A bonus for an older advisor like me in a company full of young people is to hear their daily conversation and see the pace of our fast changing society.

Almost every week, a younger colleague asks my suggestions about his or her career plan. "Can you help me decide if I should strive to be a team manager?"

"Will I get a better future, in money and in society's recognition, by taking a new offer from a multinational?"

"What can I do to not let my younger colleagues pass me over, or make me look useless in the office?"

If these questions were asked when I joined the Chinese work force in the 1970s the speaker would have been labelled "bourgeois" (equivalent of politically incorrect, as opposed to being proletarian). Those who asked such questions would have been asked to write self-criticisms.

The attitude change in today's modern China is still happening. Although people tend to spend more time planning about their personal successes a typical middle class way of thinking in other countries the new generation seldom admit they are part of a new social group.

At one office lunch session last week, someone brought up the issue of average monthly salary. According to some central government institution's recent survey, the income threshold to the Chinese middle class is 3,000 yuan (US$375) per month. That was less than everybody at the lunch table could make. But immediately, they laughed: "No, that's too little to make someone middle-class."

In the Chinese context, middle class is often synonymous for a rich and easy lifestyle, although in societies with a longer tradition of middle class life, this is far from an easy life.

Looking at all the exhausted faces in the evening rush hour in the New York subway, from Wall Street or from the city's commercial centres, one can tell how hard everybody has to struggle for his or her opportunity of career advance, and for that rare but highly valued feeling of success. The same is true about the middle class everywhere else in the world.

Maybe, China's urban white-collar workers don't want to admit they are middle class because the term, a bad name only 30 years ago, still sounds alien to their ear.

Maybe, there is a difference in Chinese accounting methods like in many other things. They count by the sheer number in the US dollar, even though in real life, 10 yuan (a little more than US$1) can sometimes still go a long way in Beijing or Shanghai.

Maybe, it is based on their impression of Western tourists in the 1980s all properly (if not more than properly) fed, all looking happy and able to afford overseas holidays. These tourists were in a spending mood, buying things that locals thought were either too expensive, useless or both.

How things have changed. Many Chinese, including some sitting around the office lunch table the other day, have embarked on similar tourist adventures themselves in Hong Kong, in Tokyo and in Paris.

Chinese have often been shy. In the past, when offered a more important job, the first thing you would often hear a Chinese worker say was: "No, no, no, no. Perhaps I'm not qualified."

How things have changed.

Maybe, as I think, the purpose of saying so, along with all the questions my younger colleagues were asking was partly to obtain encouragement and assurance from the boss or someone senior with experience.

There is no better encouragement and assurance for me than to see the change people in China are making today.

They are more creative and productive in their work, and more assertive in seeking their legitimate rights and goals.

Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/13/2006 page4)