Is (the type of) String.class a subtype of (the type of) Object.class?

Question

In Java, do class objects have the same heritance relations as the classes they represent?

Answer 1

The .class property always returns a Class object. The Class class (weird) has a generic parameter. The generic parameter types are subclasses.

Class<String> stringClass = String.class;
Class<Object> objectClass = Object.class;

And because with generics, Type<foo> is NOT a supertype of Type<subtype_of_foo> (see the Java tutorials), this means, that the answer is "No".