Political-Economic Coalition among Entrepreneurs, Professionals, and Cadres in Guangdong, China

As entrepreneurs, professionals, and cadres constitute the middle tier in China, they exhibit extravagance, gifting, and the pursuit of privileges. Particularly, privileges are likely to stem from political-economic coalition within the middle tier. The coalition is also likely to favor the preservation of the political structure. All these features of the middle tier need substantiation with qualitative data. The study gleaned the data from personal interviews with 59 entrepreneurs, professionals, and cadres in Guangdong, China. Results illustrate extravagance, political-economic coalition, privileges, and political preservation espoused by the middle tier. These results identify an investment theory to reflect the preservation of investment in political-economic coalition in order to reap privileges to afford extravagance in the middle tier. The results imply that political reform in China hinges on the erosion of the exchange of privileges in the coalition.