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The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to 2019 and multiple waves of census data to explore the temporal and spatial effects of tertiary education expansion on college graduates' job sorting. Regression results from the fixed effects model and the two-stage least-squares model indicate that, on the temporal dimension, the higher education expansion has weakened ties between college credentials and quality jobs over the past 20 years. Recent graduates are more likely to work in informal, non-urban, and non-public sectors, and the college earnings premium has also declined. There is a persistent gap in employment outcomes between bachelor's and associate degree holders. On the spatial dimension, the growing enrolment size leads to skill sorting towards low skilled regions. The study argues that the dynamic effects of college credentials may be explained by labour market flexibility and cohort crowding after higher education expansion. This paper calls for a critical reflection on the merit of further massification of higher education in developing economies, regarding its potential impacts on intergenerational inequality and regional inequality.

This paper draws on 'diaspora at home', a concept that encapsulates the unique dynamics between Hong Kong and mainland China, as an analytical tool to explore the cross-border experiences of 23 Hong Kong students at 11 universities in mainland China. It empirically ascertains how the made and imposed claims and identifications of these Hong Kong students resulted in inclusion and exclusion as their interactions with their mainland peers and institutions deepened. Specifically, it highlights how their 'diaspora at home' status offered exclusive access to privileged higher education opportunities, preferential treatments and opportunities for upward social mobility. Meanwhile, such a status also resulted in an overwhelming sense of political liability as they unwittingly became 'political tokens' and suspected political subjects amid the increasingly tense political atmosphere between mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper pinpoints the relevance of class and politics in understanding how diasporic groups engage with higher education.

Some authors argue that access to elite universities can bring about a 'habitus transformation' for working-class students, however in this paper, based on a three-year life history study, it is suggested that the transformative effects of the elite university experience come about in relation to and constrained by the working-class habitus. Working-class students tend to choose the strategy of 'compartmentalising' to manage their experience of university -- engaging primarily academically and sideling the social aspects of university life. This paper offers a very complex account of such compartmentalising, in which the lack of appropriate capitals, emotional injuries, habitual dispositions and the application of instrumental rationality are fused together to make up the university experience for working-class students. The analysis demonstrates the 'conspiracy' of reflexivity. Reflexivity does not necessarily bring changes in and challenges to an existing "habitus"; rather reflexivity conspires with and tends to reinforce it. This demonstrates the continuing role of habitus in maintaining class domination in elite settings and raises questions about the effects and effectiveness of the widening participation agenda in HE.

Drawing on a broader study that focused on understanding rural college students for equity and personal growth in higher education, this paper presents Ying's story of learning and living as a female college student from rural China. Adopting the thinking tools of habitus and reflexivity, the paper aims to understand the constraints Ying has gone through in China's higher education and her various response amidst them. The findings illustrate how the intersectionality of rural dispositions and gender has put her at a disadvantage and how she constantly mediates her surroundings through internal conversations. The paper discusses the intricate interplay between habitus and reflexivity during the mediation. The conclusion affirms the relevance of both habitus and reflexivity in our understanding of the rural student's educational experiences and argues for the role of education and society in challenging the social structure and promoting social change.

State schooling is currently transforming Tibetans' perceptions and everyday experiences in Western China. Based on interviews with rural Tibetan parents and grandparents, and using subjectification as an analytical concept, this paper argues that schooling, alongside socio-economic changes, powerfully shapes the subjectivities of Tibetan parents and grandparents. Against their own sense of exclusion due to lack of schooling, they justified their support of schooling with recourse to promises of state schooling for their children to 'be included among the people' through social mobility. Set in the context of the School Consolidation Policy (SCP), this study illustrates the 'double directionality' of this subjectification process where participants were made into as well as becoming certain kinds of subjects through navigations of their social arena. Trivialising the SCP's challenging implications observed around rural China, participants supported schooling for the perceived better quality education under the SCP. Meanwhile, they were making contingent negotiations to ensure children learn Tibetan culture and language through school education as well as other mechanisms.

The "county high school phenomenon" of Chinese rural high school education to pursue higher education has attracted much attention from the education field and society. Earlier studies were mostly from the perspective of education and believed that the "county high school education model" was contrary to education's essence because it emphasized test-oriented education and restrained students' nature and should be discarded. However, this model is surprisingly persuasive for rural families, and it is also a reflection of the rural students' desire to achieve upward mobility through education. This paper analyzed the county high school education model's connotation, expounded its operating mechanism, and systematically demonstrated and analyzed the "county high school education model" from multiple angles. It aims to find a way out for the future development of the "county high school education model" to promote education equity between urban and rural areas and the harmonious development of high school education ecology.

