Report claims China's middle class numbers 800 million

Asian Development Bank recently released the "Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2010" report, asserting that China's middle class population has reached 817 million people according to its definitions.

According to the report, the middle class refers to those who consume 2 to 20 U.S. dollars per day. The bank has also divided the middle class into low, medium and high levels. More than 300 million of those who are in China's middle class population are at the low level and can easily lapse back into poverty in case of severe crisis.

However, many Chinese scholars believe that the proportion of the middle class in China is actually far lower than the report claims. According to the Institute of Sociology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the middle class may account for a mere 23 percent of China's total population, which is around 300 million.

Yang Yiyong, director of the Research Institute for Social Development under the National Development and Reform Commission, said an official standard in 2004 showed that the middle class income threshold was set at a per capita annual income of 20,000 yuan or a per capita household income of 60,000 yuan. About 20 percent of the population met the standard back then.

By Zhang Qian, People's Daily Online