How does an authoritarian government that has leaned heavily on “performance legitimacy” for decades sidestep popular ire amidst a prolonged economic slowdown? The discursive career of “involution” (内卷) from online meme to policy object reveals how Beijing adopted and then rebranded a social media buzzword to shift popular blame away from the center. On the surface, Xi’s new campaign to stamp out “involutionary competition” (‘内卷式’竞争) targets collusive practices between local

The emergence of a prosperous, middle-income class is seen as important for China’s drive for sustained macroeconomic growth and the achievement of common prosperity. Using household survey data and defining “middle income” as being neither poor nor rich in the developed countries, we examine whether China’s middle-income class can fulfill these expectations. We find that China has successfully grown a prosperous middle-income class, and this class contributed to past macroec