School infiltration is an important aspect of family parenting research in recent years. This study reexamines the evaluation mechanism of higher education access path to explore the feelings of schooling winners (also Gaokao winners). Different from stratified education's understanding of family authority, this study proposes to deconstruct the rough understanding of stratified type, presenting a more historical and life-sense process of education acquisition and family parenting mode permeated by school education. This paper mainly uses the method of narrative analysis to explore the family parenting experiences of eight successful participants in higher education. The study found that Chinese family parenting was heavily influenced by schooling. Through discipline, empathy, and home-school cooperation, families reinforce the ideals and goals of schooling (high scores) in the field outside the school. Thus, participants expressed negative views and feelings about teachers, classmates and families. After completing the admission examination of higher education, some participants take the initiative to try to repair the relationship and adjust themselves to reach a reconciliation; Others are still growing up in the distressing experience.

A growing body of research has been focusing on the well-being consequences of migration, yet most of this has overlooked the fact that many migrants experience intragenerational social mobility alongside geographical mobility. Without accounting for the effect of social mobility in working life, the impact of geographical mobility on well-being cannot be clearly examined. This paper focuses on the most successful migrants, who have started from the bottom and have achieved upward social mobility in the course of their careers, and compares their well-being with that of native non-migrants who have experienced a similar intragenerational social mobility trajectory. The analysis is based on a recent national survey in China, which has a representative sample for both the overall population and migrants. Findings show that migrants, whether from an urban or rural origin, have better incomes but significantly lower levels of well-being than natives, even with a similar career advancement trajectory and the same destination class position. Further exploration shows that the well-being disadvantage of migrants is mainly due to institutional and sociocultural barriers, rather than to reward differentials in the labour market. This may have a wider implication for migrants across national borders., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2019.)

Purpose: The paper examines the effects of individual differences on the key motivational factors affecting Chinese study abroad students. Design/methodology/approach: The current study adopts a quantitative survey approach. Students are recruited through the largest online survey provider in China. Using 335 completed questionnaires and factor analysis, the key factors influencing Chinese students are identified. Subsequently, regressions are employed to analyse the impact of age, gender, socio-economic status, previous study or travel abroad experience, degree level and location on factor scores. Findings: This research sheds new light on the decision-making process of Chinese study abroad students. It is found that Chinese students are influenced by three key factors, social, cultural and economic environment, non-personal and personal recommendations. The results reveal that male students from the lowest socio-economic group rely on non-personal information to decide destination where they can significantly upgrade their socio-economic status. Personal recommendations are used by young persons aged between 18 and 24 and those without previous overseas travel or study experience. Originality/value: Although prior studies explore the motivations of Chinese study abroad students, very few focus on a large sample of students both in China and abroad and identify key factors using the statistical tool factor analysis. No research has been carried out to understand the impact of personal characteristics such as age, gender, prior study or travel abroad experience, degree level and location on significant factor scores. Such analysis is crucial for the financial stability of the international higher education market, particularly during the current COVID-19 crisis.

This paper investigates the rural-urban inequalities in basic education of contemporary China. The China Education Panel Survey (2013-2014) (CEPS) was utilized to analyze the gaps between rural and urban inequality in junior high schools in terms of three domains, which include the equalities of access, inputs, and outcomes. From the sociocultural and sociopolitical perspective, the household registration system impeded the improvement and development of Chinese basic education. The study found that insufficient funding and support provided the cumulative negative impacts on educational mobility and equality. The regional basic education divide was caused by ineffective and unequal allocation of education resources. This analysis also addresses a number of pertinent economic and political issues related to basic education in current China.

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various exclusions and self-exclusions in areas of social life. By drawing on a very small sample of 'counter-evidence' and 'exceptions within exceptions' -- working-class students who achieve great social accomplishments at elite universities -- this paper further explores the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in negotiating class domination and the possibilities of transcendence. We demonstrate the creative and transformative ways in which class domination is dealt with and document the prevalence of high-level reflexivity. Furthermore, we distinguish different forms and degrees of reflexivity, which then indicate the 'contingency' of reflexivity -- the relation of the possibilities of reflexivity to the unequal distribution of social, cultural and economic capitals. We further argue that what appears to be a form of self-emancipation achieved by the 'transcending group' in our study also involves the discrete and insidious reproduction of social inequality.

China's Free Teacher Education Policy (FTEP) was initiated in 2007 in response to concerns about university tuition increases and teacher shortages in rural provinces. In this paper, the authors draw on interview data from eight FTEP graduates/teaching candidates and eight teacher educators from five FTEP universities to examine the extent to which and ways in which this policy seems to provide (a) financial support to prospective university students from low-income families and (b) teachers for rural schools in these provinces. Their results indicate that the FTEP has made higher education at top-ranked universities more accessible for students from low-income families, which promotes social mobility for those students. However, their results also suggest that most FTEP graduates prefer to teach in more affluent city schools rather than rural schools. Therefore, the policy is likely to have much less impact on improving educational opportunity or social mobility for students in such rural schools.

