From Workers to Capitalists in Less Than Two Generations: A Study of Chinese Urban Elite Transformation Between 1988 and 2013

Li, Yang; Novokmet, Filip; Milanović, Branko

doi:10.31235/osf.io/enbxv

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…26 In 2016, instead, these same people were part of the global top 10% capital earners. This speaks of the empowerment of the Chinese elite, a phenomenon recently analyzed by Yang et al (2019) from an empirical perspective. 27 Moreover, the share of the Chinese population that earned from capital income increased drastically, reaching 55%.…”

Section: Country-specific Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…27 Yang et al (2019) study the changing composition of the Chinese top 5% between the late-1970s and early-2010s, and show that the rapid market transition of these years led to a new type of elite, firstly composed by technocrats enrolling in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and then joined by entrepreneurs and capitalists. The Chinese political capitalism (Milanovic, 2019) is currently in a political equilibrium where the private sector elite is left prospering as long as it does not question the political order.…”

Section: Country-specific Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class

Ranaldi¹

2021

Preprint

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This article studies global distributions of capital and labor income among individuals in 2000 and 2016. By constructing a novel database covering approximately the 80% of the global output and the 60% of the world population, two major findings stand out. First, the world underwent a spectacular process of capitalization. The share of world individuals with positive capital income rose from 20% to 32%. Second, the global middle class benefited the most, in relative terms, from such capitalization process. In China, the average growth rate of capital income was 20 times higher than in western economies. The global composition of capital and labor income is, therefore, more equal today than it was twenty years ago, and the world is moving towards a global multiple-sources-of-income society. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper Series)

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Section: Country-specific Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Country-specific Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class

Ranaldi¹

2021

Preprint

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“…The new elites have substantially higher educational attainment compared to their parents (also noted in Yang et al., 2021), which can be attributed to the substantial advantage they enjoy in the educational system (Wu, 2010). The education system in China is a series of funnels—getting into “key schools” at each level is a class sorter that funnels toward better life chances (Li et al., 2014; Woronov, 2013).…”

Section: The Emergence Of Cultural Capitalmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…The new elites have substantially higher educational attainment compared to their parents (also noted in Yang et al, 2021), which can be attributed to the substantial advantage they enjoy in the educational system (Wu, 2010).…”

Section: Securing Advantages In Educational Attainmentmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Social mobility has decreased since the 1990s (Zhou & Xie, 2019), while the influence of family background on educational attainment has increased (Wu, 2010). Yang et al’s article finds a shift in the composition of elites from staff and workers in an earlier generation to highly educated professionals today (2021). My research builds upon those findings by examining the cultural side of that change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From parvenu to “highbrow” tastes: The rise of cultural capital in China’s intergenerational elites

2021

British Journal of Sociology

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The transformation of China since the Reform and opening-up has been a subject of much research. While the scale of economic development is unprecedented, the gap between the elites and the underprivileged has widened considerably. Income inequality initially decreased in the 1980s but has increased since the 1990s (Bian & Logan, 1996;Yang, 1999). The Gini coefficient, which measures inequality in income distribution, surged from low levels in the late 1980s to have now leapfrogged "capitalist" societies such as the United States and United Kingdom, as well as other countries at similar levels of development as China (World Bank, 2010;Xie & Zhou, 2014).

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Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students

Mulvey

Wright

2022

British Educational Res J

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The term neijuan (in English 'involution') has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post-graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo-Weberian reading of neijuan to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of 'possible selves'. We investigated how final-year university students from three social class factions-rural, urban non-elite and urban eliteenvisage, plan and strategise for their future careers.We draw on in-depth interviews (n = 100) and a postgraduation survey (n = 97) with students at two public universities, one elite and one lower-tier, in a metropolitan city in Guangdong province. The findings underscore marked differences in the nature and clarity of students' envisaged future selves along the lines of social advantage and disadvantage. We demonstrate how social class is deeply connected to the scale of the competition-national or global-that students perceive themselves to be implicated in. In doing so, we draw attention to social class differences in expressions of and capacities to realise what we term 'globally orientated possible selves', which involved escaping both the sense of entrapment and the prospect of failure evinced by neijuan.

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From Workers to Capitalists in Less Than Two Generations: A Study of Chinese Urban Elite Transformation Between 1988 and 2013

Cited by 7 publications

References 17 publications

Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class

Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class

From parvenu to “highbrow” tastes: The rise of cultural capital in China’s intergenerational elites

Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students

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