By He Xiaopeng

Helen Wang, author of the "Chinese Dream: The Rise of the World's Largest Middle Class and What It Means to You", talked to CNNMoney about the rising middle class in the world’s most populous nation.

Wang defines the middle class as households with an annual income of between $10,000 and $60,000. According to her, a household with a third of its income for discretionary spending is considered middle class, though she agrees the cost of living in China varies from cities.

Wang estimates the population of China’s middle class at 300 million, “already larger than the entire population of the United States. About 25 percent of the population is middle class. It's about 50 percent of the urban population”.

Owning a home and a car is the entry standard into the middle class, according to Wang. “Most of them own homes ... in the last 7, 8, or 9 years ... everyone has a car. Some people have more than one car.”

The scene she depicts looks beautiful. But in reality it is not true – it is only an illusion.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, while the middle class, the backbone of a healthy society, is growing more slowly, if not shrinking. China’s middle class is not established and is very fragile. Despite the government’s macro-controls, sky-high house prices are still far beyond the reach of most Chinese. Living costs are also rising quickly: food, driving, clothing, medical and educational costs are a massive burden for China’s middle class.

On top of all this millions of university graduates, the future members of the middle class, descend into “ant-tribes”, a large community of low-income graduates, after leaving school. Chinese graduates are becoming the fourth most vulnerable group in China after farmers, migrant workers and laid-off workers.

So then, how big really is China’s middle class? According to the "Contemporary Chinese Social Class Research", a well-recognized report compiled in 2002 by Lu Xueyi, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the total population of China’s middle class is around 85 million.

But considering the country’s extremely uneven development, the Chinese middle class may be greatly reduced because of the income factor. More recent estimates put the size of China’s middle class at no more than 50 million -- less than 7 percent of the country’s total number of employed.

China one day might have a middle class larger than the total population of the U.S., but not yet, and if things continue the way they are, not soon either.