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Key Words China class, inequality, mobility
* Abstract This essay reviews post-1980 research on class stratification, socioeconomic inequalities, and social mobility in the People's Republic of China. Chinese class stratification has transformed from a rigid status hierarchy under Mao to an open, evolving class system in the post-Mao period. Socioeconomic inequalities have also been altered. State redistributive inequalities are giving way to patterns increasingly generated by how individuals and groups succeed in a growing market-oriented economy; rigorous empirical studies have been conducted on occupational prestige, income distribution, housing and consumption, and gender inequality. Finally, occupational mobility, a rare opportunity under Mao, is becoming a living experience for many Chinese in light of emerging labor markets. Scholarly works on status attainment, career mobility, and employment processes show both stability and change in the once politicized social mobility regime. There is relatively richer research output on urban than on rural China, despite the greater and more profound transformations that occurred in rural China.
INTRODUCTION
Chinese social stratification and social mobility is a fast growing and exciting area of sociological research. It is fast growing because China's post-1978 economic reforms and consequent large-scale transformations have provided an unusual, long-lasting opportunity for sociologists who are inherently interested in social change and social differentiation. To prepare this review I built a bibliography of more than 300 relevant English-language publications since 1980, and a greater collection of Chinese-language research literature. This research area is also immensely exciting to scholars, not only because it progressively accumulates sociological knowledge about a highly dynamic country increasingly engaged in the global economy (Solinger 2001), but also because researchers have examined questions of fundamental interest to both China specialists and comparative/general sociologists.
This excitement can be felt in an impressive accumulation of major journal publications on China since 1988,1 in a growing number of active sociologists who have conducted original research in the country,2 and in two most recent and highly relevant review essays in this journal. One essay was about China's social change and included a review of research on social stratification and social mobility up to the mid-1980s (Walder 1989a). The second review focused more on evaluating theoretical developments and research findings for an ongoing "market transition debate" (Nee & Matthews 1996),...