebooks at work,
enjoyed the restaurants in five-star hotels, and vacationed in Paris and East Africa (Yahoo
2005). The optimistic findings of this survey, however, actually pertained only to the
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“gold collar” residents of China, not the white collar (Wang Jing 2008:193), and
explained why most Chinese white-collar people do not consider themselves middle
class. This is in striking contrast to a Korean counterpart: while most of the Korean
population identified themselves with the middle class in the early 1980s due to their
increased wealth, the Chinese still do not think that they belong to the middle class,
despite the visible improvement in their lives. Interestingly, people admit that there is a
rapid growth in the Chinese middle class, but they do not think that they belong to it
themselves. There is a definite gap between the official discourses celebrating the rapid
growth of the Chinese middle class and the popular discourses shared by ordinary
Chinese people.
Despite rapid economic growth and visible improvement of lives, why does the
Chinese middle class, as defined by government and academics, not believe they are the
middle class? A simple interpretation might point to the socialist, egalitarian legacy.
Since most people identified themselves as the working class or wage earners (gongxin
jieceng) under the socialist regime, they still consider themselves ordinary workers unless
they run their own business. 30 During the Cultural Revolution, only two classes existed
(workers and peasants) and one stratum (intellectuals); bourgeoisie or the middle class
(petit bourgeoisie, xiaozichan) were the objects of condemnation. The strong
homogeneity in the past of the ordinary people prevented them from asserting a
distinctive identity or mindset in an officially socialist country.
Furthermore, as indicated above, people often times equate the middle class with
what is actually the new rich or the upper class, a different concept. In China, people
30
In Marxist terms, these people, who own means of production, should be categorized as
capitalists. However, in China, even businessmen in my interviews often said that they were
ordinary workers or wuchanjieji (proletariat or non-propertied class).
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share an image of the middle class, such as affluent suburban upper-middle class in
Western countries. Though pursuing this kind of lifestyle, ordinary white-collar workers
understand that to be middle class, they should have a sense of security and safety that
they do not actually have. Although only a few in contemporary China who can afford to
live that way, people strongly believe that it is the standard to be met. Economic reform
since 1978 has brought about a polarized social structure in which the gap between the
rich and the poor is increasing drastically. Observing the rich and elite lifestyles
portrayed in the mass media, ordinary white-collar workers feel anxious and insecure
because they have not reached the level.
Surprisingly, the highest-income group in China is the younger generation,
between 25 and 44, while in other countries it is usually the middle-aged group, between
45 and 54, who have the highest incomes (Farrell et al. 2006). This younger generation
feels that they have a long way to go to achieve their goals. While work-units provided
all social welfare benefits, including housing, for their parents’ generation, young people
must now put more effort into getting these things. They usually have vast housing debt
to pay off and hesitate to take time off work for leisure or entertainment. Intense
workplace competition induces much pressure and anxiety. All these situations they face
prevent them from identifying as middle class. However, most of my interviewees in
their 30s were usually optimistic that, if they worked hard, they would reach the level of
the middle class within 5-10: they believed that their efforts and discipline would pay off
fairly soon.
Though the official discourses of the government and the mass media celebrate
the rise of the middle class, people defined as middle class in the official discourse (or
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statistics) did not feel that it was their own story. Rather, in order to get to the middleclass level, they believed they needed more money and assets. Whereas the official
discourses failed to produce a middle- class identity that was shared by the people, they
were successful in engendering aspirations that people could achieve middle-class status
if they worked hard and lived a disciplined life. By publicizing the existence of the
middle class, “becoming middle class” came to be an important goal of ordinary people.
Conclusion
Throughout this chapter, I have argued that the formation of the middle class in
China was a hegemonic project in which the party-state attempted to establish a wealthy,
strong, and civilized nation-state in the competitive globalized world in order to
overcome the poverty and backwardness of the past. The urban middle class was an
alternative to the working class in representing the modern, brand-new China that
achieved economic reform. In order to promote economic growth, the state implemented
uneven economic development plans that replaced the old and inefficient egalitarian
system and thereby disrupted the social standing of ordinary workers. Instead, state
policies emphasizing competitiveness and efficiency nurtured the urban middle class by
rewarding educational credentials and specific expertise.
Both academics and the mass media participated in this project by assessing the
size of the middle class and disseminating typical middle-class images. The middle class
was invoked by intellectuals and social scientists as an important social force in
transitional China by contributing to social stability and sustaining economic growth. The
mass media, on the other hand, focused on the lifestyles of the middle class. In their view,
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the middle class was a desirable and newly emerging social group, one that enjoyed
comfortable lifestyles through advanced modern consumption practices but was distinct
from the new rich. It was a disciplined and high-quality subject that contributed to
harmonious society and socialist spiritual civilization. The urban middle class thus gained
the position of a mainstream force in the new China.
The efforts of the state, market, and mass media in the making of the middle class
in China produced an image of a middle class shared by ordinary people. Because of the
luxury consumption patterns of the middle class shown in the mass media, people defined
as middle class in the official discourses did not actually identify themselves as members
of the middle class. However, official discourses successfully created middle-class
aspirations and strong beliefs in social mobility by incessantly disseminating typical
images of the urban middle class. The official discourse of the urban middle class
provided the model for a Chinese identity defined by “harmony and prosperity.” The
middle-class images associated with “xiaokang” and “urban consumer culture” produced
a desire among ordinary people to become middle class. The imagined lifestyles and
urban consumer culture mediated by the middle class in official discourse defined the
vision of modern life in contemporary China, and became an instrument for strengthening
the political legitimacy of economic reform.
Comparative Conclusion
In Chapters 3 and 4, I have investigated how the Korean and Chinese states
actively engaged in middle-class projects: in the face of economic stagnation and political
disorder, political elites in both states realized that the creation of self-disciplined,
productive social subjects was critical to new nation-building that would overcome
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national backwardness and achieve high economic growth in the global world. Before
both societies saw the rise of the middle class as an actual social entity, each state
passionately addressed middle-class issues.
Along with institutional reforms in order to boost economies, both states produced
middle-class norms—civilized, socially responsible citizens of comfortable lifestyles.
These images promoted by the states and mass media specified the middle class as
economically productive, yet politically docile, which strengthened the state goals of
achieving economic development within social stability.
As Parker emphasized, the idea of the middle class is by no means determined
simply by the objective structures of occupation, income, or status (Parker 1998:16).
Distinct images of class in each society are embedded in any given society. While both
states disseminated middle-class norms and values, how specific images conveyed
middle-class norms and values were different between the states: while the Korean state
emphasized the disciplined, saving middle class, the Chinese state highlighted the
consuming, civilized (high-quality) middle class. These state efforts to create a middleclass produced contrasting outcomes in both countries: most citizens identified
themselves as middle class by the end of 1970’s in Korea, whereas very few identified
themselves as the middle class in China, even though their objective conditions could be
classified as middle class. In other words, the hegemonic discourse disseminated by the
Korean state successfully penetrated the society, while there was a gap between
hegemonic discourses and popular discourses in China. The popular understanding of the
middle class in China is almost the same as the bourgeoisie or big entrepreneurs in the
objective sense. Although Chinese self-identification of the middle class is relatively
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uncommon, this does not mean that the state project of middle-class making was not
successful. Rather, the word “middle class” is ubiquitous in people’s thinking and
conversation; citizens universally aspired to be middle class. Despite the variation in selfidentification of the middle class in these two countries, both countries successfully
promoted the idea of the urban middle class as modern, cultured, and exemplary citizens,
and incited desire for upward mobility toward the middle class.
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CHAPTER 5.
MY HOME, MY CAR: PURSUING THE MIDDLE CLASS DREAM IN SOUTH
KOREA, 1979-1986
In the 1960s, the Korean authoritarian state created specific images of the urban
middle class long before the rise of the urban middle class as a tangible entity. For most
people at that time, the middle class was mainly an imaginary and abstract concept far
distant from their own lifestyles. It symbolized urbanity and modernity as an ideal to be
reached soon, but most of the population had a long way to go to reach that ideal. With
the continued economic growth and increased income of the 1970s, however, the middle
class was no longer just a dream. The expansion of industrialization and the growth of big
business firms increased the size of the economic pie and made people feel that their
standard of living had improved.
While increased incomes allowed better lifestyles and improved standards of
living, housing was key to creating individual wealth and shaping class identity. In this
chapter, I examine how the Korean authoritarian state promoted homeownership, a
vehicle through which employees in chaebols and government could achieve upward
social mobility and become middle class. The real estate boom beginning in the late
1970s provided new opportunities for some with stable jobs and incomes to become
homeowners, although most people remained non-homeowners. What did it mean to be a
homeowner, in particular an apartment-owner, in booming Korea? How did this feel to
ordinary citizens? How did it affect the broad political landscape for the authoritarian
state?
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In contemporary Korea, the urban middle class is usually taken as synonymous
with people living in “Gangnam” 31 and residing in high-rise apartment complexes, in
addition to any specific social scientific indicators such as income, occupation, and
consumption patterns. While social scientists identify this particular class by specific
numbers and abstract concepts, people endow this class with more concrete, geographical
meanings that date back to the late 1970s. At that time the state began to develop
“Gangnam” for reasons having to do with national security, increasing population
pressure, and lack of housing in the city. The authoritarian state provided a number of
incentives to attract people to this area. With this urban redevelopment, deserted land was
transformed into high-rise apartments and modern skyscrapers and became one of the
most expensive areas in Korea. Gangnam was the very place where huge, expensive
apartment complexes were born and popularized and typical middle-class neighborhoods
were on the rise. The “early adopters,” lucky enough to buy their own houses in this area,
had gotten the ticket to the middle class, and were the object of others’ envy.
In this sense, the history of Gangnam development parallels that of the wider
urban middle class in Korea. As Li Zhang pointed out in her ethnographic study of urban
China, the process of class making is shaped by “spatial production” that not only
reorganizes urban space into a hierarchical and segregated form but also defines
particular modes of living and social identification (Zhang 2010: 14). The “contested”
urban politics in the Gangnam area formed stratified residential space and cultivated
distinctive lifestyles. Through the lens of urban redevelopment plans in South Korea, I
31
The term “Gangnam” refers specifically to the area south of the Han River (“gang” is river,
“nam” is south). It has two broad connotations: one generally describing that southern part of
Seoul, as opposed to Gangbuk (the northern part of the Han River). The other, more common
connotation indicates Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, Seoul’s two most affluent districts.
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explore how particular state policies created “open” class mobility and enabled ordinary
people to engage in “exclusive” practices of class distinctions. An apartment lottery
system (bunyang system), controlled by the government, allowed those with stable jobs
and incomes to purchase an apartment at below market value and thus achieve upward
social mobility. Those who became apartment residents strived to assert their
socioeconomic status through various gate-keeping practices aimed at the lower classes
on a daily basis.
Mega Project: The Birth of Gangnam, the New Middle-Class Town
In the 1970s, Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was suffering from rapidly
increasing population all over the nation, and an accompanying lack of housing. Between
1960 and 1970, the population of Seoul had doubled from 2.45 million to 5.5 million, and
by 1990, the population had doubled again, reaching 10 million (http://statapp.seoul.go.kr/sws/sws999P.jsp?ID=DT_B10TAB&IDTYPE=3&A_LANG=1&FPUB=
3&SELITEM=1, accessed April 20, 2011). Because of state-driven industrialization,
more and more people left their rural hometowns and migrated to big cities (particularly
Seoul) for better opportunities. This explosive population increase in Seoul created a
number of problems, including pressures in transportation, housing, and the environment.
The housing problem, in particular, was serious. The housing supply rate 32 in 1960 was
84.2 percent and decreased steadily up to the 1990s. The housing problem in Seoul was
much worse than in other cities, because Seoul was absorbing migrants from all over the
country. The housing supply rate in Seoul has always been around 20 percent below that
32
The housing supply rate is the ratio of households to housing units. For example, if two
families live in a detached house (dandok ju'aek), which is formally a single housing unit, the
"housing supply rate" is 50%.
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in other cities (Gelézeau 2007:88). Even in 1980, at the peak of economic growth, the
housing supply rate in Seoul was only 53 percent.
Table 5. 1. Population Change and Rate of Urbanization in Seoul
Time Period
Population of Seoul
Urbanization Rate
18-19th century
190
3-5%
1920
250
10%
1945
900
18%
1960
2,450
28%
1970
5,530
41%
1980
8,370
59%
1985
9,926
70%
1990
10,620
80%
Note: unit of population: thousand
Urbanization rate is for South Korea overall.
Source: Gelézeau 2007, p. 87
Figure 5. 1. The City of Seoul
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Seoul_districts_de.png (accessed April 20,
2011)
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To resolve this problem, both central and city governments came up with the idea
of developing and expanding Seoul’s undeveloped areas, Gangnam. Four decades ago,
this district was empty land containing some pear orchards and mulberry fields. The
population in 1963 was 14,867 in what is now Gangnam-gu 33 and 12,069 in what is now
Seocho-gu; currently, Gangnam-gu’s population is 560,000 and Seocho-gu’s 430,000
(www.seoul.go.kr, accessed November 17, 2010). While the north region of the Han
River was badly overcrowded, the opposite side of Seoul was so empty as to seem
uninhabitable. Figures 5. 2. and 5. 3. capture Gangnam’s completely rural past. Figure 5.
2. is the 1970s landscape in Apgujŏng-dong, 34 now the heart of Gangnam. Figure 5. 3. is
the early 1980s landscape of Jamwon-dong, clearly lacking an appropriate sewage system.
Figure 5. 2. Apgujŏng-dong in the 1970’s
Source: http://www.museum.seoul.kr/kor/main_view/kh_spc_view.jsp?se_idx=93
(accessed April 20th, 2011).
33
A gu is an administrative unit of a city, usually comparable to a district. Seoul now has 25 gus
but in 1960 had only nine.
34
A dong is an administrative unit belonging to a gu or city.
137
Figure 5. 3. Jamwon-dong in the early 1980’s
Source: http://www.museum.seoul.kr/kor/main_view/kh_spc_view.jsp?se_idx=93
(accessed April 20, 2011).
Nowadays, Gangnam symbolizes the wealth, social status, and prestige of the
Korean upper-middle and middle classes (Figure 5. 4). As the center of finance,
education, culture and information technology, Gangnam is the place in Seoul where
everybody aspires to live. However, because of extremely high rents and housing prices,
only the affluent can afford to live there. Living in Gangnam itself has become a status
symbol:
All Seoul’s major department stores, restaurants, shoe stores and clothing shops
have moved their main branches to the Gangam area in order to take advantage of
the area’s vast consumer appetite, and now we are witnessing a similar trend
among the capital’s educational and sports facilities, galleries, theaters, book
stores, and even churches. While government restrictions on the construction of
new buildings and facilities that might lure people to the Gangbuk area and
administrative guidelines permitting the construction of larger homes south of the
river certainly contribute to this mass exodus to Gangnam, a more significant
cause is most certainly the fact that there is more money, more power and more
educated people to be found in Gangnam (emphasis added; Hwang Keewon
1991:33).
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Figure 5. 4. The current Gangnam landscape
Source: http://www.museum.seoul.kr/kor/main_view/kh_spc_view.jsp?se_idx=93
(accessed April 20, 2011).
How was this rapid transformation from deserted land to status symbol brought
about? The development of Gangnam was a large government plan aimed at reducing
population pressure in Gangbuk (satellite cities surrounding Seoul were also constructed
to this end) and also at relocating the population to the more southerly part of Korea in
the face of military attack from North Korea. Around 1966, Mayor Kim Hyun Ok
implemented an aggressive pro-growth policy that involved developing areas near the
Han River. Nicknamed “Bulldozer” and known for calling construction his “religion,”
Mayor Kim started implementing a number of new projects for developing the city. His
first project was to develop the island of Youido in 1967. The entire island was filled
with high-rise apartment buildings for middle- and upper-middle-income families,
supermarkets, schools, and a tall skyline of office and commercial buildings (Kim and
Choe 1997: 66). Mayor Kim argued that development of land near the Han River and the
construction of Youido were historic tasks and a national art for the fatherland (Son
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2003). In a similar vein, the development of Gangnam began at the end of the 1960s.
Construction of the Third Han River Bridge (what is usually called Hannam Bridge) and
the Kyungbu (Seoul-Pusan) Highways triggered development of this then-desolate land.
President Park Chung Hee announced in 1967 that the government would launch
construction of the Kyungbu Highways between the capital, Seoul, and the second
biggest city, Pusan. 35 In 1968, the government authorized land readjustment (LR)
projects in the district of Gangnam in order to secure lands for the highway free of charge.
LR is a method whereby landowners pool ownership of scattered and irregular plots of
agricultural land, build roads and main infrastructure, and then sub-divide the land into
urban plots (Sorensen 1999: 2333). Each landowner must contribute a portion of his
previous land holdings (usually about 30 percent of the total) to provide space for roads,
parks and other public space, and for reserve land. The reserve land is sold at the end of
the project to pay the costs of planning, administration and construction. The attraction of
the method to landowners is that it can induce substantial increases in land value thus
enhancing the value of individual land holdings even though the remaining area is
smaller. Its attraction for planning authorities is that these projects provide land for public
facilities, build needed urban infrastructure, and are largely self-financing. While the
secured land for the project was originally estimated to be about 3,130,000 pyung (1
pyung=3.3 m2), after some expansion around 9 million pyung was ultimately secured
(Son 2005: 228). While the government obtained extremely large areas for the project,
the land price had to be increased to pay all the costs incurred. However, the government
35
According to some other sources, the government implemented development of Gangnam in order
to appropriate political funds (Kang 2006; Kim, Hyung-guk. 2004). As the government raised funds
relatively easily in case the land price increased, it had a strong interest in developing the areas and
increasing the land value.
