A Study On Social Functions Of Chinese Middle Class Based On Stratum-Attitudes-Behaviors

There have been three mainstream views on the social functions of the middle classIn academia: First, the middle class is regarded as stabilizer· in the social development, buffer layer· of the social contradictions, as well as indicator· of the social behaviors;Second, the middle class is probably regarded as the main force of sociopoliticalturbulence, and the potential challengers of authoritarian state; Third, the middle classshows a dual political personality or contradictory attitude. Sociological empiricalresearch often deduces social functions of the middle class by studying theirsocio-political attitudes directly. Their potential logic is if the middle class socio-politicalattitudes are conservative, then they playing social stability functions; if the middle classsocio-political attitudes are radical, then they affecting the stability of the social order. Ithink that attitudes are not equal to the behaviors, whether attitudes can be transformedinto concrete behaviors are affected by many indefinitely factors. Therefore, it isInappropriate to induce social functions of middle class by studying their socio-politicalattitudes directly. In this article, I will connect attitude-behavior-social functionstogether by adding another variable: non-institutional political participation into thispaper. First of all, I will discuss the influence of Class differentiation on thesocio-political attitudes, then I will analyze the socio-political attitudes of the middleclass impact on the non-institutional political participation, finally I will inference thesocial functions of the middle class based on previous conclusions.In this article, multiple linear regression models and logistic regression models wereused to explore the relationship between socio-political attitudes、non-institutionalpolitical participation and social functions through CGSS2010survey data. The conceptof socio-political attitudes of the middle class were transformed into four dimensions:including trust in government index, sense of political efficacy index, political attentionIndex as well as obedience to authority index. The results show that objective classclassification and subjective class identification both have a significant impact on socio-political attitudes, but the socio-political attitudes of the middle class are notentirely related to the non-institutional political participation. In a word, China’s urbanmiddle class has a preference for political democracy, rejecting blind obedience toauthority. At the same time, they are conservative on non-institutional politicalparticipation which will influence their living conditions for the sake of protecting theirown interests.·In addition, I think that the social functions of the middle class have been changedaccording to the current situations, It mainly displays in the following aspects: they Notonly influence the core values of the whole society, affecting the development ofconfidence at the bottom of society;but also becoming a main force for supervising thegovernment, expressing of public opinion and promoting the government’sdecision-making more democratic and Scientific on the internet.