In this thesis, I inject the thinking of the intergenerational mobility into the elite study of China by considering the effect of the family class label. By addressing how class label influences individual’s achievement of party membership, education and the elite recruitment pattern, I portray a picture about “who got ahead in attaining elite positions of China from 1949 to 1996”....[ Read more ]

In this thesis, I inject the thinking of the intergenerational mobility into the elite study of China by considering the effect of the family class label. By addressing how class label influences individual’s achievement of party membership, education and the elite recruitment pattern, I portray a picture about “who got ahead in attaining elite positions of China from 1949 to 1996”.

Using data from a national sampling survey conducted in 1996, I find that 1) “red” or “revolutionary” class label lends a great impetus to individual’s life chances from education achievement to CCP entry to elite attainment. However, 2) it is not completely vice versa for the children with “bad” class label. After 3 decades, particularly 10-year cultural revolution of class-based discrimination, this “scapegoat” class seized the chance of reentering the administrative elite trajectory as of late 1970s when the family class label policy was officially abolished, that 3) after revolution, the elite positions in the communist regime didn’t equally favor all “good classes” within which “working class” was not granted as much benefits as was red class. Especially for the lower-middle and poor peasant class, they still to some degree suffered disadvantage in moving to elite position in the post-war China, and that 4) children from pre-1949 urban employee class exhibited strong advantage in educational attainment as well as professional elite recruitment, so in this regard, revolution didn’t disrupt the social continuity completely.