Data from the China General Social Survey are used in order to investigate the factors that are related to the subjective well-being of Chinese urban residents. Factors predicting higher subjective well-being include female gender, high-income class, marriage, employment, fashionable consumption, less sense of relative deprivation, and party membership. Among these, the sense of relative deprivation has the strongest explanatory power. This suggests that the most direct threat to current subjective well-being in urban China is that its residents are living in a society with dramatic change, competition and increasing inequalities.