This paper presents an ethnographic interpretation of education as a social technology of state sovereign power and governing in the borderlands of contemporary China. Illustrated with snapshots from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Pumi (Premi) ethnic village located along China's south-western territorial margins, it is argued that the hierarchical structure of the education system, coupled with the arduous and yet "compulsory mobility" entailed in educational participation, powerfully shapes the social and political imaginaries of peripheral citizens. Education serves simultaneously as a "distance-demolishing technology" and a "hierarchy-establishing technology" that counters the "frictions of terrain" that traditionally presented a problem to the state for governing such geographically inaccessible borderlands.

Based on our fieldwork in Yunnan Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, this paper explores the different ways in which Chinese rural women engage with the rising industry of e-commerce livestreaming related to agricultural products and villages. Our analytical framework is informed by feminist political economy, which pays heed to the gendered social settings, operation of power, and entanglement between women's domesticity and productivity that underpin people's economic activities. We argue that Chinese rural women's simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment by e-commerce livestreaming are characterized by "mobile immobility", a term inspired by Wallis's (2013) research on rural women's technological empowerment by mobile phones a decade ago. On the one hand, this latest form of e-commerce has created an apparently accessible path for rural women, who tend to be geographically immobile, to achieve social mobility by becoming professional webcasters and/or vloggers. On the other hand, this enablement is in fact classed, aged, and preconditioned on in-laws' support and willingness to share these women's domestic duties, which are not guaranteed. The urban-oriented digital economy of e-commerce livestreaming capitalizes on rural young women's femininity, docile bodies and labor as well as the reproductive labor performed by their family members at the microlevel, reinforcing the urban–rural disparity at the macrolevel. The paper ends with reflections on the role of information and communication technologies and e-commerce in the development of rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In classical Greek philosophy, the pursuit of Truth was done primarily through logical argumentation using language as "Truth tool." The major thinkers in classical China, on the other hand, were famously suspicious of language, with Confucius declaring, "I wish to be wordless." They turned instead to music to express the philosophically ineffable. In this paper, we use the example of the Chinese "guqin" to show how music serves as "Truth tool" in the Chinese philosophical tradition; in fact, music may be Truth itself. Through a quartet of interrelated themes--namely, the "Search for Truth," the "Search for Harmony," the "Search for Ethical Awakening," and the "Search for Sagehood"--we show how playing the "guqin" constitutes the doing of philosophy in this musical tradition. Through the "guqin," performers and listeners experience Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist philosophical insights; no words are needed. We conclude by proffering implications for contemporary music education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the return intention of mainland Chinese students studying at prestigious universities in the Unites States. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 90 students from three top-tiered universities on the East Coast of the United States. The results of this study highlighted several aspects relating to these elite students' choice regarding return to China and the factors that influence their choices. First, the findings confirm a long-held concern regarding the low returnability rate of Chinese students studying overseas. Second, academic and economic factors have a greater deterrent effect than political and social cultural factors. Third, the most influential predictors in a student's decision to return were job opportunities in China (r = +0.32), family ties (+0.23), and difficulty in obtaining a job in the United States (r = -0.24). Policy implications are discussed.

This article examines how and why the Chinese second-generation middle class, who are unable to obtain admission in China's premier universities, turn their back on other public universities and instead attend private universities in their country. It finds that their parents capitalize on their privileged "guanxi" (connections) to send their children to private universities and then study abroad to secure a generational reproduction of their class status and mobility. The Chinese new middle class families look upon joint-partnership private universities as the stepping stone for overseas study. In addition, this article examines how extant Western class theories, including Weberian, Neo-Weberian, and Bourdieuian theories, cannot provide an adequate account of class formation and the generational stratification in present-day China. To explain this reproduction of class in contemporary China, this paper explores how and why the Maoist social institutions of "danwei" (work unit) and "hukou" (household registration) still matter in post-reform China in determining middle class's life chance. Seen in this light, the progenies of cadres and skilled professionals are the main beneficiaries of economic reform.

China's diversity of minority groups, marked by many languages and cultures, has led to much push and pull experience between homogenising forces and indigenous cultures. This is apparent in its bilingual education programme for ethnic minorities, among which Korean diaspora communities are to be counted. Korean-Chinese people in China have been exposed to the global evolution from agricultural economy to market-oriented industrial and post-industrial economy. Paradoxically, this globalising societal change has fuelled their ethnic consciousness amidst a process of "monolingual market economy", where Putonghua is seen as the "High" language for upward mobility. This paper explores Korean-Chinese parents' attitudes towards Putonghua and the Korean language. Using data from interviews with 27 families in north-east China, it is argued that the more the parents are exposed to the Koreans in the Peninsula, the clearer they realise the importance of Putonghua and Korean, not only affectively, but also referentially in function of a cross-national context. The findings suggest an increasingly complex, non-determinant hierarchy of power built between the dominant language and the non-dominant language, thereby it could be suggested that an additive bilingualism in education is needed in order to cater for referential and affective functions of language. (Contains 2 notes.)

