in Shenyang, rather than Beijing. There, he studied for a degree in material science and engineering. But he did so well that he was able to go on to study for a postgraduate degree at a university in Beijing. For him, this was a big turning point.
Soon after completing his studies, Guojun got a job as a researcher at Advanced Technology & Materials Company (AT&M). This manufacturer of metallic products was founded by a state-owned research institute in the late 1990s. His annual salary was RMB 60,000, or about $9,400. This was double his father’s salary and marked him as a member of the urban and emerging middle class. If Guojun felt special, he was not alone—many others were climbing the social ladder. In 2010, those living in emerging middle-class households or higher constituted 26 percent of the population. By 2020, this proportion will have risen to 50 percent. Much of this growth will take place in China’s fast-expanding cities, where 75 percent of the population will enter the emerging middle class or higher by the end of this decade. Today, the emerging middle class accounts for about 15 percent of the general population and 26 percent of the urban population. Guojun fit the bill perfectly. But he was not ready to rest on his laurels.
In Beijing, the middle class has to cut corners and budget tightly in order to live the better life. For instance, workers must sometimes go as far out as the fourth ring—the expressway encircling the city more than five miles from the center—before finding affordable apartments. The commute to work can then take ninety minutes or even longer.
At that time, Guojun did not feel rich, even though he was, by the standards of his family. He lived in a small apartment of just forty square meters, which he rented with a roommate, and it was poorly furnished and miles away from his office. It took him more than an hour to get to AT&M’s offices in the Zhongguancun Science Park, China’s answer to Silicon Valley, and he had to get there on the crowded subway. It meant that there was very little time for recreation. As he put it, “Every day was work, work, work.” Worse than this, he felt that even if he worked and saved for a lifetime, he still would not be able to afford a proper-sized apartment in Beijing.
At the age of twenty-seven, Guojun was lonely. He had fallen in love with a beautiful young woman in Beijing, but his modest financial income, together with the fact that he came from a city 1,250 miles from the capital, did not make him an attractive bet as a husband—or, more significantly, as a son-in-law. The girl’s parents forced the couple to go their separate ways. As he explained, “Her mom said, ‘This guy can’t lead a good life for himself, so how could he give you happiness?’”
Status, as expressed by a nice house and a good job, is a big factor in China, as we will see in chapter 8. “A house doesn’t only mean a place to live. It translates as a statement of affluence: security, health care, identity, and education,” Guojun told us. “A lot of people growing up in Beijing had houses bought for them by their parents. But for me, as someone who had migrated from a rural area, I had to pay for a house myself, and that’s almost impossible because of the high and rising costs of property.”
As he searched for a new direction, Guojun’s moment came when he stumbled across a job made for him: a lectureship in engineering at Qinghai University in his home city of Xining. Offered a comparable salary, he jumped at the chance to escape Beijing and return home. He knew his money would go further, he would stand a better chance of finding a wife and starting a family, and he would have a better life. This common migration pattern is driving the growth of the tier 2 and tier 3 cities in China.
Four years later, he has a wife, a one-year-old son, and an annual household income of RMB 80,000, or $12,500. He owns an apartment that is three times the size of the one he rented in Beijing—thanks, in part, to a gift from his parents—and he has many of the things that he wanted: a TV, a computer, and a new HTC smartphone that he bought on taobao.com, China’s largest online market.
Like many middle-class consumers, he is actively online, spending around two hours a day on the Internet—often sending messages to fellow lecturers on QQ, the instant messaging service. He used to spend more time than this, but his infant son now takes up many of his spare waking hours.
He definitely wants more—more goods, more savings, more comforts. He wants his own car; currently, he travels by train or shares the university’s car pool. He also wants to give his son every chance in life by providing him with the best education. He is busily putting money away to cover the cost of his son’s schooling. In an effort to climb the career ladder and earn a bigger salary, he is studying part-time for a doctorate at Lanzhou University of Technology. Every night after his son goes to bed, Guojun turns to his books, working until the early hours. Periodically, he takes the two-hour train ride from Xining to Lanzhou to meet with his professors. He will earn his degree this year, opening more doors to advancement. When he completes his PhD, Guojun will be one of more than sixty thousand new PhD graduates this year—a sixfold increase in the number of PhD graduates in ten years. He wonders whether an MBA would also be a worthwhile investment to help him stand out from the crowd.
Guojun has, in his words, achieved “the first half of his dreams.” In the decade ahead, he expects to continue to invest in himself and in his career. It is likely that his annual income will continue to rise as he opens more doors for himself and as his city of Xining becomes more prosperous. In so many ways, he is part of China’s middle class in motion—a fast-changing and mobile group that is redrawing society.
Cars, Caste, and Class in India
The caste system still survives in India. Although it is less defining and rigid today than ten years ago, and an interventionist government is attempting to improve social and economic mobility, it still hangs in the air. Govind is a Rajput—the proud warrior caste that once ruled the princely states of northern India. He wears a dark moustache, a marker of his masculinity and his martial heritage. Yet what really distinguishes Govind are his possessions: for a man who started with nothing, these are the things that really count for him.
Born in 1971, some twenty years before the introduction of the market reforms that would signal India’s reentry to the global economy, Govind was raised in a hut in Jhalana Dungri, one of the most deprived areas of Jaipur. Like Guojun, he was the eldest of three boys and, as such, was expected to help provide for the family from an early age.
His father, a painter, brought home about 50,000 rupees, or about $1,100, per year. Young Govind, offering his services as a day laborer and painter, was soon earning enough to help the family. “I started working when I was fifteen,” he explains. “With the money I made, I was able to put myself through school and support my father.”
He left school at nineteen and started full-time work. Very soon, he was earning around 35,000 rupees ($750)—about two-thirds of his father’s income. His turning point came when he met his wife. “She’s my great inspiration,” he says. She was a student at the local college when a matchmaker first introduced them. She was studying for a degree in education in order to be a teacher. “I realized that being a painter’s helper would not allow me to achieve what I wanted for my family,” he explains. “I wanted to do something more than just be a painter or contractor.”
This was the mid-1990s, and the Indian car market was just opening up. Until then, the Hindustan Ambassador, modeled on the stately 1950s Oxford III from the now-defunct British Morris Motor Company, was the classic Indian automobile—so much so that it was dubbed “King of the Indian Roads.” Govind took a second job as a car-wash attendant, supplementing his income as a painter. “I used to wake up at four a.m. and clean cars for people and then start my day job at nine a.m.,” he recalls. “And then, in the evenings, I learned to drive and earned a driver’s license.”
Handsome, well groomed, and physically fit, he was selected as the chauffeur for a prominent businessman in Jaipur. “I drove a white Fiat in those days,” he recalls, “and I learned all