140
had difficulty reselling this land since most people were reluctant to move to what was at
the time empty land. Around 1968, Gangnam was not connected to the center of the city
at all, and was completely isolated because communication instruments such as public
phones or post offices were lacking. In emergencies, residents would have to run to other
neighborhoods to look for phones, and after curfew there was no way to communicate
with others outside their residential areas (Chosun Ilbo, Aug. 15, 1968).
Though the government procured the land of Gangnam after LR of area 11 times
larger than Youido, it was difficult to build houses and relocate people in an area where
no social infrastructure existed. The government had to devise incentives that could
attract people to the new areas. Enacting the “Particular District Development Promotion
Law” (Tŭkjŏngjigu gaebal chokjin), the government declared that the Gangnam district
would be the center of the city, and curbed development of Gangbuk by vetoing
construction of new department stores, schools, and bars there (Son 2005: 229). The
government provided significant tax exemptions for projects that developed Gangnam
(Chang, SH. 2004: 60). It also accelerated the area’s growth by building social
infrastructure such as transportation, administration, and education in this region.
First, the government tried to make Gangnam the hub of transportation by moving
the bus terminal from Gangbuk to Gangnam. The Minister of Construction and
Transportation issued an administrative order in 1977 that all express buses must leave
from and arrive at the Gangnam bus terminal; all other bus terminals in the Gangbuk area
were closed (Son 2005: 230). The Gangnam bus terminal, in the middle of nowhere, of
course had a number of problems. It was located far from the city center. Given that only
two bridges connected the southern and northern areas at the time, the new bus terminal
141
could not connect the city centers in an effective way. Furthermore, it was located where
there were no people. Thus, many newspapers criticized the inconvenient location of the
bus terminal as “the transportation center without transportation,” and “the gate of Seoul
where the buses take people to empty fields.” In the name of development of the
Gangnam district, many people had a hard time just getting to the bus terminal to travel
to other regions.
Second, since the completion of the Third Han River Bridge in 1969, the
government had constructed more bridges connecting Gangnam and Gangbuk and also
designed a second and third subway line to penetrate the Gangnam region. Major
government offices such as the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the Supreme Court were
moved to Gangnam as well. This government effort incorporated the isolated Gangnam
area into the center of the city.
Third, the government also encouraged massive apartment construction in
Gangnam to encourage a great number of people to move there. The city government
designated about 25 percent of the land in the Gangnam district for building huge
apartment complexes (Son 2005: 231). At that time, high-rise apartment living was alien
to most Koreans. Until the late 1960s, there were only about 30 apartment buildings
nationwide, accommodating approximately 1,000 households (Seoul Metropolis 1983).
This is surprising, particularly considering how massive apartment complexes have come
to dominate the current cityscape only three decades afterwards.
Last, the government relocated elite public high schools from Gangbuk to
Gangnam by offering the schools better land prices, so as to provide better educational
142
opportunities for Gangnam residents. Since 1976, several elite schools have moved to
Gangnam (as discussed further in the following section).
The state effort to develop a new area of Gangnam changed the cityscape rapidly.
The institutional benefits promoted its development and attracted more and more people
to this area. State-directed construction of massive apartment complexes also changed
social norms about Korea’s living environment.
Triple Alliances for Building Apartment Complexes: The State, Chaebols, and the
Middle Class
In this section, I trace the process through which Gangnam development and
massive apartment construction created a huge middle-class town and cultivated middleclass norms in Korea. I argue that three actors were critical in promoting apartment
construction and changing the cityscape: the state, developers including chaebols, and
ordinary middle-class citizens. Though each actor had different interests, they all had a
stake in apartment construction. The state master plan of creating modern urban
landscape and resolving housing problems was implemented through an alliance with
chaebols interested in profiting from the construction business. The state enacted laws
and deregulated the real estate market so as to encourage apartment construction for
developers. Middle-class citizens were invited by the state to share this small piece of the
pie and to enjoy increasing wealth.
Facing Seoul’s serious housing shortage and providing decent housing for all
residents were important issues for the authoritarian state and were directly relevant to
social and political stability. Building high-rise apartments was efficient for the
143
government since they could provide more housing to people in the limited space.
Beginning with the enactment of “The Housing Construction Promotion Law (Jutaek
Gŏnsŏlchokjinbŏp)” in 1972, the Ministry of Construction’s policy had aimed at building
and supplying housing on a larger scale (Gelézeau 2007: 91). By loosening the
restrictions on constructing apartment buildings, this law encouraged developers to build
huge, high-rise apartment complexes. The Ministry of Construction set the goal of
building 500,000 houses for the Third Five-Year Economic Development Plan (19721976) and the higher goal of 1.2 million houses for the Fourth Five-Year Economic
Development Plan (1977-1981). Seventy percent of housing constructed in the 1970s was
apartment complexes, accommodating more than 2,000 households (Gelézeau ibid.).
Through other institutional incentives, the government helped developers construct
apartment buildings under fewer restrictions. For example, the government provided
funds to developers when building small- sized housing (less than 24 pyung) through the
Housing Bank established in 1969. Furthermore, in 1981, the government instituted the
National Housing Fund (Gukmin Jutaek Gigŭm), unifying the funds from different
sources and managing them through the Housing Bank (Dong-A Ilbo, July 17, 1981).
Apartments, the dominant type of housing for the middle class, were not popular
in the 1960s when they were introduced. Ordinary people viewed apartments negatively,
identifying them as low-quality housing for low-income families. The type of housing
that people preferred was a single house with its own yard (Gelézeau 2007; Park, Chulsoo 2006). The Wow Apartment collapse in 1970 epitomizes poor apartment construction
at that time: three months after completion, this apartment building collapsed and 33
residents died. After this, the government changed the target of apartment buildings from
144
the lower classes to the middle class (Chun, Sang-in 2009:43). In the early 1970s, the
Korean Housing Corporation (KHC, Daehan Jutaek Gongsa) 36 started building
apartments for the middle- and upper-middle classes by constructing larger and highquality apartments. Apartments construction for lower classes decreased; instead, modern
apartment buildings targeted the better-off. Some developers called their apartment
buildings “mansions,” implying they were residences for the affluent (Gelézeau 2007:36).
The connotation of “apartment building” changed from low-quality housing to become
more and more attached to the middle-class.
The KHC built Seoul’s first mammoth middle-class apartment complexes, the
Banpo and Jamsil apartment complexes (Son 2005). Both Banpo and Jamsil apartment
complexes were revolutionary in some ways. First, they were the first tremendous, highrise apartment complexes and functioned as a standardized model for other apartment
complexes. Second, the apartment complexes themselves worked as a self-sufficient
neighborhood equipped with facilities such as schools, supermarkets, gyms, and
children’s parks for residents (Son ibid.).
As its first mega project, the KHC constructed a mammoth apartment complex in
the Banpo area between 1972 and 1974. Apartments ranged from 22 to 44 pyung in area
and targeted middle-income families. While previous apartment complex was on a
relatively small scale, for between 1,000 and 1,500 households, the Banpo apartment
complex accommodated up to 4,000 households and 15,000 people (Son 2005). With the
beginning of the Banpo apartments, other mammoth apartment complexes such as Jamsil
began to be constructed as well. Called “Jamsil new town,” this new apartment complex
36
KHC, a government-invested organization founded in 1962, has played a major role in
constructing huge apartment complexes and affordable housing in Seoul.
145
on east side of Gangnam was aimed at accommodating about 20,000 households and
100,000 residents (KHC 1992: 130-131) and was started in 1975 and completed in 1977.
Under the military rule at the time, construction of the huge apartment complexes was not
different from a military campaign. In the name of “180 days’ strategy of housing
construction,” 280,000 construction workers were mobilized (Gelezeau 2007; KHC 1992;
Son 2005).
Though the KHC constructed all of Seoul’s mammoth apartment complexes, most
of the new housing supply was distributed by the private housing industry (Kim and Choe
1997: 115). 37 Both small and big private enterprises jumped into the business of
constructing high-rise apartment complexes. In particular, chaebols became prominent in
this business. While Korean chaebols are known as the promoters of Korean economic
growth, it is less well known that they made significant profits from land speculation and
the construction business. This lucrative business not only allowed small- and mid-sized
chaebols to grow rapidly, but brought them enormous profits. Because of the incessant
demand and escalating land prices, the apartment construction business was anything but
profitable.
Chaebols were leaders in the Gangnam real estate boom. In the economic
development in the 1970s, chaebols depended on low-interest bank loans controlled by
the state. Most chaebols spent this capital on real estate speculation, leading to exorbitant
increases in metropolitan land prices. The companies usually got a loan from the bank,
bought a huge amount of land in the city for speculation, and then reported to the
authority that they would build factories. Even if they eventually did build the factories,
37
According to Kim and Choe (1997), 67 percent of housing was supplied by the private housing
industry in 1975 and 79.9 in 1980. Although by 1988, this rate had decreased to 63.5 percent in
1988, private developers remained the biggest housing suppliers (116-117).
146
they usually bought twice as much land as needed, expecting to profit from dramatically
increasing land prices. They would then take out another loan from banks using the
already purchased land as security. With this money, they would try another land
purchase. If the firms did nothing and let the land sit idle, after a while, the land price
would skyrocket (Jung 1978: 137). This was a very easy and common road to profit for
Korean firms.
After securing this expensive land, the chaebols got permission to construct
apartment buildings. Before they started building, however, they ran ads in newspapers
and magazines for those interested in buying apartments. In this period, all apartment
buildings, particularly in the Gangnam district, were extremely popular because land
values were increasing drastically and life in the apartment buildings was believed to be
modern and trendy. No matter when the new apartment buildings were built, they all
thrived; securing an apartment unit was extremely competitive and the odds of doing so
were about one in ten. Not until the applicants put down their deposits did the developers
started laying the foundation. With contracts with thousands of people who hoped to
move in, the developers could take out huge bank loans. When the developers started
erecting the buildings proper, apartment applicants had to start making installment
payments, and the full purchase price had to paid off by the time construction was
completed. The new apartment complexes in the Gangnam areas were pots of gold for
both parties, developers and new residents. On the developer’s side, the new apartment
buildings attracted a number of people who were willing to invest money. Regardless of
their financial situations, apartments were lucrative and would never fail. On the
resident’s side, buying an apartment in Gangnam was a completely worthwhile
147
investment. Even if they incurred debt to buy the apartment, after some years, its price
would be well above what they bought it for.
A number of chaebols took advantage of the Seoul real estate boom and made
enormous profits from the construction business. Before the boom, for example, Woosung was a small brick-making company and Hansin made furnaces for houses (Shin,
Jongsu 1976; Son 2005). These construction-supply companies thus became chaebols in
the apartment boom. Similarly, companies such as Samho and Samik rapidly grew by
building large apartments. Some famous chaebols like Hyundai, which managed to get
large construction contracts in the Middle East, invested in real estate and provided large,
modern apartments targeting the upper-middle class in 1975-1977. The chaebols’ fierce
apartment construction competition transformed Gangnam into a huge high-rise
apartment town. 38
Ordinary people who aspired to be homeowners also participated in this
apartment boom. The government authorized a housing lottery system (the Bunyang
system) through the revision of the “Housing Construction Promotion Law” in 1977,
which applied to apartment complexes of more than 20 households (Gelézeau 2007: 92).
According to this law, someone wanting to buy an apartment had to open an account at
the Housing Bank, the exclusive manager of the Korean apartment lottery system. There
were different kinds of deposits. A national housing subscription deposit for nonhomeowners applying for small apartments (usually less than about 60 m2) was
subsidized by 10-20 percent by National Housing Funds. The other two deposits were for
38
The apartment construction business is still lucrative and popular among chaebols. Since the
1980s, super chaebols such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai have participated in and dominated
this business, although some chaebols that grew in this business in the 1970s and 80s collapsed
during the 1997 economic crisis due to bad finances.
148
private housing not supported by public funds, one was for relatively small apartments
(less than 80 m2) and the other for any apartment size. Both homeowners and nonhomeowners could deposit money. Once applicants deposited some amount of money
and qualified for the lottery system, they would be assigned to one of three classes. To
get in the first class usually took two years; for the second class, one year was spent; the
third class took less than a year. When a construction project was announced, if certain
criteria were met, anyone who had deposited money in the Housing Bank could apply to
enter a lottery. The odds of winning were set and stated in the announcement; 20:1 was
common. In such a case, if one hundred units were to be sold, up to two thousand
applicants would be accepted for the lottery.
Lottery winners made perhaps three or four installment payments over a period of
one or two years while the apartments were being built. The apartment had to be paid in
full before moving in, but the cost (set by the government) was below market value. After
a short time, the owners could turn around and sell the apartment for a profit (Lett 1998:
69). All the construction companies in charge of building and providing apartments had
to follow this Housing Bank lottery system and were not allowed to sell apartments in
any other way. With the limited income of white-collar workers and escalating apartment
prices, this system became the only channel through which ordinary white-collar
households could become homeowners.
However, this system created fictitious demands for apartments. In addition to
ordinary non-homeowners who aspired to their own homes, many people applied to the
lottery system simply to get an additional apartment. It was worthwhile investing a lot of
money in an additional apartment unit because it would sooner or later boost their wealth.
149
Apartment prices were skyrocketing and many people wanted to get rich overnight. But
this fictitious demand produced a vicious cycle in which the apartment prices kept
increasing with constantly higher demand. Extremely high demands for apartments
generated a high “premium,” often between 2.2 million and 17 million won (1
USD=approximately 400 won in 1978) per unit.
Once an applicant won the lottery for an apartment, he could hand over
occupancy rights to another person, sometimes for a premium of more than 10 million
won. Thus he could earn 10 million won in an instant by doing nothing. And even a loser
of the lottery, who was willing to pay up to 10 million won to the winner and could still
purchase the occupancy rights. He would wait a few days to sell this right to another
person and make another two million won out of it. It was thus an imaginary market
where people bought and sold the invisible apartments even before they were built. In
order to make easy money, more and more people took part in this gamble, beginning in
the end of the 1970s. Those with funds and time to spend on apartment lotteries could
make easy money. The apartment market was effectively created by the government and
chaebols, and middle-class people with some cash to spend were invited to participate in
this legal gambling.
Though the primary goal of the apartment lottery system was to provide more
housing for non-homeowners, it is obvious that the system favored people with financial
resources. Furthermore, chaebols, which built bigger and more expensive apartments,
catered to the interests of the upper-middle class.
150
Table 5. 2. Rates of Returns per Pyung (1 pyung=3.3m2)
Size
77
50
45
38
34
Expenses
565
414
419
407
407
(unit: 1,000
won)
Selling
690
500
500
491
476
price (unit:
1,000 won)
Return Rate
21.9
20.8
19.3
20.6
17.0
(%)
Company
Sunkyung
Samik
Samik
Woosung Woosung
(Developer)
13
251
266
2.3
Jugong
(Korean
Housing
Corporation)
Source: Hyun 1978, p. 144
As seen in Table 5. 2, the larger the apartments, the higher the chaebols’ rates of return.
The small apartments for the less affluent built by the Korean Housing Corporation were
not as profitable as the larger ones. Because developers could make more profits from
larger apartments, they preferred to build these; thus these larger apartments came to
predominate in Gangnam. Gangnam was the place that originated fictitious demand and
land speculation in Korea, which was rare before development of the Gangnam area.
The speculation in land and apartments in Gangnam made the price of land there
skyrocket. As seen in Table 5. 3, the price of land in Gangnam in 1979 was
approximately 1000 times that in 1963, whereas that in other districts was only 25 times
that in 1963. Over only seven years in the 1970s, the land values in Hak-dong, Apgujongdong, and Sinsa-dong in Gangnam had increased 20 times, 25 times, and 50 times
respectively. Increasing land value transformed Gangnam from a place where nobody
wanted to live to one where everybody wanted to live. Obsolete, empty sites had become
objects of aspirations.
151
Table 5. 3. Land Values of Seoul (1963-1979) (unit: won)
Distance from the City
Less than 5 km
5 km-10 km
Hall
Jung-gu
YongsanGangnam-gu
gu
SindangHuam- Hak-dong Apgujongdong
dong
dong
1963
Price
20,000
20,000
300
400
Rate of
100
100
100
100
Increase
1964
Price
30,000
25,000
1,000
1,000
Rate of
150
125
333
333
Increase
1965
Price
40,000
30,000
2,000
2,000
Rate of
200
150
666
666
Increase
1967
Price
80,000
70,000
3,000
3,000
Rate of
400
350
1,000
1,000
Increase
1968
Price
100,000
70,000
3,000
3,000
Rate of
500
350
1,000
1,000
Increase
1969
Price
200,000
100,000
5,000
5,000
Rate of
1,000
500
1,666
1,250
Increase
1970
Price
200,000
150,000
6,000
10,000
Rate of
1,000
750
2,000
2,500
Increase
1971
Price
150,000
150,000
10,000
15,000
Rate of
750
750
3,333
3,750
Increase
1972
Price
150,000
150,000
10,000
15,000
Rate of
750
750
3,333
3,750
Increase
1973
Price
150,000
120,000
15,000
15,000
Rate of
750
600
5,000
3,750
Increase
1974
Price
150,000
120,000
70,000
50,000
Rate of
750
600
23,333
12,500
Increase
1975
Price
200,000
150,000
100,000
70,000
Rate of
1000
750
33,333
17,500
Increase
1976
Price
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
Rate of
1,250
1000
50,000
25,000
152
Sinsadong
400
100
1,000
250
2,000
500
3,000
750
5,000
1,250
10,000
2,500
20,000
5,000
20,000
5,000
30,000
7,500
30,000
7,500
70,000
17,500
100,000
25,000
150,000
37,500
1977
1978
1979
Increase
Price
Rate of
Increase
Price
Rate of
Increase
Price
Rate of
Increase
250,000
1,250
200,000
1,000
150,000
50,000
100,000
25,000
150,000
37,500
350,000
1,750
350,000
1,750
250,000
83,333
250,000
62,500
250,000
75,000
500,000
2,500
500,000
2,500
400,000
133,333
350,000
87,500
400,000
100,000
Source: Son 2005: 236; quoted from Toji Gaebal June 1980 Data 2
One of the most important and effective incentives attracting people to the
Gangnam district was its school system. In the 1980s, elite schools were the most
important factor in promoting the development of the Gangnam area. Before 1973, the
school system was completely stratified into top-tier, second-tier and third-tier schools.
