Beijingers richer but unhappier
By Ou Lu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-01 07:50
Burden of maintaining living standard leaves some members of the middle class disillusioned
The tens of thousands of Beijingers who are part of the city's growing middle class are developing ever higher expectations in terms of their standard of living, but reaching and maintaining these standards is sucking the joy out of life for an increasing number of them.
Few would doubt that with an annual income of 500,000 yuan ($73,206) Liu Chunhua has the means to lead a privileged life in Beijing. However there aren't many traces of affluence at her home.
The 39-year-old is the CFO of a World Top 500 company's Beijing office. Despite being paid handsomely, she says she still feels she is not rich enough to indulge in a lavish lifestyle just yet.
She uses the majority of her income to pay for the mortgage and maintenance of the seven apartments she had bought in Beijing.
"I have to save to pay the mortgages off," she said.
During weekdays her family stays in a 50-square-meter apartment in Xicheng district, close to one of the city's best primary schools, which her son attends. On the weekends they stay in a bigger apartment in the suburbs, to enjoy a little bit more luxury.
The market prices of Liu's apartments more than tripled during the past few years' real estate boom in Beijing. Selling a few of her apartments would make her a millionaire several times over. But she is apprehensive about such a move.
Reflecting on the reasons she can't simply be a happy-go-lucky middle class professional woman, Liu concludes that she feels she must continuing working hard and saving as much as possible to secure a good life after retirement, to pay her parents' expensive medical bills and, most importantly, to help her son get the best education available.
"The biggest reason for me to keep saving is to ensure a good future for my kid and I believe that's what most Chinese middle-class families are doing," she said.
Liu said she has already been putting money away to send her son to study abroad after he graduates from high school.
"It might cost more than 200,000 yuan for a year's tuition, so I have to save at least 1 million yuan for him," she said.
She says another reason for her anxiety is that she never feels secure in her job.
Last year when the world economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis, she was unemployed for almost a year, living on the rents she collected from tenants.
"I was able to support my family with that money, but I want to save more in case it happens again. It wasn't a great situation - I was so busying looking for a new job that I had almost no time for my family," she said.
Although Liu is not the only breadwinner for her family, her husband, who works in the government, is not as well paid as she is.
Liu's feelings coincide with those of a survey published recently by insurance company Manulife-Sinochem. According to the survey middle class families in the most prosperous regions in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, are some of the least happy in China because of the unbearable economic pressures they face and the small amount of time they spend with family members.
But Liu's life isn't all stress and unhappiness - she recently indulged a bit and bought a villa in Daxing district with a yard in front, saying she's always had the quintessential urban dream of owning a house in the country.
"I'd love to live in a place like that when we retire," Liu said, with a beaming smile on her face.
"I'm already counting down the years until my retirement," she added.
Unlike Liu, who says she is a bit confused about her position in the social echelons, 36-year-old Wang Xin, a middle-ranking office worker at a state-owned company in Beijing, know exactly where he fits.
He calls himself pre-middle class and said he will likely become a real member of the middle class after he turns 40.
Wang said he totally disagrees with a report by Lu Xueyi, a renowned sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which said that China's middle class now comprises 23 percent of its 1.3 billion population.
Though definitions for middle class vary in China, many hold that middle class families should have household incomes of at least $10,000 a year, own an apartment and a car, eat out often and travel on vacations.
"There are simply not that many people in this country who belong to this privileged group," Wang said.
Wang owns two apartments in Beijing, both bought with loans, and an investment portfolio worth 2 million yuan, but said he still doesn't think he qualifies as middle class yet.
"Genuine members of the middle class are those with the money as well as other resources, such as leisure time, to maintain a certain lifestyle," he said.
"But many of my friends who make decent salaries at big multinational companies dare not buy whatever they like and make any mistakes at work," he said. "These people aren't genuinely in the middle class, because if they lose their jobs, they will immediately be poor."
Wang said even his friends who make enough money to not worry about being unemployed for a while don't have the leisure time that is a hallmark of middle class families in the West.
One of Wang's friends makes more than 700,000 yuan per year as a sales manager but still "lives like a dog," he said.
"In the past few years this friend's sales quota was 20 million yuan, but this year it surged to 200 million yuan, " said Wang. "He doesn't have any time left for fun."
It feels like a never never-ending struggle to keep from falling behind, Wang said.
He said his criteria for being genuinely middle class includes having enough time to be with family and to travel abroad during vacations, as well as having enough money to be able to donate to charitable causes and to take care of his health.
Wang said his definition of middle class life is that depicted on Desperate Housewives, an American television comedy-drama series popular with the well-educated young professionals in China - owning a big house surrounded by green lawns and beautiful flowers and having plenty of leisure time.
"So many Chinese are still struggling to get richer," said Wang. "We simply don't have enough time to fulfill our other needs."
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I thought this was an interesting article about the mind-set of a middle-class Beijing resident.
-Adam
