【Comprehensive】 Wu Qiang: The Middle Class Lifestyle in Fog

Wen | Wu Qiang

Today people talk about the complex mood of haze, and the fact that the 2008 Olympic Games has greatly increased the number of American athletes is a huge difference. Looking at the scene around the end of the century, and as several lawyers sued several urban governments in northern China as citizens, the smog politics in China has entered a new stage, like the Silent Hill in the early 1960s.

It may be appropriate to compare Silent Hill to the current moment, or to reveal the potential significance of haze in the future of Chinese social life. Maybe it will still be ridiculed by many people, just as they did the same ridicule of Chai Jing two years ago. They can't always see things beginning to change, and this change always exceeds people’s initial expectations, as if someone insisted "The fog is not awkward."

I remembered when I first arrived in Beijing at the end of the 1980s. I could see in the early morning, on the wide streets, behind the big liberation of blue smoke, I followed a group of high school students who rode bicycles and clashed together before class. It's hard to imagine today's people having such a vibrant landscape. These students were probably either paralyzed in nightclubs or struggling in their daily life.

For example, because of the haze, the number of cars entering the city and the road needs to be limited by single and double numbers, and rural areas in the Beijing suburbs have started the "coal to gas" project before the arrival of this winter. It seems that the haze is surpassing its geographical boundaries with its pervasive, homogenized, and beyond class differences, becoming the most important event of the moment, that is, politics, transcending the environment or haze. In itself, and with some power, what might change.

In an article more than three years ago, I once said that like the protest at the 2012 Beijing Marathon, a hail of smoky fog is screaming, evoking the environmental consciousness of the emerging middle class. Although the victims of haze are homogenized, they have different injustice effects because of factors such as class and geography. They are especially sensitive to emerging middle-class people in big cities, and are most likely to voice or act and express dissatisfaction. For example, the dissatisfaction of the Beijing residents is much greater in social media and traditional media than in Shijiazhuang where smog is even more serious, and Chengdu is no exception. The civil society in these cities is more mature.

However, it is still unclear what this underlying mechanism is. Smog politics is therefore like being hazy. Similar to “From me”, in the 1970s when Germany’s environmental politics began to rise, there was a conception in the scientific community, namely Bringschuld der Wissenschaft, that science has the responsibility to repay the society and promote the scientific understanding of the public. As a result, the scientific community’s various theories about zero growth, the seriousness of environmental pollution, and the threat of nuclear winter, etc., were first evoked by some active scientific workers to the mass media, and then disseminated to public intellectuals. Responsibility. The students who lost after May 1968 in May 1968 were able to regroup and discuss under these environmental and antinuclear issues, mobilize new environmental movements and social movements, changed the environmental and political aspects of Europe, including the birth of the Green Party in the 1980s. The birth. Although China's scientific community has started to study smog since the beginning of the 21st century, it has always said that it is self-proclaimed and unclear. It did not put forward any clear and effective public policy recommendations. Occasionally, newspapers or put into practice did not bother the public. Life, such as the cause of haze attributed to stir-fry fumes, or proposed motor vehicle restrictions.

However, the people’s tolerance seems to be increasing at the same time. I remember that in 2003, I was diagnosed with pharyngitis in Beijing shortly afterwards. At that time, the haze was not heavy, but it was summer. But it was amazing. When I left Beijing, I took a train to go to Yanbei. My pharyngitis was miraculously good. However, living in Beijing today has developed the habit of intermittent running. As long as the wind is seen and the fog is dispersed, the long-distance training of the Olympic Sports Park will be resumed. When the haze increases, the rest will be rested.

Those friends who had evaded Dali because of their children's health problems a few years ago have also moved back one after another. After all, it is difficult to leave Beijing for a long time to live and socialize. However, when those people who stay in the capital are constantly adding new air systems, wearing masks more carefully, and learning how to survive, they also more meticulously calculate the benefits and smog left in Beijing. Loss. Such calculations, together with their discussions, gradually formed a haze of middle-class lifestyle.

When revisiting Chai Jing's “Under the Dome” two years ago, it may be possible to re-evaluate the value of this documentary, although many people today still ridiculed Chai Jing’s call to broadcast a documentary speech “From me. "It's so weak to start." In fact, whether Chai Jing talks about her family experiences and cognitive changes, or the "four driving forces" of the Chinese hazy politics reflected in this documentary, it all boils down to the individualism's calculation of the quality of life. This is in line with the rationality and values ​​of the middle class. It is also the logic that they care about and make collective choices.

Then, the remaining three forces, which were observed by the author at the first time after the broadcast of "Under the Dome": Fossil fuel industries such as coal and oil, and interest groups, have affected their bargaining power due to changes in international relative prices. Eventually, it suffered from strong competition from the new energy sector and severe crackdown; emission reduction as the only reliable link between Sino-U.S. relations led to the signing of the Paris climate agreement on the eve of the G20 summit this year; the power of the environmental protection department increased. In addition to the latter, the first two domestic and international political factors have already fulfilled their missions. The rest, only the quality of life of the middle class has become the key to the future.

Of course, this is not just because the scale of the emerging middle class in China is expanding, but more importantly because of the politicization of the quality of life. In other words, problems surrounding the quality of life may not continue to be internalized as family problems or class problems. Instead, they may rise to social problems, class conflicts, or the supportive power of relationship regimes, or vice versa, that is, openness.

