The State and the Life Chances in Urban China: Redistribution and Stratification, 1949-1994 (review)

In 1994, supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, two sociologists—principal investigator Xueguang Zhou from Duke University and co-principal investigator Phyllis Moen from Cornell University—conducted a large-scale survey of urban China. In this survey, urban residents between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five living in twenty cities across China were randomly selected and interviewed. The twenty cities included three from each of six provinces: Gansu, Guangdong, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, and Sichuan, plus Beijing and Shanghai. One salient feature of this survey is that it also asked retrospective questions in order to provide a more comprehensive view of China over the period 1949-1994. The final output of the survey was a huge information matrix of 4,073 urban dwellers and 1,366 variables. The variables list should be of great interest to social scientists. It contains detailed information about the education, employment, income, residence, and household composition of the respondents. It is from this rich mine of data that The State and the Life Chances in Urban China derives all its interesting findings.

The focus of this study is on the evolution of social stratification in China since 1949. In particular, it emphasizes the fact that state socialism played a key role in affecting individual life chances in areas such as educational attainment, labor-market participation, income distribution, and workplace experience. Moreover, the study also assesses the sources and extents of China's economic reform and its impact on social stratification between 1978 and 1994.

The book is organized in three parts and twelve chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 give an introduction and overview of the redistribution and stratification dynamics under state socialism. Chapters 3-6 (part 1) take a closer look at education, employment, the Cultural Revolution, and the bureaucratic career pattern, respectively. Chapters 7-10 (part 2) evaluate changes brought about by the economic reform since the 1980s: income inequality, latent economic benefits, and job-change patterns. Chapters 11 and 12 (part 3) offer summary assessments and the implications drawn.

The first two chapters serve as an overall introduction. The author first compares and contrasts the main characteristics of the patterns of social stratification between industrialized market societies and state-socialist societies. Second, he presents theoretical ideas and research issues on the dynamics of redistribution, stratification, and institutional transformation. Finally, he provides an overview of the historical context and a description of the survey data and the analytical strategies adopted in this book.

Part 1 includes a systematic analysis of the patterns of social stratification. The four chapters in this part are organized roughly according to the sequence of stages in an individual's life. Chapter 3 discusses educational stratification. The association between social background and educational attainment is found to have been weak in lower-educational institutions (elementary and middle school) but strong in higher education (high school and college). State policies played an important role in the distribution of educational opportunities to various social groups. Moreover, educational inequality persisted, if it did not worsen, in the reform era.

Chapter 4 looks at the patterns of first-job attainment. Due to low job mobility prior to the 1990s, for many employees their first job could be a life-long one. The state redistributive institutions created two distinctive hierarchies of urban jobs: occupational and organizational. Cadre and professional occupations were closely associated with government and public organizations, respectively. This finding is consistent with the patterns in educational attainment: privileged social groups had easier access to higher education, and this paved the way to cadre and professional occupations in government and public organizations.

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) affected the life chances of a whole generation of Chinese youth. In the worst years of this period, from 1966 to 1968, schools were closed and millions of teenage students were mobilized to participate in...