From 18:30-21:00 in the evening of December 20, 2018, the fourth lecture of the Liberal Arts Forum 2018 of the School of Social Sciences was successfully held at 202 Mingfa Building. This lecture was delivered by Zhang Yi, a researcher and dean of the Institute of Social Development Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and chaired by Professor Zhao Bingxiang, dean of the School of Social Sciences. The main content of this lecture is China's social structure transformation, consumption upgrade and social governance.

Professor Zhang Yi introduced China's reform and opening up by telling about the life of Marx and the development and changes of his thoughts, and briefly described his own thoughts-the important goal of modern governance is to improve the people's living standards. However, the masses are divided into classes. Different classes have different rates of improvement in their living standards. The yardstick for measuring living standards is consumption. Under the premise of paying attention to the existence of class gaps, the improvement of people's consumption levels can effectively improve the level of social governance.

First of all, he used a lot of data to introduce China's class structure transformation in detail, and showed his classmates the survey data over the years. Among them, Professor Zhang Yi gave a key explanation on age and class distribution, class and middle-income groups, and class and regional distribution. He summarized the development trend of China's social structural transformation: the middle class will grow rapidly in the future; the peasant class will still shrink rapidly, the degree of inhabitation of farmers will rise, and the speed of land circulation will increase; peasant workers transformed from the peasant class-physical strength The number of workers will increase, as will the number of skilled workers; the owner class will remain at a predetermined ratio; the income gap will exist for a long time and it is difficult to narrow it in the short term. Afterwards, Professor Zhang Yi analyzed the class line in different periods, the five characteristics of class relations in the new period, the new problems in class differentiation, and the purpose of class analysis.

Secondly, Professor Zhang Yi introduced the consumption upgrade based on the transformation of class structure, and made detailed explanations from three aspects: class and subsistence consumption, class and developmental consumption, and developmental consumption. Among them, he analyzed and discussed topics such as China's class structure and residential housing holdings, class and fertility, the online and offline conversion of Internet consumption by different classes, and the demand for cars and travel.

Finally, Professor Zhang Yi summarized the basic conclusions of social governance for the students, explained the questions raised by Professor Zhao Bingxiang, and answered the questions raised by the students patiently. At this point, the lecture ended successfully.

This lecture enabled the students to have a certain understanding of China's social structural transformation, consumption upgrading and social governance since the reform and opening up, and a clearer understanding of the current development situation of Chinese society. "The changes in China's social structure since the reform and opening up" is the fourth lecture of the Liberal Arts Forum of the School of Social Sciences in 2018. In the next semester, the Liberal Arts Forum will have experts in different fields to bring you more exciting lectures!