The competition to get into the elite top-tier schools was extremely fierce, and the phrase
“four hours’ sleep, pass an exam, five hours’ sleep, fail an exam” was popular among
students. Students aged 12 or13 had to go through intense exam competition to get into
the top schools. Getting into elite schools meant getting a ticket to top universities in
Korea, which also guaranteed getting good jobs and stable lives later.
In 1973 the government announced the standardization of all high schools and
abolished entrance by examination into the top schools (Kang 2006: 94). Instead, students
were assigned to schools depending on where they lived. Most of the top schools at that
time were located in the heart of the city. The government ordered the elite schools in
Gangbuk to move to the newly developing area of Gangnam. Kyunggi High School
moved to Samsung-dong in Gangnam in March 1976, and Huimun High School,
Sukmyung Girls’ Middle and High Schools, and Seoul High School also moved to the
new area in 1978-1980 (Kang, ibid). Most alumni and students, who had strong pride in
153
their schools, did not want their schools to leave their original homes, but despite
opposition, they were forced to do so. Some second-tier schools envisioned that
relocation in Gangnam would strengthen their reputations and decided of their own
accord to move to the area. The trend of school relocation to Gangnam gave Gangnam
residents’ children an opportunity for high-quality education. Furthermore, the ban on
private tutoring implemented in 1980 strengthened the importance of public education,
and more people wanted to move to Gangnam where their children could get better
educations at elite schools. The massive migration of schools from Gangbuk to Gangnam
confirmed the prestigious status of Gangnam and thus accelerated the migration of people
who had initially been reluctant to relocate there.
Seoul has a particular school district system and the Gangnam district belongs to
School District eight. Since a number of top schools have moved to Gangnam, School
District eight has become symbolic of the shortcut to top universities. In fact, high
schools in this district have higher student acceptance rates at top universities. The five
high schools with the most students admitted in the top three universities in Korea,
namely Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea, were all in District Eight (Jung, Jaeyoung
1988: 548-9). This outcome made parents aspire all the more for their children to go to
school in Gangnam and eventually get into the top universities. As of 1985, the number
of people who had moved within the last five years was 30 percent of Seoul’s total
population but reached 89 percent in Gangnam. In the mid-1980s, the number of
households and high school students in Seoul increased by 7.9 percent and 1.2 percent
respectively, whereas in Gangnam they increased by 23.4 percent and 57.5 percent,
respectively. The fact that the growth rate of high school students in Gangnam was 50
154
times that in Gangbuk shows that many people moved from Gangbuk to Gangnam for
educational purposes (Kim, Hyungguk 2004: 19). The government policy of elite school
relocation in Gangnam accelerated, generating higher demand for Gangnam apartments.
Since getting into top colleges was extremely competitive in Korea, and children’s
education was the middle-class parents’ biggest concern, moving into Gangnam seemed a
great investment.
Figures 5. 5. and 5. 6. show the relation of apartment distribution and fervor for
education. The darker the districts are, the more apartments and cram schools are located
there. The number of cram schools is important in identifying spatial clusters of middleclass lifestyles because most middle-class parents are concerned with their children’s
education. Most Korean parents send their children to cram schools after the normal
school day, and most parents spend a considerable amount of money on their children’s
education in order to send them to a good university. The Gangnam area, including both
Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, has the highest rates of both apartment complexes and cram
schools.
155
Figure 5. 5. Apartment Distribution in Seoul
Source: http://gis.seoul.go.kr/SeoulGis/StatisticsMap.jsp
Figure 5. 5. shows the apartment distribution in Seoul in 2009; darker colors
indicate more apartment units. The top three districts were Nowon-gu, Gangnam-gu, and
Songpa-gu, which respectively have 158,129, 113,884, and 109, 789 households residing
in apartments. Though Nowon-gu has the most households in apartments, these
apartments were built relatively recently. In terms of the apartment size, small apartments
for lower middle-class people were predominant, whereas bigger apartments were more
common in the Gangnam district.
156
Figure 5. 6. Distribution of Cram Schools in Seoul
Source: http://gis.seoul.go.kr/SeoulGis/StatisticsMap.jsp
Figure 5. 6. indicates the 2009 distribution of cram schools in Seoul. As many
traditionally prestigious schools are located in Gangnam, that area has an overwhelming
number of cram schools to prepare students for the college entrance exams. The
Gangnam district has 1,608 cram schools, Songpa 1,118, and Seocho 802. Among the
other 22 districts, only the Yangcheon district has number of cram schools (857)
comparable to Seocho’s. The Yangcheon district is another district where dense
apartment buildings sprang up in the 1980s and where many middle-class people live.
The educational fervor in Gangnam district can be seen in Figure 5. 6. And correlating
Figures 5. 5. and 5.6. strongly suggests the correlation between the number of households
living in apartments and educational aspirations. Apartment culture and educational
aspirations for their children are the keys to identifying the Korean urban middle class.
157
What is interesting, though, is that Nowon district, another apartment district, does not
have as many cram schools as the others. Nowon-gu is where relatively young, lower
middle-class people live, explaining its fewer cram schools.
Gangnam, once empty fields and obsolete land far from the heart of Seoul, has
become its most promising district, equipped with high-rise modern apartments and better
schools. State-initiated mega projects of apartment construction and school relocation
successfully created a new town for middle-class and upper-middle class families. The
urban middle class in Gangnam was thus an artifact of state-initiated urban
redevelopment project and massive housing construction.
Apartment Living and the Formation of Middle-Class Identity
Massive construction of apartments in selected areas, in particular Gangnam,
strengthened the middle-class identity, concentrating those with similar socioeconomic
backgrounds in specific apartment buildings. By suggesting models of the middle-class
lifestyle, apartments became a vehicle through which residents adopted similar lifestyles
and cultivated class identities at the micro level.
Apartment residents in Korea are usually highly educated, middle-class citizens.
According to a case study of three middle-class apartment complexes in Gangnam—
Jamsil and Yŏksam—the educational level of the residents was very high. The rate of
college graduates or above was 97 percent (Kim, Busung 1992:34). High educational
levels also correlate to larger income. The monthly wages of most households in this
survey were well beyond the minimum wage, the average monthly household income
was 1.49 million won, and the average monthly savings rate reached 21 percent (Kim B.
158
ibid. 35). Sixty-five percent of the residents were professionals or managers, and 12.6
percent were top executives in business firms. Considering that only 26.6 percent of
urban residents were professionals/mangers in Seoul in the early 1990s, it is clear that
this particular group of professionals and managers preferred to live in apartments than in
any other type of housing (Kim B. ibid: 37). Additionally, 93.3 percent of residents
owned their own homes (Kim B. ibid.).
As a typical middle-class residence since the end of the 1970s, the apartment
complex has contributed to concentrating middle-class residents in particular places and
segregating them from the less privileged. Apartment complexes not only homogenized
their residents by inspiring them to adopt similar lifestyles, but also differentiated their
residents from traditional residents in houses. In general, an apartment complex contained
apartments of similar sizes (with some variations). Living in a particular apartment
complex was a marker pointing to a person’s wealth and social status. For example, the
Banpo 1 apartment complex contained larger units built for upper-middle class residents,
whereas the Banpo 2 apartment complex had smaller-sized apartments targeting lowermiddle class residents. When people said they lived in a particular apartment complex,
others immediately knew their socioeconomic status. In this sense, apartment living was
not simply a form of residence; rather, it was a fine mesh through which to assess
people’s socioeconomic standing.
Living in uniform apartments, residents (housewives in particular) tried to assert
status through consumption practices. Housewives often exchanged visits with their
neighbors through monthly neighborhood meetings, or for chats. The women could use
these occasions to discuss consumer products and to show off or check out the latest in
159
household furnishings, fads in interior decoration, and consumer goods in general (Lett
1998: 137). In this way a type of competition ensued, leading to increased consumer
spending either for “keeping up with the Joneses” (or Kims, as the case may be) or for
“one-upmanship” (Lett ibid.). If one’s neighbor, who was believed to be in similar
socioeconomic conditions, purchased a Hyundai Sonata, one would be unlikely purchase
a more compact car. The act of buying a certain refrigerator or washing machine
exhibited one’s socioeconomic status. As Bourdieu (1984) argues that consumption
practices depict one’s status and are used as strategies to distance oneself from lower
groups, middle-class apartment residents in Gangnam tried to reinforce their status
through possessing particular material goods. Likewise, the size of one’s apartment, i.e.
how many pyungs it is, represents one’s social standing. Anthropologist Bonggil Lim
chose as his field sites apartment complexes in Gangnam that were 25-40 pyung,
considered as typical middle-class residences. He explains how class consciousness
formed among these apartment residents. Even those living in the same compound form a
fragmented class consciousness depending on their apartment sizes:
Those who lived in mid-sized apartments feel inferior to people living in a larger
apartment; however, they also feel relieved when they see people who live in a
smaller apartment. There exists a significant difference in lifestyle among
residents in different-sized apartment buildings within the same complex. There is
a hierarchical order between large and small apartments; residents call those who
live in bigger apartments high stratum, those who live in smaller apartments low
stratum. Residents of apartments larger than 40 pyung are high executives in the
government, banks, and chaebols, and professors; residents of apartments smaller
than 30 pyung are relatively young and are small business owners, teachers, and
white-collar workers. There is a large difference between cars the two groups of
residents own. While high-end cars are the norm in “high-stratum” buildings,
compact or low-end cars are predominant in “low-stratum” buildings. There are
many two-car owners in apartment buildings with units larger than 47 pyung and
some people own foreign cars or hire a chauffeur. Experienced security guards
work for “high-stratum” buildings whereas newly hired guards work for “low-
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stratum” buildings. Because of this, there are some tensions between the groups of
residents (Lim 1992: 116).
Despite these differences between residents based on their different-sized
apartments, there is no doubt that apartment residents were typical middle-class citizens.
With the widespread increasing popularity of apartment living, apartment residents
commonly enjoyed economic benefits as well as modern, comfortable lifestyles. Owning
an apartment was almost the only way to increase one’s wealth. Since salary was usually
the only source of family income, few options existed for ordinary people to save money.
Apartments, whose prices were soaring overnight, were valuable assets for aspiring
middle-class people. Homeownership not only meant having one’s own home but was
also an opportunity to accumulate wealth. Homeownership was the fastest way for
ordinary people to gain wealth, far quicker than investing in stocks, or saving. While
investing in stocks had short-term fluctuations and savings interest rates were very low,
real estate consistently made profit that increased exponentially over time.
My interviewees confirmed that homeownership was the only way to increase
wealth. Ms. Park, a housewife in her early 60s, recalled that in the 1980s it was difficult
to live only on her husband’s salary. Her husband worked at Bank of Korea, one of the
most prestigious jobs in Korea. However, he was an eldest son and partly responsible for
his parents and siblings. Given her husband’s meager income, Ms. Park not only had to
be frugal in household management but had to find other ways to get more money:
With my husband’s salary, we couldn’t have any savings; we had to support his
family, my brother-in-law and parents-in-law. I don’t exactly remember how
much he got paid at that time. But it was clear that we couldn’t save any money
on his salary. It was not possible to save little by little every year and buy a house
after ten years. Why? Because the housing prices increased drastically overnight.
I had to buy whatever apartment I could afford. Once I had bought one apartment
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unit, its price had increased to some extent by the time I wanted to sell, and I
could make some money. When I sold an apartment, I took a loan from a bank
and bought another one. After a while, I sold the house again and got another loan
to buy the next house, something like that. I did this almost twenty times. If I had
had more money, I could have bought several houses at the same time. But I did
not have enough money. To make more money given my situation, this was the
best way. If I had more money to invest in real estate and acted like a real estate
broker, I would have been a millionaire!
Ms. Chang, a housewife married to an engineer working in a big construction firm at that
time, also recalled how easy it was to make money in real estate:
Speculation [in land or apartments] was not unusual at all. It was very rare to find
people who did not speculate in real estate. It was very common to buy and sell
apartments for this purpose. While my husband earned relatively good money, we
could become better with this [real estate investment]. But this was nothing
compared with others who became much richer. At that time, there was no heavy
tax burden. I earned some money by buying an apartment and selling it. By doing
this a few times, I could earn a fair amount of money. In six months after buying
the apartment, I could sell it. For example, I could sell the apartment that I bought
for 8 million at 16 million. It was double! I made the same amount of money as
my husband earned abroad for a year. It was very interesting. Some speculators
had 20 or 30 apartments. Those who bought and sold again and again in Gangnam
made a tremendous amount of money. (…) Gangnam women were bright, weren’t
they? They always exchanged information. They always opened their eyes and
ears to new information. When they got together, they always talked about where
apartments would be built, where you could get marketable land, and so on.
Looking back, I am not sure if I should have bought massive amounts of land and
a lot of apartments as the others did. Some people went around all over the nation
and used to buy a lot of land. I was a young woman and my children were still
little, and I wondered if I should do that [buying huge amounts of land
everywhere]. Seeing their current comfortable lifestyles, they seemed to make a
lot of money then.
She acknowledged that she participated in real estate speculation and the money she
made was not negligible. Both Ms. Park and Ms. Chang argued that they were not unique;
rather, this behavior was common. They believed that what they did was more acceptable
than “professional” speculators (ggun) who bought dozens of houses at once. Though my
interviewees could make money through speculation, even those who did not participate
in this “game” could double their wealth in a short time simply by owning an apartment.
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Apartment owners could see the rapid increase of their apartment prices, far greater than
they could have made from their own salaries. Even in a few months, apartment prices
could increase by 30 percent. Between 1975 and 1979, land prices increased around 2030 percent annually, and rate of increase in land prices in 1978 was an amazing 135
percent (Chang 2004:58). While consumer prices had increased by a factor of 20 in the
twenty years between 1964 and 1984, land prices in the big cities increased 171 times
(Chang ibid.). Based on these statistics, it is not difficult to estimate the increases that
apartment owners in boomtown Gangnam could see in their apartment prices.
Given that ordinary white-collar workers struggled to buy apartments on their
salaries alone, the apartment lottery system helped those who had some money and stable
jobs buy an apartment at less than the market value. Being an apartment owner was a
channel through which to increase one’s wealth and claim middle-class socioeconomic
status. The authoritarian state provided a large supply of apartments for salaried workers,
and these middle-income families could become apartment owners and enjoy stable
lifestyles.
Gate-Keeping Practices by the Urban Middle Class in the Urban Space
By pursuing a middle-class lifestyle and adopting similar consumption practices,
apartment residents form a class identity based on residence. Along with the
homogenization induced by apartment living, apartment residents also distinguish
themselves from non-apartment residents through exclusionary gate-keeping practices.
While some apartment complexes were built in the open spaces in the city, many
were also constructed after demolishing urban squatter settlements. The latter situation
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inevitably entailed sharp conflicts between developers and residents. In the name of
“urban redevelopment,” shanty neighborhoods were removed and replaced by new
modern buildings. Despite strong settler resistance, the authoritarian state forced
demolition of the squatter settlements and the allied developers replaced them with fancy
apartments. When implementing the redevelopment plans, the government and
developers promised to give the residents of squatter settlements priority occupancy
rights to the new apartments that were replacing their old homes. The residents of
squatter settlements usually did in fact acquire these rights, but rarely did they have
enough money to move into the apartments. All they could do was either sell the
occupancy rights to apartment brokers or others who could buy the apartments, or fight
the developers, risking intimidation by the developers’ gangster mobs. In most cases,
resistance against the developers was not successful. The developers usually mobilized
thugs who threatened the disadvantaged residents and forced evacuation of the
settlements. While plans to tear down the settlements were sometimes delayed because of
vehement protests, the protesters could not ultimately stop the developers from
bulldozing their homes.
To move into the apartments, the former residents of squatter settlements would
have had to pay a variety of taxes, almost five percent of the apartment price (even
though still below market price), including registration, property acquisition, education,
and stamp, in addition to a monthly maintenance fee. The former squatters’ meager
incomes from informal work did not enable them to afford all these fees. Bowing to
economic realities, the residents of squatter settlements usually sold their occupancy
rights to others who could afford to live there. Some were lucky enough to keep the
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occupancy rights and pay off the apartment price with some debts; however, those people
acknowledged that their standards of living prevented them from moving into the
apartments. They instead rented the apartments out to others who could afford to pay all
the fees regularly (Gelézeau 2007: 136). Those displaced tenants in general had to move
outside the city boundaries. Even if they stayed in the same neighborhood, they were
derided by the new apartment residents. Labeled “native residents” (wonjumin), these
people were stigmatized as poor, uneducated, and lacking in culture. The presence of
native residents in the neighborhood also affected the “cultural” level of the apartment
complexes and thus the apartment prices. In other words, the more native residents there
were, the less marketable and valuable the apartment complex was.