Moral education in the People's Republic of China is dominated by ideological-political orientations. However, in the last 30 years China has experienced extensive economic reform, bringing about many social changes, such as decreasing reliance on the state-owned workplace, increasing private property ownership and enhancement of the rule of law. Such changes have inevitably influenced personal, societal and ideological values, and consequently had an impact on individual moral beliefs and behaviour. In this paper I analyse the decline of socialist ideology, revolutionary morality and ideological work in contemporary China so as to provide a background to current Chinese moral education policies and practices. I illuminate some inherent contradictions and ambiguities in the changing ideological-political orientations by reference to some personal and professional experiences.

This paper examines, how individual preferences for redistribution in general and redistribution to improve access to education, improve social protection for the poor, reduce income inequality and reduce unemployment depend on beliefs about what determines one's lot in life and self-assessed prospects for climbing the social ladder in urban China. We find that beliefs about what determine one's lot in life and subjective perceptions of future mobility are correlated with preferences for redistribution. We find that those who believe one's lot in life is outside their control are generally more likely to favour redistribution. We show that this result is consistent with the existence of an altruism effect among the rich and entitlement effect among the poor. These findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables for the respondent's personal characteristics and the location in which he or she lives.

Ethnic minority education is a challenge for developing countries and a matter of international urgency. This paper imputes bilingual policy for ethnic Koreans as an example for exploring the implementation of bilingual education during China's reform period. Drawn from an ethnographic research study at a bilingual Korean school in northeast China, focus is on the dilemmas facing Korean bilingual education. Although there is diversity among China's ethnic minorities, a common thread and a general case for all minorities is a willingness in educational settings to maintain ethnic language and culture and to seek upward social mobility.

The present era is characterized by scientists' high level of mobility, which is due to the characteristics of science work and its dynamic nature. Scientific activity knows no boundaries, and mobility is a vital factor of the mutual cultural and professional enrichment of scientific communities. The international migration of scientists is creating opportunities and challenges for societies that both lose and gain scientists. In this article, the author describes the types of scientists' social mobility and discusses the state regulation of the social mobility of scientists in Russia, Western Europe, and the United States. The author also identifies negative consequences of scientists' social mobility in these countries. The high level of scientists' international mobility has introduced serious changes in the mechanism of the reproduction of the scientific elite in Russia. Owing to the emigration character of mobility and the lack of an appropriate science policy, Russia is lagging behind the developed countries of Europe and the United States when it comes to indicators of its inclusion in the world science community. Here, the author argues that more attention needs to be given by the Russian government to the development of programs and organizations that would enable Russian science to be more competitive internationally.

There is a close interactive relationship between social mobility and educational selection. On one side, the character, direction, speed, level, methods and trends of social mobility affect the aims, goals, functions, scope, strategy, content and methods of choice in education. On the other side, the goals, basis and means of choosing education promote inter-generational social mobility, competitive mobility and structural optimization. In recent years, social mobility and educational selection are increasingly coming into contact in China, but there are still a lot of mutual constraints. In order to promote a coordinated operation and positive interaction between them, society should strive to create a stable democratic political environment, sustained and balanced economic growth, and an open and orderly employment system. Moreover, we need to open up the education system, balance the allocation of resources, strengthen the function of choice and enable education to play a more value-oriented role.

With more countries entering an era of low fertility, factors that may shape individuals' childbearing desires have been extensively explored. One's intergenerational social mobility experience, however, remains under-discussed. This paper examines this issue against the backdrop of China, in which the total fertility rate has rapidly declined to the lowest-low level in recent decades. Using pooled five-wave data from the Chinese General Social Survey from 2010 to 2017, we found a checkmark-shaped relationship between social class and fertility desire. Chinese farmers have the greatest desired number of children, manual workers have the lowest, and the two upper classes lie in the middle. In general, one's origin class and destination class play a similar role in shaping fertility desire, demonstrating the coexistence of socialization and acculturation processes. The gender-specific examination further suggests that, compared to women, men are more reluctant to change the fertility attitude learned from the origin class. Based on these findings, our study proposes a novel explanation of the decline in fertility desire in China and contributes to the literature on how social mobility experiences and gender ideology jointly construct fertility desire., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Many have argued that, despite the meritocratic ideals of equal access and social mobility that underpin examination-governed education hierarchies, the rural majority are typically excluded or eliminated in the early stages of the competition. The scholastic nature of the uniform curricula, much of which has little relevance to rural life, compounds disadvantages faced by children from poorly educated rural families. Moreover, social pressures generated by examination competition aggravate tendencies to neglect basic education in favor of elite education. In this article, the author evaluates the impact of education reforms undertaken in China as part of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, particularly the elimination of college entrance exams. The examination system was eliminated, in part, because Chinese leaders had concluded that it presented an obstacle to expanding rural education and developing rural-oriented curricula. This paper evaluates the impact of eliminating college entrance examinations in terms of goals set by those who initiated the experiment: expanding rural education and developing rural-oriented curricula. While this is an appropriate way to analyze the results of an experiment, it does not directly address the main argument raised by Chinese education authorities: that elimination of entrance examinations led to a disastrous decline in education quality. In the final paragraphs of this article, the author sorts out and comments on some of the issues involved in the discussion of quality. (Contains an Appendix (Glossary of Chinese Terms), 2 Figures and 6 Tables.)

