The Revolution and China's Middle Class

I am now reading Jonathan Fenby's biography of "Chiang Kai Shek and the China He Lost". One of the interesting bits in the book is the fact that 75% of all cadets at the Whampoa Military Academy came from relatively well to do families and were either sons of landlords, middle-income farmers, or local officials.

The academy was established by the KMT (China's Nationalist Party) in 1924 in Guangdong province, and served as the breeding ground for China's leading revolutionaries. Nationalist and Communist figures such as Chiang Kai Shek, Zhou Enlai, Lin Biao, and even Vietnam's Ho Chi Min were among the academy's instructors and graduates. Mao Zedong, the son of a well to do farmer,  was never a student at the academy, but served as the Director of Propaganda for the KMT between 1925 and 1927.

At times like these, it is especially important to remember that China's revolutions were almost always instigated and managed by people from the country's small middle class. So, while today - as before - the country's farmers don't have the means to bring about political change, it is their rich compatriots in the cities that the government shoud be more worried about. And it is.