Ms. Chang, a housewife in her 50s who lived in Gangnam apartments for more
than 20 years, recalled her experience when her family moved in Gangnam. She
comments on how middle-class apartment residents unwelcomed native residents:
Seocho-dong was better than Daechi-dong in standard of living. For example,
those who lived in Daechi put a huge jar at the front veranda. There were no
sashes at their veranda. 39 It seemed that there were more native residents (who
had originally lived in the area) moving into the new apartments. Thus, their
standard of living was a little different from that in Seocho-dong. In Seocho-dong,
there were a number of working women, for example, teachers. Many mothers
came to the daughters’ apartments to care for their grandchildren. In Daechi-dong,
however, the majority were ordinary housewives who were native residents
(wonjumin), or people who had not lived in the apartments before. At the time,
Eunma Apartment was really cheap. [The developers] built apartments in great
quantity, targeting the lower-middle classes. Eunma used to be called
“Ddongma,” 40 because it was a poorly constructed and was not as marketable as
other apartments.
39
Middle-class apartment residents usually installed metal bars at their veranda for security
purposes to prevent any thieves. No sashes meant that the apartment owner was poor enough not
to be concerned about his property.
40
“Ddong” literally means shit. The interviewee used this derogatory word for this apartment
complex to distinguish it from other apartments of high quality.
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A novel by Han Soo-san vividly describes the hostility of the new apartment residents
toward these “native” residents and the strategies they used to exclude them by building
their own neighborhoods within apartment complexes.
Children living in apartments left our school. I didn’t see them at church any
longer. They had their own school in the apartment complex. Their own church
nearby the shopping center was much bigger and taller than ours. After they
disappeared from our school, I heard women living in apartments call us children
of “native residents.” “Hey, you are children of native residents, aren’t you? Our
children are not your friends any more. You are not allowed to come here. You
native residents should hang around your own neighborhood.” We came to realize
something little by little. Even if we washed our faces and wore clean clothes
without mud, our faces were much darker than those living in apartments. While
we were living in our neighborhood, there were people who could get into their
apartment freely, that is, a man who got the job of apartment security guard and
five women who became cleaners. They were apartment residents during the day
and came back to our neighborhood at night. They wore uniforms and lived in
apartments during the day and cultivated sweet potatoes and cabbages as residents
of our neighborhood at night (Han 1994: 475-477).
In a similar vein, Kim Yoon-young’s novel also demonstrates how middle-class
apartment residents stigmatized those who lived in public housing and engaged in
exclusionary gate-keeping practices towards them as a means of claiming social status.
Identifying those living in public housing as inferior, apartment residents tried not to
mingle with them:
Suseo public housing complex is often called “the isolated island” of Gangnam or
the “dark side” of Gangnam. Despite the huge size of the complex, it was an
eyesore to its neighbors. Children who lived in ordinary apartment complexes but
were assigned to Suseo Gap Middle School made a fuss about going to the school.
They usually transferred to other schools or even sued the Gangnam District
Education Office for assigning them to inappropriate schools. Residents’
complaints about declining apartment prices were nothing compared with people
preventing their children from hanging out with children living in public housing,
treating them as lepers. There were some Ph.D.s, college professors, and doctors
in this group. The more the children [living in public housing] were looked down
upon by this group, the more united those children became (Kim, Yoonyoung
2002:121).
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Living in an apartment meant being middle class, affluent, and cultured, a status to which
non-apartment residents aspire in the near future. Bourdieu (1984) argues that the
contention between groups in the space of lifestyles is a hidden, yet fundamental,
dimension of class struggles. For to impose one’s art of living is to impose at the same
time, principles of a vision of the world that legitimizes inequality by making the
divisions of social space appear rooted in the inclinations of individuals rather than the
underlying distribution of capital (Wacquanct 2008: 272). Similarly, the ascendancy of
apartment living was socially structured by making the rest of the population desire to
live in apartments. Rather than questioning the social hierarchy and inequality shaped by
the living environment, those who do not live in apartments want to be apartment
residents, serving to bolster the current symbolic domination of apartment living.
Describing how those who are not a part of the middle class feel about apartment
residents, Gelézeau (2007) introduces an outsider’s perception about apartments. Ms.
Park, an interviewee in Gelézeau’s work whose husband works at a small firm and who
dwells in a small detached house, says:
Apartment buildings will be built there after redevelopment (demolishing old
housing). Those whose standards of living are different will be moving in. Then, I
am concerned that our children might be stressed, because we don’t live in an
apartment. There is a sort of tension between apartment and non-apartment
residents. Those apartment residents look down on non-apartment residents. In
fact, living in an apartment means being rich. Living in an apartment…Oh, they
are affluent! I think so. Even children like apartments. My little one often asks me,
“When are we moving into an apartment?” Yes, living in an apartment is a dream
(Gelezeau 2007: 122).
Apartment living produced a stratified urban space in a sophisticated way. The
residents of an apartment building or complex shared a class identity driven by similar
material conditions and lifestyles, and there was a pattern of class distinction between
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them and residents of other apartment buildings or complexes, as well as between
apartment residents and non-apartment residents. Increasing apartment living and the
spread of its middle-class culture created a class-based spatial and social hierarchy in
traditionally egalitarian Korea. Apartment living was an effective vehicle by which the
urban middle class formed its class identity and distinguished its particular lifestyles from
those of other social groups.
Authoritarian State Power, Urban Governance, and the Korean Dream
After the second oil shock in 1978, the 1980s enjoyed an economic boom with
three lows: oil prices, interest rates, and exchange rates. Because of the favorable
international economic environment, the Chun Doo Hwan regime could showcase
successful economic performances. GDP per capita (current US dollars) had been rapidly
increasing during the 1980s, from $1,674 in 1980 to $5,438 in 1989, more than tripling
over a decade (WDI, 1980-1989). And the 1980s finally saw the achievement of mass
consumption, so frequently promised by President Park. The Park regime always
emphasized a Korean version of the Protestant ethic, hard work and frugality, and urged
people to sacrifice their lives to work in the name of “national development.” When
Yushin authoritarianism was implemented in 1972, the military regime even controlled
personal fashion styles. For example, the regime banned long hair for men and miniskirts
for women because, it argued, these styles might corrupt public morals and disrupt social
order. These styles thus were symbols of freedom and resistance to authority, symbols
that the authoritarian regime had to strongly repress.
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During the 1970s, state power penetrated and repressed individual lives in
extreme ways. The Chun regime, which came to power through another military coup
after Park’s death, was not very different from the previous regime: it too was extremely
repressive and did not allow any kind of challenge to state power. The only difference
was that the Chun regime relaxed its control in the arena of mass culture. In what is often
called “3S policy,” the regime attempted to depoliticize ordinary people by turning their
attention from politics to other things, such as sports, screen, and sex. In the beginning of
the 1980s, professional baseball and soccer teams were established, and Korean wrestling
competitions were also launched. Many adult films were suddenly released in this period.
In 1981, the curfew, which had been maintained during the Park regime, was lifted, and a
more vibrant nightlife was created. Though the Chun regime was politically as repressive
as the Park regime, it was not until the Chun regime that people started to enjoy mass
consumption in a more favorable, less controlled economic environment. Consumption
indicators confirm this: considering urban households alone, in 1970 only 14.5 percent
owned a television and 8.9 percent owned a telephone; by 1985, almost every household
had a television, and more than half had a telephone (Nelson 2000: 87). In 1971, there
was only one passenger car 41for every forty-two Seoul households, but by 1988 the ratio
of cars to Seoul households was one in five (Nelson 2000: 95). During merely a decade,
not only phones but also cars had become necessities for many ordinary families. In
particular, among middle-income households, more than 90 percent owned refrigerators,
color TVs, telephones, gas ovens, and cameras. Cars were owned by a surprising 42
percent of the population.
41
Passenger cars refer to cars owned by the government and commercial entities as well as those
owned by private households.
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Table 5. 4. Ownership of Major Durable Consumer Goods
Electronics
Refrigerator
Color TV
Telephone
Gas oven
Camera
Audio system
Credit card
Piano
Microwave
VCR
Personal computer
Golf club membership
Condominium membership
Ownership (%)
99
99
99
97
92
69
56
52
47
46
13
10
8
Source: Han et al. 1987, p. 13
Three decades of economic development planning were successful in Korea, and the
authoritarian state had achieved its policy goal of a rising urban middle class. While a
middle-class consciousness had been prevalent since the Park regime, it increased even
more as time passed. Despite the different definitions of the middle class adopted in each
survey, Table 5. 5 consistently shows that self-identification of the middle class had
increased by the end of the 1980s.
Table 5. 5. Surveys of Middle-Class Consciousness
1980
1981
1984
1985
EPB
41.0
53.0
Maeil
44.5
Kyungje
Jungang
42.6
57.7
Ilbo
Donga Ilbo
SNU
Social
Science
Research
Institute
170
1986
1987
59.9
60.5
76.7
61.8
1988
60.6
57.3
Sources: Yeon et al. 1990, p. 58 (Economic Planning Board, various years; Maeil
Kyungje Mar. 24. 1988; Joongang Daily Sep. 22, 1987; DongA Ilbo Apr. 3, 1987; Seoul
National University Social Science Research Institute 1987)
Note: All these institutes used different indicators to measure the size of the middle class.
However, economic policies focusing on rapid, overall growth gave rise to
increasing social inequality, and ordinary people felt a sense of relative deprivation.
Some political scandals in the late 1970s deepened feelings of frustration and injustice.
Misconduct, corruption, bureaucratic cleanup—there was a time when those
words appeared almost daily in the newspaper. Only then did the family in back
lower the volume on their TV. They stowed away their refrigerator, washer, piano,
tape player, and other such possessions in the basement and brought out their old
clothes to wear in public. The newspaper often quoted a high official as saying
that any government official whose misconduct came to light would be dealt with
in accordance with the law. But the misconduct of the man of the house in back
must not have come to light, for he emerged unscathed. “If misconduct comes to
light”—these words smacked of a very peculiar irony (Cho 2006: 17).
While there was no doubt that the chaebols and high state officials were the biggest
beneficiaries of the economic policies, the authoritarian state still provided ample
opportunities for social mobility, which was far more than before open to everybody with
higher education and some job skills. Yet, the most important mechanism of social
mobility in Korea was its housing policies. Through the apartment lottery system,
ordinary white-collar workers could get “my homes” for a few years’ savings in the
Housing Bank. Achieving a decent apartment unit in a relatively good neighborhood was
a life-long project for ordinary salary men, as housing prices were escalating, and they
could not afford to buy an apartment without any government support. Owning a home or
an apartment gave ordinary people a huge sense of achievement, reassuring them as long
as they owned an apartment and had constant income, they could enjoy a stable lifestyle.
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Homeownership has a substantial meaning for ordinary Korean middle-income
families, which differ markedly from their Chinese counterparts, for example. In socialist
China, where housing was provided for most citizens by the socialist regime,
homeownership, though an important asset for middle-income families, was not a
decisive criterion for being in the the middle class. Most people believe that having a
certain amount of cash or deposits is as important as homeownership in making a middle
class. In Korea, however, homeownership outweighed the importance of cash or deposits,
because an apartment was (and still is) an asset or commodity more valuable than
anything else. Because of this, a successful housing supply was the most important goal
for the authoritarian state to maintain social stability and to defuse dissatisfaction with the
government: creating more homeowners was equivalent to embracing more people and
making them beneficiaries of the authoritarian regimes.
While educated white-collar workers were dissatisfied with the enduring military
authoritarianism and its political repression, they also feared massive student and labor
protests that might lead to instability and social disorder, which would harm their
economic interests. A journalist pointed out this ambivalence of ordinary middle-class
citizens toward the political regime:
Currently, there are 1.4 million people who opened a housing subscription deposit
and wait to win the housing lottery without any promises. The military regime
tries to solicit political consent by reminding them that they will win the
apartment lottery. The regime made people think about nothing except for being
homeowners (Oh Yeonho 1990).
In a sense, the authoritarian state’s promotion of homeownership among ordinary
middle-income families made it easier to manage the overall population, particularly the
disadvantaged, marginalized groups. As Leela Fernandes pointed out in her study of
172
urban India, it was the practices of the state and middle-class that created the
underpinnings of exclusionary models of community and civic life (Fernandes 2006: 172).
In Korea as well, the state and middle class created an exclusive urban redevelopment
model that neglected the interests of the urban poor and the lower classes. By promoting
construction of high-rise apartments and modern skyscrapers, the authoritarian state
created civilized and modernized cities embedded in the urban middle class.
At the same time, the urban middle class wanted their own “heaven” away from
any kind of disorder and danger. Above all, a clean and beautified residence was the key
to maintain real estate values. Because of this, middle-class homeowners often had
conflicts with squatter settlement dwellers or street vendors, viewing them as harming the
urban landscape and thus lowering housing prices. Even when the government planned to
build smaller apartments for demolished urban squatter residents, middle-class citizens
strongly opposed this plan, fearing that their apartment values would be reduced by the
lower-class apartments nearby (Kim, Hyungguk 1989b: 80). Apartment residents often
protested against street vendors who made noise and blocked the street (Dong-A Ilbo, Apr.
5, 1989). Exclusionary practices and acts of class distinction by the urban middle class
toward the unprivileged reduced the state’s efforts to manage those “threats” and to evict
them from the new towns. Often identified as insurgents, protesters at urban squatter
settlements provoked uneasiness among middle-class citizens. The intense protests might
disrupt social order and furthermore provoke North Korea, bringing about national
insecurity. The homeownership and relatively comfortable lifestyles shared by the urban
middle class allowed authoritarian state power to operate effectively. Through its housing
policy and the real estate market, the authoritarian state created apartment residents on a
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large scale and a widespread middle-class image. The state inspired ordinary people to
believe they could become middle class once they captured the “right” opportunity: as
long as ordinary people maintained their hope for success, there would have no incentive
to challenge the existing regime or social order (Kim, Dongno 1990:419).
Existing studies on the Korean middle class express different opinions about
middle-class consciousness. Some studies argue that the educated middle class was the
critical social force that led to democratization (Han 1986; Han et al. 1987; Koo 1991).
Others argue that the middle class was a conservative social group that supported the
existing social order and opposed rapid social reforms (Choi 1989; Jones 1998). Some
survey data show that the urban middle class was an educated, liberal social force, critical
of politics in general and social problems (Hanguk Ilbosa 1987), enthusiastic about
discussing politics and showing high voting rates. At the same time, however, they did
not participate in political parties and other political organizations, preferring legitimate
and moderate forms of participation—and under the military rule, voting was the only
“legitimate” means of political participation. It is not clear whether the urban middle
class should be considered a conservative or democratic social force; one’s answer
depends on the specific social contexts examined. In the context of urban spatial politics,
the urban middle class was a social group who had something valuable to lose.
Aggressive housing policies favoring the urban middle- and upper-middle classes lifted
the social status of many white-collar salaried men. As beneficiaries of housing policies,
middle-class homeowners witnessed their increasing wealth and generally found no
incentive to participate in political protests and demonstrations and risk abandoning the
small comforts they enjoyed. One survey shows that among middle-class citizens, 26
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percent were very satisfied with their lives and 58 percent generally satisfied, meaning
that 84 percent were at least generally satisfied with their current lives (Han et al. 1987:
13). By catering to the economic interests of the urban middle class, the authoritarian
state could successfully stave off the demands of the urban poor and lower classes.
Conclusion
I have argued that state-directed urban redevelopment plans and apartment
construction projects provided the material conditions under which the urban middle
class could improve its standard of living. Through the apartment lottery system, the
authoritarian regimes provided apartments at below market value, allowing ordinary
white-collar workers to become homeowners. While in the 1970s the urban middle class
existed only in the arena of discourse created by the state and the mass media, the urban
middle class materialized in the real estate boom in Gangnam, Seoul, in the 1980s. The
state-led development of Gangnam not only transformed the desolate area into high-rise
apartments and modern skyscrapers, but also spatialized the concept of social class. The
popularization of apartment living originating and dominating in Gangnam identified the
urban middle class in Korea as educated, comfortable apartment owners.
The urban politics in Gangnam suggests the following conclusions: first, the state
and chaebols were critical actors actively engaging in producing the middle-class identity.
Their particular political and economic interests led to massive apartment construction
projects that embraced middle-income families and gave them privileged status. Second,
the middle-class apartment residents deployed exclusionary gate-keeping practices
against non-apartment residents or former urban squatter settlement residents.
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Standardized lifestyles and consumption patterns of the middle class based on being
apartment dwellers gave the middle-class residents strong social solidarity. However, at
the same time, apartment living also promoted residents’ use of “distinction” practices as
a way of asserting their social status. Last, the concept of social classes, including the
urban middle class, can be understood in particular spatialized reconfigurations. Not only
did “objective conditions” such as income, occupation, and education identify social
classes, but spatial form and geography also shaped class identities. Being middle class in
Korea was constantly defined and redefined by urban restructuring, community politics,
and housing policies.
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CHAPTER 6.
A PLACE OF MY OWN: SEEKING PRIVACY AND SECLUSION OF THE
URBAN MIDDLE CLASS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
Recently, scholars and mass media in both the West and China have paid attention
to the increasing disputes and protests by middle-class homeowners in urban China, who
have articulated their interests and have been fighting for their rights as property owners.
Socialist China, where political behavior and expressions have been tightly controlled by
the communist party, now faces conflict between homeowners and real estate developers,
or sometimes local governments. Driven by strong economic motives to protect their
property or privacy, these middle-class homeowner-citizens often organize campaigns,
sue management companies, or take to the streets. Some liberals think that this trend,
which is led by empowered and organized individuals, might signify the bourgeoning of
civil society in China and eventually undermine the authoritarian state power. While the
new property regime made possible by market reform opened up space for citizens to
voice their interests, it still remains unclear what direction Chinese society might be
going in a broader political context. This chapter looks at the dynamics of urban spatial
politics in China: namely, how the identity of urban middle-class homeowners was
created, how the class identities of the new subjects have unfolded through local forms of
spatial politics and contestations, and what implications this pattern has in the broader
political configuration.
