The demand side

This chapter argues that the Chinese middle class is not a class at all, in the familiar sense of the unequal distribution of assets and diverse forms of &s;capital&s;, but rather an entirely new social phenomenon: a risk-class, or more properly still, a risk-innovation-class. But, just as it is not a familiar &s;class&s;, neither is it straightforwardly &s;middle&s;, in any substantive sense recognizable to Euro-American scholars and laity used to their dominant sense of this term. Rather, this middle class is the specific beneficiary and agent of this new system of risk-innovation-class, positioning itself as the new stalwarts of complexity-attentive responsibility and meritocratic respectability as against a feckless, decadent elite above and an uncivilized mass beneath. On the security side, scholars see powerful, self-propelling dynamics specifically towards the emergence and active personal adoption of the category of risk-class.