'Social Stratification, Past, Present, and Future' celebrates the 50th anniversary of the annual Cambridge Social Stratification Seminar. This editorial presents a brief characterisation of the 'Cambridge school' approach that has featured prominently through the seminar's lifetime. Then it discusses the domains and topics explored in this issue – education; intergenerational transmission of inequality; family, work and employment; occupations; migration for work; housing, and political preferences. While most of the papers focus on Great Britain, several papers involve international comparisons, one focuses on stratification in India, and another on China. Collectively, researchers reveal how social hierarchy influences people's lives, and reproduces fairly stably over time. The papers also contribute to understanding the sometimes counter-intuitive outcomes that challenge those charged with policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the culture in China and how politics determines the form of educational institutions. Asserts that China's educational system is designed to promote selected students to elite status in the Communist Party. Discusses the links between education and the political elite and their effect on social mobility. (DMM)

In this paper, the author investigates rural Chinese citizens' encounters of structural and institutional inequalities and social (im)mobility. The author addresses social (im)mobility from a holistic perspective (i.e., in institutional, occupational, social, educational, cultural and political dimensions). In this regard, the author explores if a range of parental disadvantages serve as significant hindrances to the acquisition of social mobilising opportunities among the next generations in rural Chinese contexts. Here a holistic presentation helps understand the nuanced relationship between institutional barriers (i.e., rural hukou status) and alternative obstacles to social mobility; and explore, in part, how parental inheritance of rural hukou status would bar individuals' from socially mobilising and result in some forms of unsustainability. Previous research on China restrictively measures social (im)mobility from limited perspectives, failing to fully and accurately reflect the extent of social (im)mobility Chinese populations face. This paper is a comprehensive literature review where relevant Chinese literature, exclusively found in the e-library system of the University of Cambridge, is included and thoroughly discussed. Articles that include the keywords of "hukou", "China", "social mobility" and (a) "economic", (b) "social", (c) "cultural", (d) "linguistic" or (e) "political" are extensively studied, in a hope to understand the existing scholarship on multifaceted social (im)mobility in Chinese contexts. The author argues that, despite the 2014 hukou reform, further loosening the requirements for rural-to-urban hukou conversion should be prioritised by the Central Government of China in order to ensure the rural-urban divide and structural and institutional inequalities rural hukou holders face can curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State schooling is currently transforming Tibetans' perceptions and everyday experiences in Western China. Based on interviews with rural Tibetan parents and grandparents, and using subjectification as an analytical concept, this paper argues that schooling, alongside socio-economic changes, powerfully shapes the subjectivities of Tibetan parents and grandparents. Against their own sense of exclusion due to lack of schooling, they justified their support of schooling with recourse to promises of state schooling for their children to 'be included among the people' through social mobility. Set in the context of the School Consolidation Policy(SCP), this study illustrates the 'double directionality' of this subjectification process where participants were made into as well as becoming certain kinds of subjects through navigations of their social arena. Trivialising the SCP's challenging implications observed around rural China, participants supported schooling for the perceived better quality education under the SCP. Meanwhile, they were making contingent negotiations to ensure children learn Tibetan culture and language through school education as well as other mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate of people moving within the United States is at one of its lowest points in U.S. history, while China has experienced unprecedented levels of domestic migration. While both are world-leading economies, these countries demonstrate stark contrasts in geographic mobility, urbanization, and economic growth. Despite these differences, social factors affect migration capabilities in both places, with some people more mobile than others. This study assesses internal migration and highlights the structural and social determinants of mobility in both countries. This article's analysis reveals an accentuated downturn and the longest annual decline recorded in the U.S. Evidence shows declining internal migration in the U.S. primarily occurring at the local level and amongst renters. Large and expensive American cities have had significant losses of residents in recent years. By contrast, China's "floating population" has increased as migrants move to cities. This study examines trends from 2010 to 2020 to compare the two countries regarding internal migration, urbanization, housing, social mobility, and economic growth. However, rather than simply comparing them, the paper argues that the internal migration dynamics in both countries are, to a degree, connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) on intergenerational income persistence in China. Using population census, we first estimate the intergenerational income elasticities (IGEs) across Chinese prefecture‐level cities. We then find that the prevalence of SOEs in a city is negatively associated with its IGE. The estimation using the geographic variation in SOEs created by the '156 Projects' as an instrumental variable shows the suggestive evidence that the relationship between the prevalence of SOEs and intergenerational income persistence might be causal. Further analysis reveals that the prevalence of SOEs may hamper intergenerational mobility through (1) stifling competition from the private sector and (2) facilitating occupational inheritance within SOEs. Our research implies that reforming SOEs shall promote social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived government corruption is an important indicator of depressive symptoms. Recent studies have explored the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms in a cross-cultural context, but the underlying mechanisms need further research. This paper examines the impact of perceived government corruption on depressive symptoms in China and the moderating role of social status. Based on the 2018 wave of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS2018), 14,116 respondents aged between 16 and 96 were selected. The results revealed: (1) Perceived government corruption was significantly positively correlated with depressive symptoms. (2) Social class had an inhibitory effect in moderating the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms. (3) The moderating effect was only significant for respondents who received education between junior high school and a bachelor's degree. The findings provide policy implications for developing countries and transitional societies like China. To build a more psychologically healthy society, we need to strengthen anti-corruption, stimulate social mobility, and improve people's sense of gain in the future [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study long-term trends in social mobility in the People's Republic of China since its inception in 1949, with two operationalizations: 1) intergenerational occupational mobility and 2) intergenerational educational mobility. We draw on an accumulation of administrative and survey data and provide comparable estimates of these measures for birth cohorts born after 1945. To help interpret the results, we compare trends in China to those in the United States for the same birth cohorts. We find an increase in intergenerational occupational mobility in China due to its rapid industrialization in recent decades. Net of industrialization, however, intergenerational occupational mobility has been declining for recent cohorts. Intergenerational educational mobility in China shows a similar declining trend. In addition, mobility patterns have differed greatly by gender, with women in earlier cohorts and from a rural origin particularly disadvantaged. We attribute the general decline in social mobility to market forces that have taken hold since China's economic reform that began in 1978. In contrast, social mobility by both measures has been relatively stable in the United States. However, while social mobility in China has trended downward, it is still higher than that in the United States, except for women's educational mobility., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Intergenerational social mobility has been of interest to economists and sociologists in recent years. However, with the development of methodologies and applications, it has been found that studying income mobility and class mobility separately often led to some conflicting findings. The class mobility and income mobility of China, a major developing country, has attracted the widespread interest of economists and sociologists from around the world. In this article, we attempt to answer the following questions: Should these divergent findings of intergenerational income and class mobility be regarded as a result of the differing data problems faced by researchers seeking to investigate income and class mobility or as a result of their differing analytical approaches? Is there a significant difference between intergenerational class mobility and income mobility in China? Our own comparative analysis involves measuring the magnitudes and temporal trends of intergenerational class mobility and income mobility. By using China Health and Nutrition Survey data, this paper explicitly tests the differences in the intergenerational associations of the income table and the class table from the "local", "global", and "comprehensive" perspectives, and provides smooth estimates of trends of both social class mobility and income mobility. This empirical study demonstrates that there is strong evidence showing that China's class mobility and income mobility are not consistent in both fluidity levels and trend changes using the same data and same analytical approaches. Furthermore, there is a stronger association between fathers' class and children's class than between fathers' income and children's income, and the temporal trend of class mobility is more volatile than that of income mobility. This leads us to suggest that, in China, class may in general be a better indicator of socioeconomic status than one-shot measures of current income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptions of social mobility vary across countries. However, past studies have mostly focused on populations in Western developed countries. Little is known about perceptions of social mobility in non-Western developing countries. The current paper focuses on Chinese perceptions of social mobility using a large-scale nationally representative sample. We found that, overall, Chinese believed in upward social mobility. Moreover, different patterns of perceptions of social mobility were identified, which suggest that respondents experienced either upward or downward social mobility in the past, but all of them thought that they can move up in the future. Perceptions of social mobility were also linked to important sociodemographic and economic factors. We discuss these findings in relation to the Chinese economic context., (© 2021 International Union of Psychological Science.)

Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an 'effective' way to represent social justice and legitimise – explain away – class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic 'success' and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment – Chinese schooling – this paper aims to discuss the relation of meritocracy to upward social mobility and class domination. Our analysis raises questions about the notion of 'success' in a meritocratic environment and suggests the operation of a new form of symbolic domination in relation to these working-class high-achievers. Through their 'successes' at school, they are distanced from their working-class localities and histories, while they also remain outside of the middle-class sensibilities that they aspire to – they become a 'third class' whose core values reside in meritocracy itself. There is no transcendence of class here rather a different form of distinction and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a life course perspective that captures the migration trajectory for rural‐to‐urban migrants in China during the observation window. By taking this trajectory approach, we aim to advance the understanding of divergent rural‐to‐urban migration patterns in China and their determinants and consequences. We use data from the Survey of Internal Migration and Health in China (IMHC) and focus on individuals' migration experience between age 14 and 40. First, we apply sequence analysis to characterise the main rural‐to‐urban migration patterns by different timing, duration, frequency, and direction and identify seven common patterns. We next examine the determinants of these patterns. The results suggest that demographic characteristics, socio‐economic background, and hometown characteristics shape migration trajectories in complex ways, highlighting that social origin can substantially determine migration patterns of rural Chinese. Furthermore, we examine via a counterfactual framework how the seven migration patterns shape migrants' occupational attainment while taking account of self‐selection into different migration trajectories. The findings show that (i) there is self‐selection into migration trajectories that has implications for occupational status and (ii) non‐transient adult urban migration is associated with higher occupational attainment whereas other types of migration are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study long-term trends in social mobility in the People's Republic of China since its inception in 1949, with two operationalizations: 1) intergenerational occupational mobility and 2) intergenerational educational mobility. We draw on an accumulation of administrative and survey data and provide comparable estimates of these measures for birth cohorts born after 1945. To help interpret the results, we compare trends in China to those in the United States for the same birth cohorts. We find an increase in intergenerational occupational mobility in China due to its rapid industrialization in recent decades. Net of industrialization, however, intergenerational occupational mobility has been declining for recent cohorts. Intergenerational educational mobility in China shows a similar declining trend. In addition, mobility patterns have differed greatly by gender, with women in earlier cohorts and from a rural origin particularly disadvantaged. We attribute the general decline in social mobility to market forces that have taken hold since China's economic reform that began in 1978. In contrast, social mobility by both measures has been relatively stable in the United States. However, while social mobility in China has trended downward, it is still higher than that in the United States, except for women's educational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal settlements are often subject to government‐led demolitions and clearances. In contemporary China, the removal of such settlements often necessitates negotiations between governments and landlords who are hard to dislocate, as exemplified in 'Nail Households' literature, whereas migrant tenants, if any, can be easily evicted without appropriate compensation. Our case study, however, presents evidence contrary to this. Migrant tenants proactively defended their rights and demanded compensation from their landlords. Drawing upon the lens of rights consciousness, this paper examines how the presumably marginalised migrant tenants were able to successfully defend their rights and interests. We found that (i) social capital accumulation, stigmatisation, the exclusion of planning participation and the transfer of clearance responsibility through two rounds of 'state retreats' reinforced the rights consciousness of migrant tenants and served to consolidate their bargaining power, contributing to a reshuffling of the landlord–tenant power position. (ii) The landlords, incentivised by attractive compensation packages, were brought into a temporary and fragile alliance with government agencies to secure the dislocation of the migrant tenants. The landlords thus took responsibility for the clearance from government agencies, whereas the local state was able to tactfully avoid any government–tenant confrontations. Although the tenants were able to secure adequate compensation from their landlords, the overall situation brought an end to the social support that existed in migrant enclaves and thus hampered their upward social mobility. This study revisits the understanding of the reshuffling of the landlord–tenant power relationship, albeit contingent and transient, against the backdrop of changing state–society relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberal theory of industrialism is one of the chief political theories impacting education. Such a framework associates academic achievement directly with employability and establishes education's dominant position in mediating social mobility. However, Chinese graduates are confronted with the broken promises of higher education, since college credentials are no longer regarded as 'golden tickets' that guarantee decent jobs or high social status. Therefore, this paper establishes a critical framework for analysing the liberal theory of industrialism. By referencing to empirical research, the current study provides an in‐depth discussion from the national perspective and offers explanations from both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The study suggests that the implementation of the theory in egalitarian societies has been largely compromised with regard to meritocratic selection. Meanwhile, the theory relies on a veil of ignorance, for it assumes that people would have a unanimous perception regarding social status. In both respects, it is argued to be incompatible with the contemporary Chinese context. Thus a more comprehensive and flexible perspective is needed to identify functions of higher education in developing countries. 