This chapter examines a dual process of urban middle class formation in China:
how extensive state intervention through massive housing reform since the 1980s
177
contributed to creating an urban middle class in China; and how, in turn, these new
subjects have cultivated their class identity and engaged in exclusive class practices that
have effectively insulated them from other population. The postsocialist 42 Chinese state
promoted urban housing reform and implemented diverse experiments in order to
develop the real estate market, attract foreign investment, and reduce the employers’
burdens of public housing. Housing reform significantly improved the standard of living
for urban residents, leading to a drastic increase of space per capita, and above all,
created a new social group, namely homeowners. In the process of selling off public
housing to sitting tenants, a number of employees in the public sector benefited from
significantly discounted prices and became homeowners. Housing, which was under the
socialist system once a welfare benefit distributed through work units or employers, came
to be a commodity through which one could display his or her property value, social
status, and personal taste. Through the lens of housing as an index of social status, I will
explore how homeowners, endowed with the right of property ownership by the state,
cultivated distinctive lifestyles on a daily basis, formed a particular class identity, and
served to reproduce exclusive citizenship.
42
The distinction between socialism and postsocialism is quite complex. Despite extensive
privatization and thus reconfiguration of economic and social order, China is still a socialist
country. China still maintains a one-party rule and has a strong commitment to socialist ideology.
Scholars usually periodize “postsocialism” after the 1989 Tiananmen movement as a critical
juncture of reform, witnessing growing consumerism and individualism (Farquhar 2002; Rofel
2007; Zhang 2010). While “late socialism” refers to the earlier phase of the Chinese reform,
“postsocialism” signifies the later phase of the reform since the shift to the Jiang Zemin
leadership in 1993, during which the privatization of state-owned enterprises and property
speeded up and deepened (Zhang 2010: 16).
178
Housing Privatization: Making Private Ownership Available
Housing reform, one major component of market reform in China, was a critical
platform from which the Chinese government created a new social group of homeowners
under bureaucratic control. Housing reform began to address the issues more generally
associated with socialist housing system, particularly the heavy fiscal and management
burden on government and poor living environments. Private ownership, once
stigmatized as antisocialist under Mao, came to signify individual success and was an
engine of economic growth under post-Mao regimes. The nationwide experiments to sell
existing housing stock to sitting tenants began in the mid-1980s, and the subsequent
expansion of a private housing industry after 1992 to stimulate the economy and attract
foreign investment had a profound impact in urban China.
While housing is identified as a commodity in capitalist societies, which people
can buy and sell according to their income and tastes, housing in socialist China was
collectively owned and considered a public welfare benefit rather than a commodity
(Bian 1994; Davis 2003; Parish 1984). Under Mao’s leadership, officials nationalized
rental housing and urban land, and the state transformed housing into an element of the
redistributive economy in which individuals were provided housing through their
danwei 43 (work units) (Bian 1994). Most danweis owned housing and built housing
directly for their employees. Housing was regarded as part of the wage costs of
enterprises and public-sector housing was freely distributed to employees. No deposit or
other payments were required before the tenants moved in. Rents were extremely low
43
Danwei is the basic unit of urban life under socialism. In China the danwei not only provides
members of society with economic reward for their work; in addition, through the provision of
housing, free medical care, child care centers, kindergartens, dining halls, bathing houses, service
companies, and collective enterprises to employ the children of staff, the danwei provides its
members with a complete social guarantee and welfare services (Bray 2005: 3-4).
179
because the housing provision had been taken into account in determining wages (Wang
and Murie 2000:402).
Housing access and its accompanying inequality were mainly shaped by the rank
and size of the work units to which people belonged, rather than by individual-level
variables such as income and jobs; while people belonging to larger and higher ranking
work units could enjoy the provision of comparatively better housing, people in smaller
and lower rank work units could not. Of course, this does not mean that everyone was
equal within the work unit; the differences between cadres and workers, higher status
professionals and low-skilled technicians were real and significant (Wang and Murie
2000:402). 44 Even though higher professionals and government administrators had
slightly better housing, the Mao era did not see any sharp inequalities in housing; almost
everybody had to live in meager space (Parish 1984). Since population growth and the
large flows of people into urban regions far outstripped available housing, most urban
residents had to live in cramped, tiny flats (Fraser 2000:30). By 1976, urban housing
provided an average of only three square meters per person (Wang and Murie 1996: 973).
It was fairly common for three generations to share one room. As Table 6.1 indicates, as
of 1985, there was a significant lack of basic amenities in urban areas: the majority of the
urban population still did not enjoy the use of a private bath and toilet, and the supply of
heating was even rarer.
44
The basic eligibility criterion for housing was formal urban residence and permanent
employment by the institution. Then the most important factor influencing housing entitlement
was official status as cadre or worker. Workers were given low priority (Wang and Murie
2000:402).
180
Table 6. 1. Housing Survey 1985: Provision of Facilities 45
Household facilities
Total number of households
Exclusive use of kitchen
Shared use of kitchen
No private kitchen
Exclusive use of toilet
Shared use of toilet
No private toilet
With bath/shower
No private bath/shower
With water supply
Shared use of water tap
No direct water supply
Use of electric light
With gas supply
Shared use of gas supply
No gas supply
With heating
No. of households (1000)
26194
16046
2289
7859
7910
3233
15051
1981
24213
16331
5042
4821
25487
3016
83
23095
3013
%
61.3
8.7
30.0
30.2
12.3
57.5
7.6
92.4
62.4
19.2
18.4
97.3
11.5
0.3
88.2
11.5
Source: Population Statistics Department of State Statistical Bureau, 1989 (cited
from Wang and Murie 1999:111)
From early on in the economic reform, policy makers and state officials
recognized that basic housing conditions were critical to social and political stability.
According to the official document issued by the central government, which regarded the
official urban residents in all major cities, the housing shortage reached one billion square
meters by 1978 (Wang and Murie 1999: 101). The document, On Strengthening Urban
Construction Works, was issued to local governments by the CCP Central Committee in
March 1978, and warned that urban housing problems were one of many elements that
could lead to social instability:
…severe shortage and poor repair and maintenance of urban workers’ housing
and other facilities…. These problems have serious consequences in production
and people’s living; they will cause instability (State Council 1978; cited from
Wang and Murie 1999: 102).
45
In 1985, the Chinese government carried out a major housing survey in urban areas including
county towns. The results revealed some important features of urban housing and, for the first
time, provided reliable quantitative data on the urban housing stock and living conditions.
181
In addition to improving people’s living environments, there was another reason that the
Chinese government sought to privatize the housing sector: to resolve the heavy burden
on the government. Maintenance cost levels of the public housing stock ran well above
the nominal rents paid by tenants. As of 1991, rent on government-owned housing
averaged 0.13 RMB per square meter while upkeep expenses averaged 2.31 RMB per
square meter (Duda et al. 2005: 2). Under these conditions housing costs accounted for
only 1 percent of the average worker’s earnings. In April 1980, Deng Xiaoping made a
speech on urban public sector housing to central government leaders.
…urban residents should [be allowed to] buy houses, or to build their own houses.
Not only new houses could be sold, old ones could be sold too. [The buyers] may
buy out-right; [they] may also pay by installments over a period of 10 to 15 years.
[We] must adjust the [public sector] rent according to house building costs, and
make people think buying is worth more than renting…when increasing rent, low
income workers should be subsidized (Wang and Murie 1999: 142).
After 1980, urban China experienced the most unprecedented building boom in
Chinese history. Housing reform aimed, first, to increase the housing stock by whatever
means possible in order to ease the problem of housing shortage that was prevalent in
urban China, rather than the development of a market-oriented housing provision system
(Wu 2002). Reformers believed that housing shortages were caused by the welfare
character of housing and argued that the only effective way to solve the problem was to
increase rents and encourage urban dwellers to buy houses from the government or their
work units, or to build their own housing (Zhou and Logan 2002: 140). Since 1979, when
Deng launched extensive market reform, various central legislation and local regulations
concerning the privatization of urban housing have been issued in the hope of
182
encouraging the development of an urban housing market (Bian and Logan 1996; Wang
2000).
Following a series of experiments in the 1980s, housing reform in the early 1990s
included the sales of public housing to sitting tenants. The initial discounts offered to
sitting tenants for older housing were very substantial, and a baseline selling price was set
at only 130 RMB per square meter of floor space. Therefore, sales were very attractive to
many employees. Installment payment plans were made available to those who could not
afford to pay outright. At the national level, there was a rush by many work units to sell
housing to their employees at the lowest possible price (Wang, YP 2001: 624). This
cheap sale of public housing, however, resulted in a drain of public assets (Wang, YP
2001: 625). Major adjustments were made to the 1992 reform plan, which provided
different arrangements for different income groups: while high-income families were
required to pay market prices for the full property rights, prices for low- and middleincome families had to be subsidized. Despite the government’s intensive efforts to apply
market mechanisms in the housing sector, the work units were still critical players to
involve in housing distribution and the development of the housing market was very slow
in urban areas. Furthermore, the majority of urban residents remained public tenants who
enjoyed low costs and secure use-rights to their greatly improved residential space (Davis
2003: 188).
In the late 1990s, the Chinese government moved toward the full capitalization of
housing. The government designed to encourage the development of housing markets and
sought every means to disengage from public housing through the promotion of
homeownership (Duda et el. 2005: 3). In the spring of 1998, Zhu Rongji spoke repeatedly
183
in favor of full commercialization and in July of that year, the State Council promulgated
Circular No. 23, which announced that as of December 1998, no enterprise would be
allowed to sell employees’ housing below construction costs (Davis 2003: 188). Market
rates were to prevail and there would no longer be any welfare housing (fuli fang), except
for extremely poor families. Since then, the bulk of urban housing stock has become fully
capitalized and a slogan of “fostering the continuous and healthy development of real
estate markets” has been put forward.
Still, there remained a significant discrepancy between employees’ salaries and
commercial housing prices. Wage increases in the public sector did not reflect
commercial housing prices, which ordinary public sector employees could not afford. To
reduce commercial housing prices and to support public sector employees, “affordable
housing” (jingji shiyong fang) was built with government support for low- and middleincome groups (Davis 1993; Tomba 2004; Wang YP 2001). These apartments, generally
of a quality similar to commercial properties (although usually of a smaller size), were
sold at a significant discount (usually one third of the market prices) to urban residents
(generally middle-income, first-home buyers). Since the sale price of affordable housing
was to be checked and approved by the local authority, affordable housing was much
cheaper than ordinary commercial housing. To reduce the price, most of the local
government service charges—such as planning, registration, planting, and underground
water compensation fees—were reduced up to 50 percent (Wang, YP 2001:631). The
promised price for most of these schemes was below 4,000 RMB per square meter, a
benchmark price worked out jointly by the Ministry of Construction and the municipal
government. Prices in some of the suburban schemes were relatively lower (between
184
2,000 and 3,000 RMB) (Wang, YP 2001: 632). Sales of this relatively low-priced
housing became an important part of the housing market in Beijing and the amount of
affordable housing now reaching the market is substantial. By September 1999, 464,000
square meters had been sold and in 2003, affordable housing units constituted 23 percent
of all new units sold in Beijing (Duda et el. 2005: 7).
Another homeownership-oriented policy was the Housing Provident Fund
(zhufang gongjijin), paired with reform of the salary system. Instead of providing housing
directly and paying employees a correspondingly lower salary, this program’s goal was to
enlist public sector employees in the development of the commercial housing market by
raising their incomes but siphoning the increase into savings accounts dedicated to
housing, while reducing their in-kind housing benefit, thereby encouraging them to find
housing in the marketplace (Wang 2001). Under the savings scheme, an individual’s
funds are deposited directly by the employer into an account in his or her name
administered by China Construction Bank. The fund can be used for a variety of purposes
associated with buying, building, or improving homes, including outright purchase,
downpayment, and monthly mortgage expenses.
During my field research, a number of my interviewees pointed out that they
benefited from the homeownership-oriented housing policies. The “affordable housing”
system was a vehicle through which they could become a homeowner. Even people in
their late 20s and early 30s were already homeowners. Some of these individuals said that
they wanted a bigger house, because their house was smaller than 100 square meters.
Although they were not fully satisfied with their relatively small apartments, they felt
relieved that one important part of their lives was already resolved by purchasing their
185
own house. Non-homeowners in their 20s expected to purchase their own houses in the
near future. Those in their 40s and 50s owned more than two houses. After acquiring
their first house from their work units, they could purchase their second ones. One of my
interviewees, who worked at a famous university press and earned around 80,000 RMB a
year, owned two houses in Beijing:
Generally speaking, a number of people in their 40-50s in Beijing have two
houses, because the first house was usually distributed from their work units. For
example, our first house was allocated by my wife’s work unit. Afterwards, since
housing reform, we purchased another house with our money, though it was much
cheaper (than market price). Those who are older than 40 years old, whose
incomes are relatively high, and whose savings are enough, can purchase a second
larger home with relative ease. I live in our first house now. The second one is a
little further. Since my child goes to school in the city, we do not want to live
further. We are waiting for my child go to college. Then, we can move to the
second one. I think that people in this situation are really common. Currently, our
annual income is almost 300,000 RMB. Therefore, purchasing a house is almost
the same as our three years’ income, which is not bad.
Another interviewee, who was a small business owner and also owned two houses, felt
that, among those who received a good education and had a stable job and income, it was
common to own more than one house.
I have two houses, whose area is more than 300 square meters. One is 210 square
meters, and the other is 100 square meters. There are not a small number of us,
who came to Beijing, received good education and worked for a while, and who
have two houses. I guess 20-30 percent of people own 2-3 houses. I might
estimate a little higher, because all the people that I know are like this. A group of
people that I recognize are usually those who got good education and occupy
higher positions in their work. But I am sure that there are at least 10 percent of
people in Beijing who own more than two houses (emphasis added).
With the housing reform, China is becoming a nation of homeowners with the rate of
homeownership reaching 82 percent in Chinese cities in 2007, compared to less than 20
percent in the 1980s (Huang and Yi 2011; Huang 2004). With rapidly rising income and
high return on real estate investment in the recent housing boom, second homeownership
186
is also emerging in Chinese cities. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
of China, about 6.6 percent of urban households own two or more homes in 2003 and the
percentage increases to 15 percent in 2007 (Huang and Yi 2011).
The marketization of the housing sector brought about widespread enthusiasm
among residents about to enter the housing market and made homeownership the norm,
as many surveys conducted in Chinese metropolitan cities in the late 1990s suggested
(Davis 2003:189). For example, in 1999, of those who earned 2,000 RMB per month, 70
percent expected to purchase housing in the next year if they had not already done so;
even 35 percent of those who earned 500 RMB or less per month had similar
expectations (China Daily 2000, January 9).
Furthermore, urban housing reform transformed the physical built environment
conditions dramatically since 1978. Between 1979 and 1989, 830,000 families occupied
new or renovated apartments, and between 1992 and 1996 another 800,000 moved. More
than 4.5 million people changed their address, and average space per capita doubled, in
most cases a move guaranteeing a higher material standard of living. By the late 1990s,
the norm for new construction was a three-room apartment, with its own kitchen and
bathroom, that overlooked a skyline punctuated with high-rise towers in diverse
international styles (Davis 2002:245).
Table 6.2 confirms that housing conditions in Beijing have significantly improved
since the housing reform. The majority of people in the survey own their houses through
either housing reform or market mechanisms. More than 80 percent of people in the
survey also enjoy spacious living environments, such as two or three-bedroom
apartments.
187
Table 6. 2. Housing Conditions of 5000 Urban Households
Households surveyed
Building Property Right
Public House Rented
Private House Rented
Private House Formerly
Owned
Private House from Housing
Reform
Commercial House
Other
Style of House Construction
Individual Storied Building
Four-bedroom
Three-bedroom
Two-bedroom
One-bedroom
Ordinary Storied Building
Sing-story Building and Other
Households surveyed
2007
3000
2008
5000
676
150
105
455
28
47
2509
1895
1429
131
522
53
12
106
1248
2810
399
120
305
10
72
716
1817
135
87
163
Source: Beijing Statistical Yearbook 2009
Despite broadened housing access that allowed many urban residents to become
homeowners and a significant improvement of overall housing conditions, housing
privatization has widened the gap in housing space and quality among Chinese urban
residents. By heavily subsidizing the cost of purchasing housing for employees in the
public sector, housing reform has operated in a way that favors public sector employees.
Policies on the sale of public housing to sitting tenants, rent increases, subsidies and
employers’ contributions to individuals’ housing “provident funds” all are available for
only employees in the public sector (Wang and Murie 2000: 406). The massive sellingoff of public housing stock at below market prices enabled well-placed employees to
obtain a low-cost entry ticket in the real estate market. Public sector employees were thus
able to obtain use rights for better quality housing than offered to most urban residents at
the same subsidized price. Under the housing reform schemes, those who were privileged
188
under the old housing system were still privileged after privatization, rather than
eliminating the distributional inequalities of the existing housing system (Duda et al.
2005). Tomba (2004) notes that policies supporting purchases of newly built units in the
market are heavily skewed toward public sector employees and these attribute to three
government priorities: first, fueling economic growth by stimulating consumption;
second, helping attract talented individuals to public sector employment; and third,
binding the urban middle class more closely to the political status quo (10-11).
Particularly in the public sector, those who have benefited most from housing
reform were cadres and professionals (Li 2005). Not only were these high status workers
better informed of market opportunities, which allowed them much better access to
information, but higher incomes and various in-kind subsidies allowed them to purchase
housing more readily than others. In terms of location, a number of people in this
occupational group, who had previously bought reform housing and moved to more
outlying locations, now considered moving back to central city districts, their preferred
good reputation location (Li 2005: 186). 46 They sometimes ended up owning multiple
homes because they exploited their privileged access to acquire property (Tomba 2005).
After purchasing housing at subsidized prices through their companies, these multiple
homeowners rented out their old apartments and moved into better apartments, a practice
that was impossible under the conditions before housing reform.
