As China’s economy falters, so does middle-class confidence
China's middle class is facing new uncertainty as a sluggish economic recovery after Covid-19 challenges President Xi Jinping's focus on national security.
BEIJING — At a restaurant in the Chinese capital that serves up low-cost meals to seniors, much of the crowd these days is decidedly less than senior.
For Wang Ran, a 27-year-old designer, lunch at the restaurant in Beijing costs about half what she would normally pay — which makes a big difference as she downgrades her spending amid an economic slump in China that could have global ramifications.
Previously, Wang said, “I pretty much bought things whenever I saw something I liked. But this year, I might have to consider the financial aspect a bit more.”
Decades of breakneck growth transformed China into the world’s second-largest economy and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, swelling the middle class from 3% of the population in 2000 to more than 50% in 2018, according to the Pew Research Center, which defines middle class in China as living on $2 to $50 a day.
For decades, this modern economic miracle buoyed the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which promised the Chinese public security and prosperity in exchange for severe constraints on political freedom. But a new period of relatively slower growth has created uncertainty for the more than 700 million people in China’s middle class, the largest in the world.
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