January 3, 2008 -- More than half of the population of China will be in middle class by the end of the next decade, a top Communist Party planner told the state-owned China Daily newspaper on Dec. 26. Specifically, 55 percent of Chinese people will live in households earning between 60,000 yuan ($8,200) and 200,000 yuan ($27,400) per year, according to Zheng Xinli, the vice-minister of the Communist Party's central policy research office. In the cities, that goes up to 78 percent – but only 30 percent of rural residents are expected to be in the middle class, Zheng told the newspaper. Expansion of the middle class is seen as part of the country's efforts to quadruple its per capita gross domestic product by 2020, the newspaper reported.