In contrast, employees in small, low-ranking, or non-state-owned work units that
have not performed well and have not invested substantially in housing were more likely
to live in poorer quality housing. Within the workplace, manual workers fell behind their
46
Another option for high-status workers who have their own private cars is to move suburban
areas where luxurious condominiums and single-family housing are available in gated
communities.
189
better-paid white-collar counterparts. The cost of purchasing use rights imposed a
relatively heavier financial burden and manual workers became less able to make
multiple claims on enterprise assets or bargain for larger discounts on purchase price
(Davis 2003:194). As the most disadvantaged groups, migrant workers and other lowincome groups continued to seek residence in urban villages or sought housing in the
increasingly dwindling stock of old inner city tenements and run-down work unit housing
blocks (Li Ibid: 188). 47
In sum, public sector employees and professionals/managers in the private sector
were two primary groups that most benefited from housing reform. Public sector
employees had access to government support and employers’ resources, and could
become homeowners in the early phases of housing reform. Along with the housing
boom, the prices of the apartments that public sector employees purchased cheaply
drastically increased; these employees enjoyed becoming the owners of valuable assets.
Moreover, managerial and professional staffs in the non-public sector could afford to
purchase housing at market prices. Even if market prices were beyond ordinary people’s
reach, their high salaries allowed them to buy better-quality houses in good locations.
Conversely to the rise of the two social groups as property owners, blue-collar families
began to fall behind. Because of drastically increasing real estate market prices and being
abandoned outside the social safety nets, those who were not supported by the state in the
early phase of the housing reform had a lower chance of buying houses.
47
What is interesting in the case of China is that residential segregation is not as clear as the
Western case in the sense that wealthy and poor neighborhoods coexist in both inner cities and
suburbs. Moreover, geographic distance between the rich and poor in Chinese cities can be
negligible since a wealthy gated community can be built right next to a dilapidated migrant
enclave in the suburbs, or an old housing neighborhood in the inner city. For details, see Huang
(2005).
190
Cultivating Distinctive Middle-Class Identities
Under Mao, new apartment buildings, which were built to meet growing housing
needs, combined work and residential spaces. Within these public housing complexes, all
necessary public services were provided and private lives were based on work units; thus,
this unique space promoted a collective lifestyle and defined a collective identity within
the work unit (Huang 2007:15). The collective lifestyle based on work units was very
similar to the traditional extended family in the sense that members in the same work unit
not only shared basic facilities such as toilets and kitchens but also shared a strong sense
of solidarity with each other. Because people were physically attached to the work unit
and their residential space regardless of their status, collective identity was formed along
the lines of the work unit, not class background or status.
The image of housing within work units is that the driver of the director of the
unit could well live in the same block of flats as the person he drove, and certainly
they would live in neighboring dwellings. They would have occupied different
sizes of flats but they were not segregated spatially. The spatial divisions related
to occupational and industrial and administrative differences, which divided work
places from one another. Within these work places the social mix was
considerable (Wang and Murie 2000:410).
However, with the demise of the work unit and the end of public housing
provision, neighborhoods and residential communities were no longer shaped by work
units, and households affiliated with different work units lived together in private housing
estates (Huang 2007). While housing in the pre-reform era was assigned by the work unit
regardless of personal tastes, residence in private estates was determined by personal
tastes and ability to pay (Bray 2005). Now, common socioeconomic status, lifestyle and
property-related interests have become the key to sorting people into different types of
communities and forming a collective identity (Tomba 2004; 2005). As the disparity
191
between urban incomes has continually grown, housing supply has diversified to meet the
needs of different social strata. 48 The differences between wealthy and poor housing
estates are striking: lower-income housing consists primarily of matchbox-like
apartments that are poorly constructed and maintained. There is no green space and the
exterior paint is easily washed away. By contrast, the commercially developed middleclass neighborhoods feature a variety of architectural styles and high-quality construction
materials; the apartments are spacious, clean and well maintained with the green space
and parking lots. Three main housing compounds marked by income constitute the
stratified urban residential space in Beijing.
Suburban Luxurious Town Houses and Upscale Apartment Complexes
Jinghua is a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in Beijing. After
earning a Ph.D. degree in the U.S., Jinghua got the position. Her husband owns his own
business and they have a daughter, a 17-year-old high school student. They live in a
three-floor brick town house named as Andelusi Garden of a foreign and exotic name.
The suburban neighborhood is not far from Beijing International Airport. After passing
by old and rural neighborhoods on the way to Jinghua’s, her new neighborhood is
segregated from the outer old and rural one.
In Andelusi Garden, there are modern brick buildings lined up. Each house has its
own parking lot with a small yard. Brand new foreign cars are parked at the parking lot.
48
During the second half of the 1990s, Beijing public employees experienced a sharp increase in
salaries. For example, employees in the healthcare sector saw their salaries rise by 168 percent
between 1995 and 2000 and their average salaries are around 40 percent above the average. The
salaries of employees in tertiary education and scientific institutions increased 158 percent, 31
percent above the average. By contrast, the salaries of manufacturing workers in Beijing
expanded less than the average, up 72.5 percent increase against 93.1 percent on average. See
Beijing Statistical Book for details.
192
The interior of Jinghua’s house is not that different from that of American suburban
middle-class homes. In the living room are a big flat-screen TV and a comfortable leather
sofa. The second floor has their bedrooms and study rooms, all receiving ample sunshine
during the day. In the basement, there is a huge ping-pong table and storage space. They
own a car, a Volvo S80, which her husband usually drives for work. Since they live far
away from the center of the city, her daughter has difficulty getting to school every day.
It takes 15 minutes to drive to Shuangjing, the closest subway station, and her daughter
takes a taxi to go to school every day. Two or three times a week, Jinghua also takes a
cab to the university she teaches at. They own two more houses in central Beijing. They
rent out one of these apartments, and their nieces live in the other apartment.
While staying in Beijing, it was not uncommon to meet ordinary Chinese people
who enjoy this comfortable lifestyle. Mostly in their late 30s or 40s, they were mid-level
managers or professionals who had been in their careers for a relatively long time. Karen
is a 45-year-old fashionable woman who works at Sino-Pec (China Petroleum and
Chemical Corporation), a state-owned firm. After earning a Ph.D. in geology, she works
as a senior researcher. She earns approximately 100,000 RMB a year and lives in a town
house with a nice view near Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace), which her family
recently moved into. Her husband is a business man and they have a high-school
daughter. They own two more houses and two cars. She is always dressed up, but not in a
flamboyant style. She enjoys her lifestyle, and is not concerned with her family’s
financial situations. She loves jogging every morning along a nice path, and goes to travel
abroad with her family on vacation. The only concern of hers is to make her child go to a
prestigious university in Beijing. Most of my interviewees, who were in their 40s and in
193
established careers, were pretty satisfied with their lives. They have already achieved
many things in their lives, such as getting a good job, making enough money, and buying
a house. All they worry about is their children’s success, providing them with good
education and having them go to good universities to secure a bright future for
themselves. Since they realize that their high education has paid off in their own lives,
these parents want to make their children pursue the same thing.
After living for several months in Beijing, I found that there were some suburban
areas where many professionals and entrepreneurs lived in spacious town houses. These
suburban areas had numerous foreign restaurants, upscale clothing shops, coffee places,
and supermarkets for foreign products. A number of foreigners also lived in this area. As
I passed by a suburban neighborhood one day, I saw that the landscape was completely
different from the typical Beijing landscape. I thought I was in a neighborhood
somewhere in California. Spacious, bright single houses with well-maintained front
gardens stood along the road. There were wood ridings, golf clubs, and international
schools nearby. These neighborhoods allowed the residents to enjoy an American middleclass lifestyle complete with various leisure activities. Because of the inconvenient
location, only car owners could live in these suburban areas. While in Beijing, I had the
opportunity to visit upscale apartment compounds, where some of my friends lived. They
were gated communities, and I was stopped by security guards and asked to explain
where I was going. Usually, those gated apartment compounds had English names such
as “the Class,” “City Elites,” and “SOHO New Town”; this served to remind potential
buyers of distinctive, modern and Western elite lifestyles. In addition to English names,
the European-style appearances of apartment complexes attract potential buyers by
194
symbolizing luxurious lifestyles compatible with Westerners. Fleischer elaborates the
appearance of an apartment compound in Beijing:
The fence around the compound is decorated with marble plaques depicting
legendary Greek-style scenes with naked women and amphorae of wine. The
common ground between the complex’s four main apartment towers features a
gothic-style building in the shape of a church that houses the compound’s
administrative offices. On top of each apartment tower a gilded cupid statue aims
with bow and arrow into the distant horizon. The main entrance to the complex is
closed by a four-meter-high, pointed arch-shaped iron gate with gothic
ornamentation (Fleischer 2010:37).
As described above, this distinctive feature of new apartment complexes promotes
images of high-quality life. This magnificent shape of apartments is distinctive from
other modest ones, implying that the residents’ lifestyle is not the same as other ordinary
people. These apartment compounds usually have large units. In spacious apartments, the
living rooms were usually equipped with wide flat-screen TVs and comfortable sofas
with coffee tables. My friend apologetically told me that the interior of her house is
simpler than any anything else in that apartment. She added that her neighbors decorated
their houses in a fancier fashion. A Korean friend of mine, whose husband was working
in the IT industry, also lived in a gated apartment compound called
“Yangguangshangdong (Sunshine Upper East Side),” paying 20,000 RMB per month for
rent. Since her husband’s company supported the rent, they could afford to live in the
fancy apartment where they could enjoy well-maintained children’s playgrounds, an
athletic center with an indoor swimming pool and gym, and a security service. Her
Chinese neighbors were usually double-income families; both husbands and wives were
young, educated professionals or managers in foreign firms. At the shopping center inside
the apartment compound were a fancy Korean-brand bakery-cafe, spa, massage place,
and beauty salon. Escaping from the bustling and crowded city landscape, the residents
195
enjoyed exclusive, spacious and green environments. During the holidays, they usually
went abroad for a vacation. Their children went to expensive boarding schools for a
better education and sometimes went abroad for college.
Mid-level Commercial Housing
The place where I lived in Beijing for six months was a high-rise apartment
compound called “Huaqingjiayuna (Huaqing Garden),” close to the Wudaokou subway
station. This area was near Zhongguancun, the hub of IT industry in Beijing, and also a
university town where a number of prestigious Chinese universities were located, such as
Beijing, Qinghua, Renmin, and Beijing Language University. Because of the convenient
location and high demand from foreigners and middle-income families, this apartment
compound was one of the most expensive residences in the area. According to my
interviewee who has lived in this area for three decades, since he was young, this area
was literally the middle-of-nowhere; there was nothing except for the universities that I
mentioned above. To go grocery shopping, they had to walk for half an hour. It has been
only in the last ten years that Zhongguancun has developed to its current state. The
apartment compound, Huaqingjiayuan, was also built around 2001. In booming town
Beijing, this apartment compound is no longer new. The gates and walls around the
modern, high-rise buildings completely segregated the apartment compound from the
bustling and noisy cityscape. The space immediately outside the apartment compound
was always crowded with street vendors, loud solicitors, and commuters. During the
weekdays, the apartment compound was usually quiet. Only young children and their
nannies or grandparents were there.
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In Huaqinjiayuan, the apartment sizes varied, from one- to three-bedrooms. While
my roommates and I paid around 7,000 RMB per month, I was told that it cost around
10,000 RMB per square meter, which was in the highest price range for residences in
Beijing. When the apartment compound was first built, many university faculty members
purchased these apartments because of the convenient location and reasonable prices.
Since then, this area has been rapidly developed and homeowners have witnessed a
dramatic increase in real estate prices.
Between the buildings are lawns, small paths, and a few nooks with benches,
bushes, and Chinese-style garden elements. In one corner of the neighborhood is a
parking lot, with above-and underground facilities. On another side sits a combined
kindergarten, primary, and middle school building. Similar to the atmosphere in other
new complexes, during the week the compound was very quiet. On weekends it became
lively and crowded with predominantly young families with small children. In the
neighborhood, this apartment is definitely one of the newest; the buildings were relatively
well-maintained, when compared to nearby apartment compounds—with modern
facilities, including a gym, swimming pool, and children’s playgrounds. The first floor in
each building was occupied by small grocery stores, massage shops, and restaurants.
There were security guards as well, but they did not stop every person entering the
compounds. Even if there were walls and gates around the apartment compound, they
were not as exclusive as the high-end apartment compounds. Residents from other
apartment compounds went freely back-and-forth between their houses and this
compound in order to let their children play in the playgrounds, to buy things at the stores,
and to visit their friends.
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Many of the residents in the apartment compound were young Chinese couples or
families whose three generations live together, in addition to international students or
employees. Usually young couples worked during the day and their parents took care of
their child. Benefiting from rapid wage increases since economic reform, young,
educated couples are enjoying a newly acquired lifestyle that the old generations could
not imagine before: not only do they live in new, relatively spacious apartments that were
usually equipped with modern, Western-style furniture, they also use their financial
means to frequently visit restaurants, travel, or buy selected consumer goods, such as
computers and cars (Fleischer 20010:93). When I had an appointment with these young
educated people for interviews, they took me to the fancy restaurants and treated me.
Though they were anxious about the uncertain future, they strongly believed that their
hard work and high education would bring a promising future. They are very aware of the
need to make money in order to secure their own and their child’s future. At the same
time, they enjoy their financial independence and the possibilities money has opened up
in the transformed urban environment.
Lower-Middle Class Danwei Housing
Around Huaqingjiayuan, there were many old apartment buildings. They were
usually low-rise buildings of four- to six- floors with no elevators. It was usually dark and
dingy inside the buildings. Like mid-level commercial apartment compounds, there were
also some shops in the compounds, but they were not as clean as the ones in the
commercial apartment compounds. Many old apartment buildings in this neighborhood
belonged to university danweis. A number of faculty members received their houses from
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their danweis. However, faculty members rarely lived in these apartment buildings.
Instead, many foreign students or other Chinese families rented these low-end apartments.
Even in the same neighborhood, renting these apartments cost only half of the rent prices
in Huaqing. If not rented out, owners stayed in on-campus apartments during the
weekdays, since their suburban houses were far away from work.
The apartment sizes were much smaller here than in the commercial housing
compounds—usually less than 100 square meters. These old buildings were rarely wellmaintained, as the buildings had no security guards or cleaners. Since the security team
was substantially understaffed and, unlike the other two housing compounds, could not
afford any high-tech surveillance devices, individual families were left to protect
themselves by installing metal bars over their windows and balconies. Because there was
no custodial staff for the apartment buildings, each apartment building became dirty
easily. However, the relationship among neighbors was more close-knit here than in the
other complexes. While neighbors hardly knew each other in the upscale apartment
compounds and residents were more individualistic because of their own busy work
schedules and desire for privacy, residents in these danwei housing complexes
maintained more intimate relationships with their neighbors. Social life here was more
vibrant.
As seen above, the urban space and residential areas have been stratified since housing
reform: well-off entrepreneurs and professionals with higher incomes can afford to live in
high-quality housing located in superior environments, while ordinary workers cannot.
During my fieldwork, I found that housing size or type represented a status marker. The
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location, size, and type of the house strongly affected the homeowner’s status/class
identification. Housing is a mirror through which one’s social status can be represented.
For example, many people thought that 100 square meters could be identified as the
typical size for middle-class homes, whereas less than 60 square meters suggested lowerclass ones. Those who had multiple homes and enjoyed living in a spacious house were
recognized as successful figures; those who had small homes still had opportunities to
improve their standard of living for personal success. The size of the apartment—how
many pingmi (square meters) one’s apartment is—became an important measurement of
personal success.
In addition to housing size and quality, the home’s location was also decisive in
determining one’s social status. Those who had an ability to pay would move to gated
housing compounds and enjoy living in their own “paradise,” segregating themselves
from overcrowded surroundings and strangers, what Fraser called “oasification.”
Through careful reading of housing ads in Shanghai, Fraser (2000) found that developers
increasingly sought customers through promising exclusive lifestyles, guaranteeing
privacy, and providing green and peaceful environments. Potential home buyers did not
simply look for a house per se, but also particular lifestyles and atmospheres. While some
ads simply featured images of a “quiet green zone,” many others constructed more
complex messages linking an oasis to an elite lifestyle (Fraser 2000: 48). For example,
the advertisements often emphasize images of beautiful gardens in gated communities.
The appeal of these Chinese gardens goes beyond just their aesthetic attraction. They are
also powerful symbols of prestige and class distinction that are increasingly bound up
with exclusionary spatial practices. By offering a secured environment with shared
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aesthetic and sensory pleasures, gated communities thus serves as ‘pedagogical’ sites
where middle-class sensibilities and identities are being cultivated (Pow 2009:67).
By representing and marketing “good lives” (xingfu shenghuo; meihao shenghuo)
through the ads of gated communities, real estate developers sell ideas about an idealized
residential landscape and visions of middle-class lifestyles. As Caldeira (1999) points out,
the advertisements of gated communities present “the image of islands to which one can
return every day, in order to escape from the city and its deteriorated environment and to
encounter an exclusive world of pleasure among peers” (120). Purchasing a house in a
gated community and consuming the images reflected in gated communities, residents are
bestowed with “symbolic capital” to show “a reputation for competence and an image of
respectability and honorability” (Bourdieu 1984:185).
Those who sought an elite lifestyle wanted to purchase exclusivity, privacy, and
security, which was distinctive from the majority of population who could not afford to
buy that luxury. The reputation of neighborhoods and the security of the built
environments were the most influential factors for home buying decisions (Tomba 2005).
