While China's middle class right now consists of only a quarter of the population, they are set to grow to nearly half the total population by 2020, according to Euromonitor. That means that 700 million out of the estimated 1.45 billion people of 2020 will have an income of roughly between 80,000RMB (11,800USD) to 120,000RMB (17,700USD) a year. more ›

This a rough translation of Fan Gui's response to Sun Liping's essay (which we wrote about here): 1. Regarding Sun's first point, I believe that he has ignored a very crucial fact—the growing gap between rich and poor. 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth, how can you say that such a status quo has "flexibility"? While Professor Sun divides the population into urban and rural, does he mean that the urban poor... more ›