摘要: 工业自由主义提出教育是促进就业与提升社会地位的决定因素, 其理论对当代教育产生深远影响。然而,当大学毕业文凭已不再是'金饭碗'的保证, 中国大学毕业们面临着逐渐暗淡的就业前景与日益渺茫的阶级跨越机会。因此, 本文就工业自由主义进行批判性探讨。通过引用研究数据, 结合量性与质性证据, 本文从国家层面进行深度探讨。本文提出,工业自由主义与精英教育相左,同时, 由于此理论搭建于人们对于社会地位的一致认知的假定, 其论证受 "无知之幕"矇昧。本研究旨在说明工业自由主义难以解释当代中国高等教育的困境, 并呼吁制定更全面理论, 采用更灵活的视角来了解发展中国家的高等教育模式。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous studies on social stratification and mobility in China, education is considered as the core mediatory factor in social reproduction and mobility. This paper, however, investigates how childhood health affects social stratification. Using data from Urbanization and Labor Migrant National Survey (2012), this study examines the effects of nutrition, hygiene, and health before age 14 on adult socioeconomic status attainment, including education, the international socioeconomic indexes of first job and current job, and family income per head. The structural equation model results show that the nutrition intake (whether one experienced starvation and the frequency of fish and meat intake) and hygiene (indicated by the source of drinking water and the toilet type) have significant effect on adult socioeconomic status attainment. However, the effects change at different life course stages. Moreover, childhood health (indicated by adult height) has significant impact on adult socioeconomic status attainment, but no significant impact on the international socioeconomic indexes of first job and current job. We conclude that investment in childhood health is an important mechanism affecting social class reproduction and mobility. Therefore, health intervention for children from poor and disadvantaged families are necessary. It will benefit children's education and encourage upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will be very useful for teaching classes on social mobility, social stratification and area studies on China. SAMPLE SYLLABUS My article can be incorporated into any existing social networks, social stratification and social mobility or China studies syllabus. Footnotes 1 This guide accompanies the following article: Raghunath N. A Sociological Review of China's Social Credit Systems and Guanxi Opportunities for Social Mobility. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores how the confessional politics of Catholic identification has been mobilised into religious callings, from the village to the city and from China to Overseas Chinese communities. Building on fieldwork conducted in Hangzhou and New York City in 2018, I show how a Chinese Catholic migrant priest authenticates the spiritual purity of his vocation by using the legality and ease of transnational travel to legitimise his moral and economic upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to obtain an accurate estimate of China's intergenerational income mobility and to present evidence on its distributional pattern. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey ( CHNS) over the period 1989-2009, I find that China is less mobile than most developed countries. Then, I employ five different approaches to investigate the distributional pattern of China's intergenerational mobility across income levels. The results suggest that poor families have relatively high mobility, indicating opportunities for the poor children to escape poverty. Finally, I show that while wealthy fathers are likely to pass on their favorable economic status to their sons, rich sons come from a very wide range of family economic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how the policy of alternative Chinese qualifications policy affects ethnic minorities' (EM) social mobility, and how such multi-exit assessment framework affects Chinese as a second language learning and teaching in Hong Kong. Chinese language (CL) qualifications other than the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) have been accepted by the University Grants Committee-funded institutions in Hong Kong as university admission requirements, including General Certificate of Secondary Education, International General Certificate of Secondary Education, and General Certificate of Education. These international qualifications are oftentimes considered lower-level non-equivalents to HKDSE in the job market. Even high achievers in these examinations are criticized by local employers as less-than-competent in workplace Chinese communication. Moreover, civil service jobs traditionally popular among EM require a Level 2 in HKDSE or specific government tests, which 'implied' the said alternative qualifications as insufficient for career advancement. CL teachers and EM students are thus torn between the manageable alternative qualifications to improve university admission chances, or the difficult HKDSE examination as well for better career opportunities, which reduce their chance of upward mobility. Through triangulation of interview data from an EM focus group ( N = 8, all female), relevant surveys, and government documents, the authors argue that EM students' academic advancement is highly related to their CL proficiency, and alternative qualifications do not necessarily suffice to improve their social mobility. The paper also looks into the policy's implicated challenges for curriculum planning and design faced by CL teachers, and recommend that policy reviews be carried out based on recent demographic shifts and classroom realities to better equip EM students' CL proficiency, so as to increase their employability, smoother social integration into Hong Kong society, and to resolve the intergenerational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous studies have shown the importance of an individual's socioeconomic status on his or her self-rated health status, less well-known is whether self-perceived class mobility, a measure highly correlated with an individual's de facto social class and past mobility experiences, affects self-rated health. In this paper, we attempt to fill the gap by examining how perception of class mobility is associated with self-rated health. Using eight waves of Chinese General Social Survey data spanning the years 2005 to 2015, we conducted an analysis at the micro (individual) level and the macro (provincial) level. Analyses at both levels yielded consistent results. At the individual level, we employed ordered logistic regression and found that the perception of experiencing downward mobility was associated with significantly lower self-rated health in both rural and urban areas compared with those who consider themselves to be upwardly mobile or immobile. At the provincial level, the findings from static panel analysis further revealed that there is a positive relationship between the self-perceived class mobility and self-rated health level.