Even many non-luxury housing advertisements emphasized 24-hour security, repairs, and
cleaning services provided by a professional facilities management team (Fraser 2000:
33). In some neighborhoods, protection from the outside was guaranteed by walls
encircling the neighborhood while a private corps of young guards protected the gates of
each building (Tomba 2005:945). Some advanced electronic technology was mobilized
for securing the apartment complex, such as an electronic card to gain access through the
gate, and video entry phones that allowed surveillance of strangers. Furthermore, this
security system strictly identified visitors and restricted their access to buildings,
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effectively excluding outsider. The obsession with security is not just about enhancing
safety in gated communities. It has also become a source of prestige and a status symbol
for those living in gated communities. In particular, the presence of high walls and
closely guarded entrances suggests the importance and exclusivity of the inhabitants
(Pow 2009:65). Residents bought personal security services from developers and real
estate companies, thereby shielding themselves from the chaotic urban environment of
crime and poverty while simultaneously separating themselves from the rest of the
population who has not fared as well (Davis 2010). New homeowners in enclosed
neighborhoods tried to keep intact the boundaries that protected their property rights and
lifestyles from the outside world. These efforts brought insiders together around this
common interest, while creating a distinction from those outside.
By constituting “others,” middle-class communities effectively represented
civilized and high-quality (suzhi gao) lifestyles that were distinct from the majority of the
urban population. Usually referred to as the “floating population (liudong renkou),”
outsiders (waidiren) and migrant workers (mingong) have been thought of as a dangerous
and uncultured population (Zhang 2001). The appearance of these people was an
imminent threat and potential intrusion, which might disrupt urban beautification and
social morality. While affluent middle-class citizens residing in gated communities were
safer and more secure neighborhood, they had to depend on ‘outside labor’ to maintain
their privileged lifestyles (Pow 2009: 110): outsiders or migrant workers took care of the
housework; they drove the car for the landlady; and they stopped strangers at the gate. As
Pow (2007) notes, these outsiders occupied an ambivalent position: they were the agents
who secured the good life for those civilized enclaves, but they were also regarded as the
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inferior “moral other” due to their rural hukou status and their perceived lack of suzhi. At
the same time, the outsiders’ inferior positions served to locate middle-class citizens in
the upper and superior positions of the social map. By emphasizing characteristics such
as moral failings or abnormalities of the other, civilized middle-class identities came to
be more distinct.
Governing the Urban Population
Housing reform, and thus the emergence of Chinese middle class lifestyles,
symbolized personal freedom, individual capacity, and the pursuit of individual
happiness, which were images that contrasted with the collective-oriented lifestyles under
Mao’s leadership. In the Mao era, the communist state penetrated society and thoroughly
controlled private lives that were organized by danwei. As a primary source for the
supply of most basic daily needs, danweis were closely involved with the hukou system
(a national population register). The danwei-based hukou register was utilized as the basis
for the planned distribution of resources. To augment the information provided by the
hukou, each danwei was also required to establish a system of internal personnel files, or
renshi dang’an. While the hukou register contained fairly basic information, including
facts and former places of registration, the personnel file provided a much more detailed
record of each individual’s work history and social background, as well as assessments of
his or her attitudes toward politics and work performance. These files were utilized
primarily by the danwei when assessing personnel for promotion, reward, or
redeployment, and also for determining whether someone would become a target during
political campaigns (Bray 2005: 115). As Bray (2005) writes, the hukou register and the
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personnel file were “technologies of government that transformed the individual worker
into a knowable economic and political subject and fixed him or her visibly within the
administrative and physical space of the danwei” (116). In the centralized system, all
members of a specific danwei became legible and manageable subjects. Attaching
workers to their workplaces and facilitating collective-oriented socialist lifestyles, the
danwei compounds transformed workers into observable subjects. Not only were private
lives under surveillance by danweis from the top-down, but they were also visible to
neighbors. As coworkers and neighbors, residents in danwei compounds knew their
neighbors’ family events and economic situations like the palm of their hands. As even
the most private things could be public and thoroughly controlled under this system, there
were no concepts of “individual autonomy” or “privacy.”
Housing privatization collapsed the danwei system, and instead saw the rise of
community building based on individuals from diverse backgrounds. Instead of direct
state intervention, the postsocialist regime has emphasized the role of self-governing
communities and small government that operates in a cost-efficient way. Commercial
housing estates are built and managed by property developers, real estate management
companies and private homeowners’ associations, which have taken over certain statedelegated functions (Pow 2009; Zhang 2010). In private compounds, the state relies on
private agents to maintain social order. In my research, it was very common to see private
security guards replacing the role of the local police in middle-class gated communities.
Since, in middle-class neighborhoods, most activities were mediated by the private
companies, the direct interactions between middle-class citizens and the local
government were rare (Tomba 2010: 209). The visibility of the state and its institutions in
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daily activities was limited; residents hardly recognized the role of their community
committees. The roles of residents’ committees 49 were replaced by homeowners’
associations (yezhu weiyuanhui), whose members were often successful businessmen,
professionals, or political elites (Wu 2005: 245). In these communities, governance has
experienced a transition from administrative dominance by the residents’ committee to
self-governance led by the homeowners’ associations. This trend has also been more
visible in middle-class gated communities. The Chinese government has celebrated the
expansion of grassroots democracy produced by self-governing practices in urban
communities (China Daily 2003, March 19).
These myriad changes brought about by urban housing reform seem to confirm
the discourse of neoliberal governmentality 50: increasingly, government responsibility
and accountability have been transferred to semiautonomous entities, the private sector,
the community, the family, and individuals in the name of consumer choice and personal
development (see Bray 2006; Hoffman 2006). Passive subjects, who were the objects of
political mobilization and state control during the Mao era, have been empowered,
becoming “desiring” subjects with enhanced freedom and individual capacity (see Rofel
2007). With the rise of private property ownership in China, ordinary people, particularly
middle-class homeowners, came to be conscious of individual property and privacy
49
Throughout the Mao years, residents’ committees were tightly linked and subordinated to the
next higher level of city government, which served to control urban neighborhoods. The
committees oversaw sanitation, maintained the household registries, and after 1978, monitored
compliance with the one-child campaign and re-employment of laid-off workers (Davis 2006).
50
At a broader level, Nikolas Rose conceptualizes neoliberalism as a technology of rule that
capitalizes on the “powers of freedom” to induce citizens to be self-responsible, self-enterprising,
and self-governing subjects of advanced liberal nations (Rose 1999:49-50). Neoliberal reason
informs a mode of governing subjects that mobilizes their individual capacities for selfgovernment. This neoliberal strategy is called “governing at a distance” because subjects are left
free to govern on their own behalf.
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rights. Many Chinese scholars and Western media have paid attention to the role of
rights-conscious middle-class citizens (see Li ed. 2010; Read 2003; Tomba 2004; Zhang
2010). By capturing the moments when middle-class citizens fought against developers
or the local government to protect their property and privacy rights, scholars and media
have noted that middle-class homeowner citizens would be able to trigger political
change from below (Davis 2006; Read 2003). These scholars and media highlighted that
middle-class homeowners were assertive about their demands and engaged in organized
collective action which might pave the way for participatory and grassroots democracy.
With the housing boom, the number of disputes between homeowners and developers
escalated. Most issues have been related to the improvement of living environments. The
new homeowners want to pursue their lives in a comfortable environment, where they
enjoy not only better housing facilities but also other amenities like green space, parks
and gardens.
Conflicts have largely grown out of discrepancies between the original project
and the final configuration of the neighborhood (see Cai 2005; Read 2003; Tomba 2004;
2005; Zhang 2010). For example, when developers did not fully carry out their plans—
such as failing to build day care centers, a protected children’s playground, or secure
gardens as promised—residents were outraged with the developers, who they felt had
violated their rights as homeowners. In order to articulate their interests, resourceful
middle-class homeowners mobilized both human and economic capital. Not only did they
organize community associations or committees to sue developers and to protest against
the local government, but they also utilized new communication tools such as internet
boards and e-mail listservs, which played a crucial role in informing residents and
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promoting discussions. Most disputes were resolved through institutional channels,
particularly the courts. According to the China Consumers’ Association, housing-related
complaints and disputes have been growing at a phenomenal annual rate since the late
1990s. In the first half of 2003, 9,900 disputes were recorded, a rise of 23.4 percent more
from the previous year, of which 5,300 concerned housing quality, 1,300 contracts, and
600 discrepancies in measurements (China Daily 2003, Aug. 28).
While most cases were resolved through institutional channels, such as mediation
through local governments and lawsuits, some homeowners were willing to take to the
streets when they did not see satisfactory results. It was not unusual to read in Chinese
newspapers about outraged middle-class homeowners’ protests against the developers or
local governments for their property rights and social justice:
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. (China Daily 2009, Nov. 23).
Through weiquan yundong (the rights protection movements), rights consciousness has
become more salient, and homeowners are attuned to even minor infringements of their
rights, leading to a higher degree of participation. By engaging in collective activism,
previously isolated homeowners were brought together and formed a strong sense of
group solidarity (Zhang 2010: 208). However, the democratic content of grassroots
governance has remained limited in two ways. First, this grassroots participation was
constrained by specific spatial gate/community boundaries. Although gated communities
opened a new space for collective deliberation among homeowners, gates also delineated
the boundaries that prevented other social groups from participating in actions, which
was exclusive to non-residents of the communities (Tomba 2010: 211). Second, the
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agenda was usually limited to “consumer rights,” rather than broader “citizen” or “civic”
rights. As the residents had paid a considerable amount of money for their home and
property management, they felt that the management companies should serve the
residents wholeheartedly (Zhang 2010: 192). By seeing the relationship between
homeowners and management agencies as one of “masters” versus “servants,”
homeowners clearly articulated a heightened sense of entitlement and awareness of
consumer rights.
Contrary to some scholars’ expectations, others argue that homeowners’ protests
and collective activism might not necessarily erode the political legitimacy of the Chinese
party-state and are not contradictory with the “socialist harmony” supported by top state
officials. Rather, middle-class homeowners’ protests serve to resonate with the purpose
of the Chinese government: making socially and politically responsible citizens to
support a modernized and civilized nation. The existence of middle-class citizens—
consuming, moral, and empowering—symbolizes new, modern, and rational subjects that
promote civilized social order while not challenging state authority. Within the limit of
the existing social order, the events and social scenes organized by the middle-class
citizens could showcase expanding individual freedom and rights. This signifies the
gradual transition to an orderly and productive state capitalism. As Hooper (2000)
suggested, the state promoted consumer’s interests and rights, not because it intended to
protect individual rights per se, but because it had its own political and economic
interests to gain. Not only were the quality and reputation of China’s products and
services critical to the country’s modernization, but the official advocacy of consumer
rights could also be a means of garnering general popular support (Hooper 2000: 127).
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In this sense, the expansion of individual freedom and property rights that resulted
from market reform in China does not indicate the retreat of the authoritarian/socialist
state, as is suggested by some scholars. Although neoliberal reason informs a mode of
governing subjects that mobilizes their individual capacities for self-government (see
Rose 1999), Ong and Zhang argue that, in the context of Chinese economic reform, state
permission to pursue self-interest freely is aligned with socialist control over designated
areas of collective or state interest (2008: 4). Market-driven reform and privatization did
not necessarily bring about the weakening of state power; rather, neoliberal ideologies are
coexisting with the authoritarian regime. Ong and Zhang maintain:
Neoliberal forms of self-management are not only flourishing within the mutating
socialist landscape but also actually helping to sustain socialist rule. Privatization
must be reconceptualized to take into account a diversity of market-driven
strategies and calculative practices that crisscross and interweave between state
and society, public and private, other and self. The private/interior and the
public/exterior are becoming more and more enmeshed, with public interventions
promoting private choices and self-interest directing public discourses. Despite
the growth of power of the self and powers of protest, there have been few
demands for the limits of government, that is an absence of a liberal technology of
government that is correlative of the notion of “civil society” (Ong and Zhang
2008: 7).
The middle-class residents recognize well that their newly acquired privileged lifestyle
and private properties are as much a product of their own enterprising selves as the
privatization opportunities underwritten by the socialist state. The implicit social contract
that exists between the middle-class homeowners and the state ensures that while the
former get to live their ‘Chinese dream’ of acquiring a nice home, the latter, by providing
opportunities for that realization, can enhance its legitimacy of rule and count on the
support of the emerging propertied middle class. In this sense, class compromises are
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possible at the level in which such a compromise does not touch the essential, as Gramsci
pointed out (1971: 161).
Instead of weakening state power, market development has ironically exploded
the meaning of state protection and ownership. Middle-class homeowners’ property
rights could not be protected without the state’s legal regime and institutional
arrangements. Even if middle-class citizens’ lifestyles seemed to secure more autonomy
and freedom from the state, it always necessitated a bigger framework of state regulation.
In this sense, the Chinese new middle class, which seeks property and privacy, is
fundamentally predicated on strong state power.
Conclusion
Since the housing reform in the late 1980s, the Chinese state has succeeded in a
massive production of homeowners. As one of the largest homeowner societies in the
world (China Census 2005), many ordinary citizens became homeowners and improved
their standard of living throughout the course of housing reform. In particular, there were
two primary social groups that most benefited from this reform: 1) white-collar workers
in the public sector who bought their houses at a significantly discounted price, and 2)
professionals and managers in the private sector whose income was high enough to be
able to buy the commercial housing at market price. Those who got the first entry ticket
in the housing market boom were the winners who saw a rapid increase of housing prices,
widening the gap with the rest of the population. The Chinese state provided material
conditions under which some public employees and professionals could enjoy privileged
lifestyles in a better environment.
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While the state’s bureaucratic intervention played a crucial role in producing
middle-class identities based on similar structural-economic conditions, middle-class
identities have also been reproduced by particular lifestyles shared by individuals in
specific locations. Not only did residential segregation, resulting from differences in
financial affordability, make spatial distinctions between the urban middle class and other
urban residents, but consumption patterns based on their well-serviced and westernized
neighborhoods constructed the culturally advanced identity of the urban middle class.
The class practice of “distinction” could be articulated more visibly, as these better-off
citizens engaged in exclusive practices of enclosing their communities from outsiders and
seeking privacy by escaping from the polluted and crowded urban environment.
Furthermore, housing disputes and collective action which these homeowners were
involved in signal that rights-conscious middle-class identities were flourishing.
The impacts of the rise of middle-class identities in the Chinese political arena
remain unclear: while some scholars have celebrated the possibility of the opening of an
independent political space propelled by rights-conscious middle-class citizens, others
have focused on the conservative and moderate characteristics of the middle class.
Despite increasing collective action and protests that are organized by middle-class
homeowners, there is no sign of political change in China and the discourse of the
“harmonious society” declared by the government is still powerful. Increasing individual
freedom and the pursuit of economic interests disseminated through the urban middleclass social body, in turn, which has strengthened state legitimacy rather than weakening
state power.
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Comparative Conclusion
Through the cases of the urban middle class formation at the local level in Korea
and China, I have investigated how state-sponsored homeownership became a channel
through which those with stable income and jobs achieved upward social mobility by
becoming homeowners and cultivated middle-class identities. With urban redevelopment
plans in Korea and housing privatization in China, homeownership became an important
component for defining middle class boundaries, and housing size became an index to
indicate a certain social status.
The comparison between Korean and Chinese cases suggests the following
conclusions: First, housing and urban policies in both countries contributed to massive
production of urban middle-class homeowners. To resolve the lack of housing, the
governments initiated construction of a large number of apartment buildings in urban
areas. By providing some incentives to government employees and mid-level managers in
private firms, the apartment lottery system in Korea and the affordable housing system in
China made these people homeowners of decent housing. Real estate booms in these two
countries escalated housing prices in a short time and those who became homeowners
early on enjoyed a rapid increase of their property values. The production of these
beneficiaries became a backbone for each society, helping each regime maintain social
stability.
Second, the concept of the middle class had a spatial dimension as well as social
and economic dimensions. In Korea, the urban middle class was identified with those
who lived in a high-rise apartment in Gangnam. Similarly in China, living in a modern
apartment in a decent neighborhood was critical to shaping a middle-class identity.
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Though the governments and academics suggested specific criteria to define middle class,
such as income and occupation, people also had a subjective notion of the middle class
constructed by spatial locations. Living in a desirable, convenient, and cultured
environment reflects a resident’s ability to pay and grant them social status,
distinguishing them from other social groups who cannot afford to live in those
neighborhoods and thus helps to form an identity among residents. Stratified urban space
based on real estate price not only produced a hierarchical order of built environments,
housing, and communities, but created a fragmented cultural milieu where a particular
social group displayed cultural tastes and lifestyles.
Third, the class is not only made by objective conditions; it is also made and
reproduced by people’s practices in daily life. While the state project of modernization
and development produced ample economic opportunities and thus a more open form of
class mobility, people’s consumption and spatial practices in apartment compounds or
gated communities where people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds live together
segregated themselves from other groups of people such as street vendors and squatters.
Residents in apartment compounds and gated communities pursue similar lifestyles to
keep up with their neighbors, while distinguishing themselves from people with lower
socioeconomic status. Through these ongoing processes, the middle-class boundaries
became clearer at the local level.
Fourth, exclusionary and gate-keeping practices by middle-class citizens
coincided with the interests of authoritarian states: to maintain political stability by
minimizing any resistance from below. The consumer-citizenship of the urban middle
class resonated with a state vision of national development without disrupting existing
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social order. Protesters and urban squatters in Korea were the potential threats for the
urban middle class, putting their property values at risk. The Korean state always utilized
the security threats to solicit the support from the middle class who were anxious about
social instability. As an exemplar of self-governing citizens, the rise of the urban middle
class in China led the state to justify emerging social inequality by making social
hierarchy natural, according to individual ability. The urban middle class was an
important social actor in shaping a political trajectory by influencing consent and conflict
over state development projects.
