Military Status in Chinese Society

Abstract

Western social scientists believe, with the Chinese literati, that the status of the military in China is invariably low. This is not true of contemporary China: There is abundant evidence that Chinese military status has not always been low but that there have been extended periods when it was as high or even higher than the civil status. The evidence also suggests that different socioeconomic classes in Chinese society have divergent views of the question; the scholar gentry being, as a rule, firmly antimilitary, while the peasantry has regarded military roles as an avenue to higher status.