The Resurgence of the Bourgeoisie in Mainland China

Abstract

Although the abolition of private ownership after 1949 is supposed to have eliminated the bourgeoisie in mainland China, the situation has changed radically since the initiation of the economic reforms in 1979. In the countryside, the household responsibility system has allowed peasants to become individual owners, while individual, nominally collective, and private economic activities have also been resumed in urban areas. These new property owners have annual incomes as high, in some cases, as one million yuan. According to Marxist thinking, these people should be classed as petty bourgeois or even bourgeois. Other individuals owe their wealth to their position as relatives of high-ranking cadres, and these may be classed as the ``bureaucratic bourgeoisie.`` They are likely to play an important role in the future.