Cultural Capital, the State, and Educational Inequality in China, 1949–1996

Abstract

Previous studies on educational stratification in socialist China focused on how changing macropolitical processes and state policies affected the patterns of educational attainment, while paying less attention at the mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of educational inequality. Employing the cultural capital perspective, this article explores the relationship between cultural capital and children's educational attainment in urban China during the entire history of communist rule from 1949 to 1996. Using data from a nationally representative sample of Chinese urban adults conducted in 1996, this article addresses important issues about the social reproduction of educational inequalities in a socialist context. It finds that cultural capital has significant positive effects on children's educational attainment even after controlling for measures of family background. Moreover, the findings provide evidence that both the cultural reproduction model and the cultural mobility model have applicability to the Chinese case. Another finding is that the effects of cultural capital on educational attainment vary with the changing macropolitical processes in different historical periods in China. The results imply that the process of social stratification in socialist China has been shaped by massive state intervention.