One new entrant joins the Chinese middle class every second of every day.

 

In Shanghai’s decadent days a century ago, it was the foreigners who lived the high life. Today it is the ultra-rich locals. But not far behind, an increasingly vast middle class army is on the move, upwardly ascendant.

 

 

It rampages daily through one of the world’s biggest shopping malls, in central Pudong, called in English Super Brand Mall, but in Chinese, more appropriately, Zheng Da – or “really huge.” This is double the size of Warringah Mall in Sydney and almost double Chadstone in Melbourne, with 300,000 people cascading up and
down its 13 floors on an average day at a weekend.

 

I spent time in Shanghai meeting some typical members of  the Chinese middle class – 300 million consumers whose values, tastes and behaviour will decide the fate of China’s economy, and in time the globe’s as well.

They live in roughly 100 million households which earn US$10,000 to $60,000 a year.

 

China’s middle class is the world’s largest, and it is in robust health. This is China’s time, and the whole world needs to know who, and what, matters here.

 

Aspiration is the main game. They are people who expect opportunities to open up, they anticipate life getting better. But they’re not mad spenders. Their instinct remains, to save first, they have learned to rely primarily on themselves.

 

In a pedestrians-only district of the old French concession, I met Gu Luping, aged 22, receptionist and cashier at “Lotus Land,” an Indian restaurant on a first floor, with tables on a broad verandah beneath shade trees from the old days when this was part of the French concession.

 

She’s not shopping, not spending. She’s saving for her own business. Fundamentally, she says, “I want to be independent.” Towards that aim, she goes to night school once a week to study accounting.

 

Her 30-year-old boss Zhu Jingxuan, who chats in a relaxed, egalitarian way with guests and staff alike, has abandoned his first career in corporate design and is dreaming of opening more restaurants.

 

Zhu, a classic Chinese mix of bohemia – with long hair and ear-stud – and hard-headed businessman, discovered Indian cuisine during his first travels on the sub-continent, five years ago.

 

He began working life as a designer, but says it’s hard to make money from it in China: “Intellectual property rights are not protected. Your ideas will be stolen. Businesses don’t care about where they come from.” He designed the chairs in his restaurant – “but if I were to start selling them, someone else would do it cheaper and undercut me.”

 

People still send him design work, but he tends to pass it on to his wife, because he needs to be in the restaurant – where he employs two Indian chefs.

 

His father has a printing materials factory, and would like him to take it over, “but I don’t know anything about the business.”

 

There has been some family discussion about shifting to the USA, but Zhu says “you can make money easier here than in the States. And I like to live here.”

 

He and his wife own an apartment, and drive a Cherokee but are planning to shift to Toyota “even though it’s expensive – everything’s expensive here.” They are not yet parents, but “it’s on the schedule.”

 

After returning from his first visit to India, he opened one of only 40 Indian restaurants in the city. Most of his friends work in offices. “They have to listen to the boss. Here, I’m the boss.”

 

Sun Lu, aged 28, a senior analyst in a foreign corporate office, broke up with a girlfriend not long ago. Next time, he hopes to find a bride. Especially in big cities, he says, people are expected to own a flat before they marry, usually bought by the man. He expects that if he hasn’t made progress on the fiance front within a couple of years then “I’ll start to get letters from home.”

 

Sometimes parents want to introduce their sons to appropriate girls. Resumes are distributed.

 

He jokes: “The girls want a guy who is gao fu shuai – tall, rich, handsome

– while the girls need to be bai fu mei – white, rich, beautiful.”

 

Sun Lu, like Gu, is looking for investment opportunities. “Spending is a great tie,” he says.

 

“When you’re young, I think it’s better to save. Shanghai is one crazy society, you can spend a whole lot here.”

 

Lu likes to watch soccer, basketball and music shows on TV – but not politics. “Whoever the leader is, that’s not the first thing to consider. The priority is for our lives to keep getting better.” He gains most information he needs from the internet, on his computer or phone. He follows about 100 people on weibo, China’s twitter – singers, movie stars, sportspeople and business leaders.

 

Most members of this independent-minded middle class resent being perceived – by the wider world or by their own government – as merely “economic units.” They are also pursuing lives of the mind, of the spirit – Christianity and a revived Buddhism are booming in middle-class China.

 

Briton Paul French, a consultant to market analysts Mintel and one of China’s leading consumption experts, based in Shanghai for almost 20 years, says: “Many middle class people are starting to think beyond acquiring.

They want to show they are giving something. And in a market where charity is new, compassion points are valuable.”

 

“It used to be all about the young,” he says.

“That has changed. China is going to be an older place, the demography shows.”

 

The Chinese consumer, he says, has begun to trust in the internet. And while the credit card market took a long time to take off, the repayment rate is already much better than in most other Asian countries. “It’s in part a by-product of the one child policy.” There are fewer family members to whom to pass on debts.

 

Department stores are still doing well “because shopping malls are being done so badly by property developers. And every department store group now also has an online operation.”

 

My youthful fellow Australia China Connections columnist Australian Geoff Tink works in Shanghai managing events for luxury brands around China – and cites Porsche as an example. Of the world’s top 10 Porsche dealers, nine are in China. And the average age of a customer is 10 years younger than in Western markets like Australia.

 

That’s life in the fast lane. ■

*Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor for The Australian newspaper and a former Beijing-based Chinacorrespondent. For more than 20 years, Rowan has written on issues impacting China, Hong Kong and theAsia Pacific region. He was previously the China correspondent (based in Hong Kong) for the Australian Financial Review and a senior writer with Time magazine.

He has received the Graham Perkin Award for Journalist of the Year in 1995 and has won two Walkley Awards for Asia-Pacific coverage. Rowan is also the author of Comrades and Capitalists: Hong Kong Since the Handover. 
He recently launched his latest book, Party Time – a groundbreaking book of reportage and analysis about the Chinese Communist Party.