Whats the single most important thing about the rise of China?
Academic types sometimes toss around words like “unprecedented” too easily. Not David Lampton: The director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) works his way up to it. “China has the most rapidly growing middle class in the world today,” he says. “In fact, it’s growing more rapidly than any middle class in modern times. It’s probably growing more rapidly than any middle class ever has, anywhere. What’s going on there today is unprecedented.” This is very good news, Lampton says. The World Bank estimates that 250 million to 300 million people have climbed out of poverty since China adopted economic reforms. That’s a population roughly equal to the whole of the United States, moving from a subsistence existence to a measure of middle-class wealth within a single generation. Lampton is at work on a book about the rise of China’s middle class, and he recognizes that the phenomenon is a tumultuous one. Will skyrocketing dem