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CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION
In this dissertation, I have explored how the Korean and Chinese states
successfully promoted development projects by reinforcing their political legitimacy and
consolidating state power. A comparative study of these two countries has shown that the
urban middle class was critical in shaping the developmental trajectory in both. More
specifically, state discourses on the middle class and the actual practices of the middle
class served to idealize a state vision of national development and modernization. The
creation and growth of this new middle class in relatively classless, egalitarian Korea and
China could suggest how authoritarian states can promote improved standards of living
and thus appeal to their hard-working populations.
The urban middle class in both countries was shaped by two concurrent processes:
discursive/symbolic production of the middle class and the provision of material benefits
by state economic policies. In both capitalist/authoritarian Korea and postsocialist China,
the creation of middle-class norms by official discourse and academic circles (also
government-supported) was an effort to overcome national backwardness caused by civil
war and political chaos, and signify an alternative social force representing a strong and
modern nation. Table 7.1 summarizes the characteristics of the middle class in both
countries. The images of disciplined, frugal, urban middle-class in Korea identified
patriotic citizens who would reconstruct their nation in the face of national division,
economic backwardness, and strong foreign power. In China, the images of cosmopolitan
middle-class consumers glorified the increasing purchasing power of Chinese citizens in
the globalized world.
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Along with official discourse about the middle class, state policies nurtured the
actual growth of the urban middle class. The state-business alliance in 1970s Korea saw a
rapid growth of big businesses that produced many white-collar workers with stable jobs,
incomes, and various fringe benefits. The growing economy during the post-war period
could fully absorb high school and college graduates and provided them with a middleclass path. That many children of peasant families entered well-paying jobs in large firms
(chaebols) created optimism and a belief in prosperity and social mobility. In China,
market reform and privatization since the 1980s witnessed a dramatic wage increase
among professionals and private-sector employees. The introduction of a market
economy into a socialist country gave those with educational credentials and technical
skills the freedom to pursue material wealth. Unlike Korea, where the number of
government employees did not increase much with the growing economy, the state sector
was the biggest employer in socialist China and government employees could enjoy
benefits comparable to those in the private sector. Even though their incomes were lower
than in the private sector, the Chinese government provided many perks unavailable to
non-government employees. In addition to increased income resulting from explosive
economic growth, enabling some people to enjoy modern, comfortable lifestyles, statesponsored homeownership eased one of the biggest burdens on big-city residents by
creating homeowners through discounted housing prices below market value. In addition,
the real-estate boom in both countries later let these homeowners benefit from
skyrocketing urban housing prices.
The upward mobility of the urban middle class, those who benefited from the
changing market environments and accumulated its material wealth earlier than other
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social groups, became a key source of social inequality in previously egalitarian societies.
Yet the widespread optimism and confidence that the success of the middle class created
throughout society effectively prevented any large-scale conflict on overall state policies.
The category of the middle class became a channel for showcasing upward mobility even
as social inequality increased.
TABLE 7.1. Characteristics of the Middle Class
South Korea
China
Disciplined, frugal middle class
Cosmopolitan, consuming middle class
Created by the alliance between state and
Created by the party-state
chaebols
Middle class as a vanguard of socialist
Middle class as a new national identity
civilization
Theoretical Implications
This dissertation offers three major theoretical implications for current theories on
the state, development, and class. First, I challenge previous economics-centered studies
of development that focus narrowly on how specific economic policies produce
developmental outcomes. Previous studies on state-directed development have, I believe,
ignored the social and cultural aspects of development. My research emphasizes the
existence of an ideological project that stressed nationalism and modernization and thus
legitimated the developmental push. I have traced the processes through which the state
deliberately produced specific meanings, symbols, and values in the middle class. The
state-sponsored formation of the middle class in Korea and China are exemplary cases
that highlight how the authoritarian state effectively promoted its development project
217
and successfully imposed social discipline throughout society. In addition to providing
the “right” institutional arrangements to enhance economic development, the state also
had to create “developmental subjects” with development-promoting dispositions and
attitudes in order to pursue its developmental goals relatively unencumbered. In this
sense, development processes were not limited to institutional changes alone; rather, they
brought about a social transformation in which social order and norms were completely
reorganized. This formulation implies that the state was not only an administrative,
military, and policing institution in a Weberian sense; it was also a pedagogical,
corrective, and ideological institution (Gorski 1993; Gramsci 1971). By disseminating
particular norms, morals, and values, the state was an active shaper of society that
transformed passive social subjects into responsible and proactive ones.
Second, my study complements existing state-centric studies of development in
East Asia. Previous development studies have focused on the role of state elites and state
capacity in developmental outcomes. While I do not deny the importance of state policy
implementation, I have also highlighted how ordinary people interpreted and negotiated
state development projects. Even if a state implements a particular policy, its success
depends on whether the people support or oppose it. Looking at the role of the middle
class in easing disruptive economic transformations, my research demonstrates how
“society” also came on board with the development push. By adding a class-based
approach, my dissertation suggests how political alliances or configurations among
different social actors can lead to particular development paths. The urban middle class,
created by the state, shapes the dynamics of consent and conflict on state-directed
development projects. Due to the exceptionally strong state in East Asia, the state has
218
been seen as the only actor in development in much of the literature on developmental
states (though some authors have focused on state-business alliances). It cannot be
ignored that ordinary people, as collective social actors seeking their own material
interests, produce developmental outcomes from below as well.
Third, my dissertation sheds light on how social classes and inequalities are
constituted and reconstituted in daily life. Both Marxist and Weberian views of class and
social inequality have focused on structural and objective conditions and thus considered
class as a result of unequal resource distribution in the market. Neither of these traditional
views gives proper weight to the cultural practices of social actors on a daily basis. As I
have discussed for the construction of the middle class in Korea and China, the middle
class is shaped not only by such objective criteria as income, occupation, and educational
level: both structural conditions and cultural orientations shape and reshape class
identities (Bourdieu 1984; Liechty 2003). According to this formulation, class cannot be
reduced to economic wealth, educational level, political position, or cultural tastes, but is
rather realized through the interaction between objective and subjective factors and the
complex mediation between economy and culture (Hanser 2008: 5). This dissertation
views middle-class formation as composed of three distinct but intertwined processes: the
structural formation of the middle class (class-in-itself), the discursive construction of the
middle class, and class reproduction through daily class practices. First, the state creates
the objective conditions for the rise of a middle class through social policies and
economic reforms. Second, the state, media, and intellectuals construct a narrative of
what the middle class is and does that becomes part of a hegemonic project of
legitimating a particular vision of development and modernity through the constitution of
219
a disciplined class subject. Third, operating in the ideological and objective spaces
created by the state, middle-class actors actively constitute and reconstitute themselves at
the local level. In various areas including consumption and urban space, middle-class
actors employ classificatory practices to distinguish themselves from other lower classes.
Epilogue: The End of the Social Contract?
Jinhee, a 24-year-old college student in Seoul, is looking for a job. Because of
recent increases in college tuition, she had to take multiple leaves of absence during her
undergraduate years. She lives in a moderately furnished, cramped room in a gosiwon 51
building with ten other people. She cannot even find a temporary job to pay her rent. Her
B.A. degree does not make her stand out in Korea’s highly competitive job market, where
she must compete with those with degrees from top Korean and American universities,
had international experience in the U.S. and other countries, and are fluent in English. In
her college years, she worked hard to earn a high GPA, attain high scores in English tests,
and get other certificates to make her attractive to potential employers. Despite these
lengthy and painful efforts, her qualifications were not good enough. She is several
months behind on her room rent and is in danger of being kicked out by her landlord.
Jinhee’s story is not uncommon in 2011 Korea. 52 Labeled the “880,000-won generation
51
Gosiwon is a particular form of housing in Korea. It originally sprang up to serve those
preparing for various national exams, such as civil service or bar exams. Located in a convenient
neighborhood close to schools or to exam-prep institutions, gosiwons provide a small, convenient
space for those students to focus on their studying. Since the 1990s, this kind of housing has
become popular because of its very much lower rents than in apartments and single-family
houses. Many young, low-income singles live in this housing, using it only for sleeping.
Recently, a lot of migrant workers from northeast China have also begun to live in gosiwons.
52
I borrow this character from a famous Korean TV sitcom, “High Kick: a Counterattack from
Short Legs,” shown on MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation) since fall 2011.
220
(88 manwon sedae) 53,” the many young people in their 20s with little job security and
low incomes has been a major social issue since the late 1990s. Since the 1997 economic
crisis, structural adjustment and economic restructuring has led most Korean business
firms to cut labor costs through massive layoffs of mid-level managers and white-collar
workers and the reduction of permanent employment. The second practice is directly
responsible for the rise of the “880,000-won generation.” The 1997 revision in labor laws
allowed employers to hire workers with lower pay, job insecurity, and no benefits under
the guise of “necessary business restructuring.” Nowadays, more than half of Korea’s
total work force are irregular workers (National Statistics Office 2005) whose monthly
wages are only 62.5% of those of regular employees. In a 2007 Survey on Labor
Conditions by Type of Employment, the Ministry of Labor found that, while 90% of fulltime workers are covered by social insurance protections, only 50% of irregular workers
are eligible for by national pensions, health insurance and unemployment insurance
(except for industrial accident compensation insurance). The widespread upward mobility
available to high school and college graduates in the 1970s is available to the younger
generation only if their parents are middle or upper-middle class. Though in the past the
employers provided all benefits to their employees, enabling them to achieve middleclass status after a few years of work, now it takes more than ten years for ordinary
people to buy their own home (usually an apartment) with only their wages. Vulnerable
in the cruel globalized market, the younger generation is willing to accept lower wages
and longer work hours as they struggle to survive in daily life.
53
The concept of the 88-manwon generation was introduced by economist Woo Sukhoon and
journalist Park Kwonil (Woo and Park 2007). Involving unstable job security, irregularly
employment and low income, the 880,000-won generation is young workers in their 20s who are
paid less than $1,000/month. Due to these unstable economic situations, this young generation
puts off marriage and is economically dependent on their parents.
221
Similar to the younger generation, a number of white-collar workers and
managers in their mid-40s or 50s in big business firms who had worked there for much of
their lives have been abruptly laid off. In the name of labor flexibility, these hardworking, committed workers were abandoned by their employers like useless waste.
Small- and medium-sized companies went broke in the recession and business owners
and managers also experienced downward mobility. Hit by the late-’90s economic crisis,
those who had attained the dream of a middle-class lifestyle found their lives torn apart
by unemployment and the ultimate permanent loss of their former lifestyles.
This changing, extremely competitive market environment has heightened stress
throughout Korea: it has the second highest suicide rate worldwide (after Lithuania) and
the highest suicide rates among OECD countries. Suicide rates in Korea have been
gradually increasing since the 2000s. In particular, suicide among the older population
(more than 60 years old) is believed to have been increasing rapidly. Major newspapers
constantly report on those who commit suicide owing to chronic economic hardship and
related family issues caused by unemployment, bankruptcy, and huge debts. While the
reasons for suicide can of course be complex, there is no doubt that social pressure,
poverty, and the accompanying depression are critical factors. With no public relief
system, people forced into a corner have few alternatives.
Some would argue that these are completely new social phenomena in Korea,
brought on by the economic crisis and its accompanying neoliberal policies since the late
1990s. Conversely, we need to understand that these were precisely the long-term
outcome of a middle-class-based, exclusionary development project. Though statedirected economic development was successful in enabling people quickly to escape from
222
absolute poverty, quantitative-oriented development did not address social inequality and
widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Unlike European social democratic
states that embraced inclusive social welfare systems, the Korean development model
failed to promote a more equitable pattern and forced each individual to take care of
himself with no state protection. When the economy was growing explosively in the
1970s, most people could benefit from rapid economic growth despite differences in
degree. With the economic recession, however, people are driven to extreme competition
for a small slice of the pie. While the 1987 democratic transition replaced authoritarianmilitary power and changed the existing political order, later democratic governments
were not successful in building a more inclusive social welfare system. Prominent
Korean political scientist Choi Jang Jip argued that, ironically, Korean society has seen
no political and social development since democratization (Choi 2002). He argues from
the phenomena: social inequality has worsened and the opportunity for upward social
mobility through hard work and education has been closed off; Gangnam has been a safe
haven for the upper-middle class and the middle class has been more conservative,
focusing purely on generating wealth; ordinary citizens are cynical and skeptical about
politics, particularly about the political parties that fail to address current problems (Choi
2002: 5). Upset with the performance of democratic governments, an increasing number
of people believe that democratic governments are inherently incompetent (agreeing with
the conservative media’s nostalgia for the Park regime). Since democratization, the
government has failed to build a democratic hegemony against authoritarian power and
its legacies, and the long-term trajectory of exclusionary, middle-class-based
development has also led to a decline in family and community feeling.
223
This post-’80s Korean development trajectory can give insight into the Chinese
case. Chinese economic growth and development is still a controversial issue in
academia, international politics, and the mass media. On the one hand, China’s great
social transformation over last three decades is an exemplary case for developing
countries, one of uninterrupted economic growth over a long period of time. On the other
hand, concern has been growing about increasing social inequality in China: one of the
world’s most egalitarian countries has now become just the opposite. For example, by
2001, China’s overall Gini coefficient had increased to 0.447, greater than that of the
United States (Naughton 2007:218). The rise of the urban middle class has paralleled the
fall of the working class that has lost its permanent employment. Images of a small,
comfortable middle class always stand in contrast to the low wages and long hours of
migrant workers in cities, the maids, daily laborers, and waitresses. The suicides of more
than ten workers at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen in 2010 tell us how unbearable the
working conditions were. This incident was followed by labor disputes at Honda plants in
Guangdong province, which ended with wage increases. Along with the mistreatment of
young factory workers in coastal cities and the growing labor disputes, the older
generation of workers in state-owned enterprises in northeast “rust belt” cities faces
unemployment, pay and benefit cuts or suspension, and pension loss (Lee 2007). Given
the lack of institutional channels for resolving their problems, mid-aged workers cannot
but take to the streets to fight for their rights. The growing discontent in China comes not
only from ordinary workers who are struggling to make ends meet. It comes also from
better-off middle-class homeowners who must try to defend their property rights against
224
local governments or developers. Altogether, China is experiencing a rising social unrest
that raises the specter of social instability in the minds of the CCP.
The current Chinese leadership has admitted that increasing social inequality and
income disparity between the haves and have-nots might become a potential threat to
China and is addressing the importance of reducing social inequality. In October 2006,
Chinese President Hu Jintao called for the creation of a “harmonious society (hexie
shehui),” a move that further signaled a shift in the party's focus from promoting all-out
economic growth to solving worsening social tensions. 54 Chinese leaders believe that a
harmonious society includes narrowing the wealth inequities, increasing employment,
improving public service, and protecting the environment. Since then, “building a
harmonious society” has been a top priority for the CCP. While the CCP recognizes
narrowing the income gap as an important part of its agenda, a harmonious society does
not uphold the form of egalitarianism existing before the reform; rather it allows for
socioeconomic differences. Given that political legitimacy is built on the regime’s
economic performance, it is unclear how the Party will sustain rapid economic growth
while decreasing social inequality. Moreover, this ideology of harmony addresses
increasing social conflict by trying to resolve the problem in a lawful and peaceful way.
As many critics point out, however, harmony can be another justification for
discouraging opposition and resistance considered detrimental to building a harmonious
society: harmony can serve simply as a ruling ideology to stifle any social confrontation
and challenges from below.
54
China’s Party Leadership Declares New Priority: ‘Harmonious Society.’ October, 12, 2006.
The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006101101610.html).
225
Throughout the development of capitalism there has been tension between capital
accumulation and social equity. As Karl Polanyi argued in his book The Great
Transformation, “For a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a
double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a
countermovement checking the expansion in definite directions. Vital though such a
countermovement was for the protection of society, in the last analysis it was
incompatible with the self-regulation of the market, and thus with the market system
itself” (1944: 136). For Polanyi, the commodification of fictitious commodities
(including land, labor, and money) will inevitably trigger massive social dislocations and
spontaneous counter-moves from society to protect the social fabric.
When socially marginalized groups realize that they are excluded by the state or ruling
elites and their demands cannot be properly resolved through existing institutional
channels, massive social mobilization from below can appear. The case of Korean
democratization in 1987 can be seen as the workers’ response to an authoritarian state
that allied itself with big business and failed in properly protecting workers’ rights. When
ordinary workers realized they were being forced to sacrifice their rights and that the state
and their employer had ignored their demands, the working class could be successfully
mobilized, allying itself with other opposition groups and challenging authoritarian
power. Though the mobilization was not successful in promoting substantive workers’
rights, it was nevertheless not a negligible achievement.
The path of successful working-class mobilization in Korea is, however, less
likely to be followed in China. Learning a lesson from the Tian’anmen Square Protest in
1989 and also from other East European events, the Chinese leadership is well aware of
226
the impact of massive social unrest on the political legitimacy of the Party and the regime
on the whole. Unlike the anti-communist, labor-repressive Korean authoritarian state, the
legitimacy of the Chinese communist party-state rests on the welfare of the working class
as a basic force in that socialist country. Because of this, Prime Minister Wen Jaibao and
President Hu Jintao have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to improving social
welfare and the livelihood of the poor. They have also claimed that their top priority is
“people.” Despite this official rhetoric, the challenge to the CCP lies in combining
contrasting elements, such as market economy, neoliberal thinking, and socialist
authoritarianism, as Li Zhang rightly points out (2010:215). The CCP will experiment
with different strategies to prevent the development of large-scale social conflict within
the tension between market economy and socialist rhetoric. At this moment, it is not clear
what choice the CCP will ultimately make and what the ultimate outcome will be. One
thing, however, is clear: the CCP must find ways to reassure the insecure working class
who were victimized by privatization while promising ongoing benefits to the middle
class.
227
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