This paper proposes a novel understanding of social mobility in China by exploring the literature on social credit systems. I propose that social credit systems, which include credit rating systems and factors of social governance, can affect occupational attainment, as they may influence or function in tandem with guanxi networks. Through social credit systems, there could possibly be a new order of stratification powered by norms of social conformity. These systems can curtail social mobility efforts by designating some individuals as high risk. In addition, these systems can regulate social behaviors, as actions that are considered "right" are rewarded, while "wrong" actions result in penalties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how China's heterogeneous African population contributes to shaping new types of social spaces in Chinese cities. We analyse how their different types of collective ( primary and corporate) agency work in the creation of transient spaces, that is, translocal and transforming spaces in Guangzhou and Foshan, China. A mixed-methods research approach was applied to cover the breadth and depth of African merchants' social spaces in both cities. The results indicate that many African merchants are mobile individuals linked across China and across national borders to their home countries and other countries in which they have lived and worked. Whereas other authors have looked into traders' migration pathways via Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Macao to China, our results also stress the importance of previous intermediate stations, particularly in West African states, South Africa, and Dubai. The transiency of the social spaces of Africans is underlined by the high mobility of many of them, including the great inflow of new migrants with trajectories that are often informed by living in or experiencing a variety of other societies, business environments, and living and working conditions. Through their translocal and transnational activities, experiences, and trajectories, African merchants contribute to the emergence of new transient spaces in both cities, as well as to successful business performance, which also benefits the Chinese economy and society. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]