This is another kind of "homogenization" that resembles haze. Like the homogenization of milk, it may turn a consumer class into a political class. For example, in the face of melamine and waste food safety, the middle class may often avoid these safety issues and choose to import milk and milk powder as well as reliable restaurants. This is a class segregation of consumption. It can also be understood that the melamine victims' groups are not able to form a powerful voice no matter how they are mobilized. The middle class elites only provide legal and media assistance and charity and relief, and thus isolate the collective actions of the middle class.

As a consumer class, even if confronted with environmental and class justice issues related to their own consumer behaviors, such as shark's fin, fur, tuna, or sweatshops, it is not easy to “begin with me” and boycott through consumption. In terms of effect, consumption responsibility is no more important than producer responsibility and government supervision responsibility. Really able to convert them from consumers to citizens requires mobilization and participation to form a massive consumer resistance campaign, such as the long-standing resistance of the animal protection organization to sealskin, the boycott of tuna, and the fair trade in coffee beans. After a long period of time, it may change the concept and create a new way of life, that is, the political correctness of consumption.

In this sense, Chai Jing’s “starting from me” points to a social movement. After the documentary, what is lacking is the follow-up and mobilization of society. These of course have environmental limitations. But hidden behind its appeal, it is different from ordinary political consumerism or consumer resistance movement - the quality of life of politics. Its class attributes derive from all the vanity of the middle class: the desperate pursuit of life style and careful maintenance, such as the quality of school districts, housing lots, property standards, warehouses, supermarkets, automobile brands, clothing brands, and tourist destinations. Their sensitivity to lifestyles has replaced or surpassed their sensitivity to class justice, welfare and taxation. Therefore, it is easy to form a collective class illusion. The illusion of enjoying growth, wealth, and freedom leads them to embrace neo-liberal globalization, a sense of Trump's instinct, an antipathy to social movements, and to the bottom class. Painful disregard, although they will also be more involved in all kinds of "charity, charity," to appease the inner uneasiness. Thus the entire middle class constitutes the order of neoliberal rule. This may be the basis for Hu Angang’s confidence that China can leap over the “middle income trap”.

In fact, this so-called "middle income trap" has always been worrying. In 2007 after the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis erupted, the World Bank published a report entitled “Rejuvenation in East Asia: Perspectives on Economic Growth”, which for the first time put forward the concept of “middle income trap” and warned that developing countries such as China may face In the predicament, middle-income countries with a per capita national income of between 1,000 and 3,000 US dollars are rarely able to successfully enter the ranks of developed countries but are stuck in them. Labor costs are higher than many low-income countries, and their high-tech advantages are not enough to compete with developed countries. The Chinese nature that has always attached great importance to the World Bank's opinions regards this warning as a concern and only then can the "12th Five-Year Plan" cross the "middle income trap" as a goal of economic development.

In other words, the Sino-U.S. leaders signed the Paris Agreement on the eve of the G20 summit in Hangzhou. They will jointly face the uncertainty after Trump’s election and the interest groups of the fossil energy industry have been accused of being “victimists and conspirators”. Afterwards, the intensification of haze has highlighted the biggest hidden concern surrounding the development of the country, namely, the strength of the middle class, and the tremendous pressure to maintain the quality of life in the country. The dissatisfaction brought about by the decline in the quality of life is different from the traditional sense of relative deprivation and may have a cumulative explosive power. They are eager for a quality of life: whether it is the world’s largest car market, the largest luxury goods market, the demand for free trade and travel freedom, and oil, which exceed 20 million vehicles a year, or the sensitivity to education equality, property rights, and citizen’s personal rights. Restraint will not be able to compensate for the damage and infringement of the quality of life.

Under the dome, they can no longer pretend that they don’t know Hebei’s steel pollution, they cannot ignore the cost of economic growth in the past two decades, and they begin to think about the public nature of the haze, public goods in the air, and their welfare and justice issues. Stop ecological pollution transfer and environmental injustice caused by polluting industries. After all, the closure of polluting industries may cause a large number of unemployment, but the working class and the ordinary civic class are often the most vulnerable victims of environmental degradation. The question of quality of life has turned into a common public issue, and it may surpass the problem of the "middle income trap". It is not comforting to say "to treat middle-income groups."

Then, overnight, as if there was a trumpeter croaking, everything changed. Some people immigrated to the south or abroad. More people just modified the fresh air system, and the scope of smog was getting bigger and bigger. Even Chengdu, a land of abundance, became a hard-hit area. When those people who did not believe that smog was political and ridiculed “from me” two years ago, they finally began to talk about smog politics, which means that a sense of environmental responsibility that “no one can escape” begins to grow. This is both a kind of civic responsibility and a global responsibility, and may go beyond individualism and generate collective action. This may be the effect of “implementing from me” that implies an ethical responsibility.

Then nothing beats this. In the long run, there is no means to eradicate it, as long as the curse of the "middle income trap" is still there. This may be the homogenizing effect of haze. For a long time to come, we may all have to breathe and witness together.

【About the Author】

Wu Qiang | Tencent Everyone's Columnist, Doctor of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.