Facing the reality of the social transformation in contemporary China, this book analyzes the structure, nature and influence of social classes in contemporary China based on the new development of the theoretical paradigm of class analysis at home and abroad, and the data provided by large-scale social surveys. This book focuses on three core issues: first, it explores stratification theory and stratum structure, and puts forward a new perspective for analysing the stratum structure of contemporary Chinese society – the framework of power/authority stratum; the second is to study the growing and expanding middle class and its corresponding problems; the third is the topic of "subjective stratification", which reveals the reflection of objective social changes and social structure differentiation on people’s subjective cognition and values.