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Table of Content

    01 January 2017, Volume 3 Issue 1
    Higher education, elite formation and social stratification in contemporary China: Preliminary findings from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey
    Xiaogang Wu
    2017, 3(1):  3-31.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16688144
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    Higher education plays an undoubtedly important role in promoting social mobility in modern society. Previous literatures have tended to focus on the comparison between those with college degrees and those without, treating the former as a homogeneous group and the schooling process as a 'black box.' This article introduces the background and research design of the Beijing College Students Panel Survey and analyzes the first wave of the data to investigate social stratification within the Chinese higher education system, paying special attention to the roles of family background, special admission policies, and key-point high schools in the process. Results show that while family socioeconomic status and residence locations continue to exert direct influences on the likelihood of getting into three tiers of universities (national elite universities, '211 universities' and 'non-211 universities', key-point high schools and special admissions policies serve as important mechanisms in this process. Attending key-point high schools can help students to achieve higher scores in college entrance examinations and thus to ensure equitable access to college education; special admissions policies apparently benefit those from advantaged family backgrounds. Moreover, those in the national elite universities are more likely to join the Party than their counterparts in other universities, although their intentions are lower. These findings have important implications for understanding the role of higher education in elite formation and social stratification in contemporary China.

    Sources of unequal cognitive development of middle-school students in China's rural-urban migration era
    Lingxin Hao and Xiao Yu
    2017, 3(1):  32-55.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16684115
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    This paper seeks to identify the major sources of unequal cognitive development of middle school students in China's current rural-urban migration era. Under a framework that integrates theories of social stratification, migration, and sociology of education, we utilize data on a nationally representative sample of 9th graders and a standardized cognitive test to provide valid population patterns and explanations of cognitive development inequality. Our regression decomposition helps disentangle the sources of group disparities between the predictor levels and the predictor effects. Our analysis reveals that the old order of inequality created by household registration (hukou) has been complicated by rural-urban migration. Inequality has increased for rural-hukou students, with the most dramatic differences occurring among children of migrants, depending upon the child's migrant status. Our regression decomposition analysis results point to the effectiveness of the school learning environment as the chief source of cognitive development inequality. We discuss implications for policy interventions to foster and ensure an equal education for all students.

    Buying out of familial obligation: The tradeoff between financially supporting versus living with elderly parents in Urban China
    Haiyan Zhu and Yu Xie
    2017, 3(1):  56-73.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16685499
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    For Chinese families, coresidence with elderly parents is both a form of support and a moderator of financial support. Previous literature on intergenerational support in Chinese societies has studied either coresidence or financial support independently, but not these two forms of support jointly. Using data from the 1999 'Study of Family Life in Urban China' in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Xi'an, we examined whether or not adult children, especially sons, buy out of the obligation to live with their parents by providing greater financial support. To account for the potential selection bias associated with coresidence, we treated coresidence and financial transfer as joint outcomes by using endogenous switching regression models. The results showed that children who coreside with their parents would have provided more financial support had they lived away and children who live away from their parents would have provided more financial support had they coresided. These findings suggest a self-selection mechanism that maximizes children's interests rather than parents' interests.

    Characteristics of Chinese rural networks: Evidence from villages in central China
    Hang Xiong and Diane Payne
    2017, 3(1):  74-97.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16678593
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    Characteristics such as 'acquaintance society' and 'differential mode of association' have been widely acknowledged as unique features of Chinese rural societies. However, quantitative evidence of these characteristics is not found in the literature. Applying methods in social network analysis, this paper presents a quantitative study of the social structure of Chinese villages. We measure various network statistics and topological properties of these villages using detailed data on major social relationships (including kinship, house neighbourhood, land plot neighbourhood and political relationships) in 10 rural villages located in central China. In this way, we provide a quantitative description of the structural characteristics of Chinese villages and quantitative evidence for some widely acknowledged features. Our findings are threefold: (1) the networks of Chinese villages are densely connected and highly decentralised; (2) the networks are typical small-world networks, referred to in network research as 'acquaintance societies'; (3) individuals form neighbourhood ties according to the closeness of existing kinship ties, which corroborates the feature of 'differential mode of association'.

    Seeking out the Party: A study of the Communist Party of China’s membership recruitment among Chinese college students
    Guihua Xie and Yangyang Zhang
    2017, 3(1):  98-134.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16686678
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    Being recruited to the Communist Party of China (CPC) begins with a self-initiated application. Prospective candidates are selected by the Party from an applicant pool and then go through an evaluation process that is at least 12 months long. Only those who meet the Party's expectations will be allowed to join. This study examines the impact of factors such as political attitude, personality, family background and college ranking on university students' eagerness to join the Party and their prospects of being accepted. The data are based on the College Student Panel Survey in Beijing, 2009-2012. We find that both applicants and selected candidates are typically top academic performers who are student leaders, active in community service and popular with fellow students. However, in comparison to non-applicants, both applicants and selected candidates score lower in selfesteem, ambition and career-mindedness. Furthermore, Party membership applicants tend to be more socially conscientious and less pragmatic, more obedient to institutional rules and decisions, and less independent-minded. These traits do not seem to affect applicants' chances of Party membership admission, however. Instead, we find that college ranking has replaced family background to become a major factor in determining application and acceptance of CPC membership among college students.

    Back to historical views, reconstructing the sociological imagination: The new tradition of classical and historical studies in the modern Chinese transformation
    Jingdong Qu
    2017, 3(1):  135-166.  doi:10.1177/2057150X16686260
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    Historical perspectives are a means of reconstructing the sociological imagination, as classical sociologists did. There are many historical dimensions in Karl Marx's social studies: dialectical analysis of the present as history; reconstructed narratives of historical events; and finally, evolution of family, ownership, state, and social formations. Likewise, in order to understand the reality of Chinese society, we need to examine the transformation of modern Chinese social thought and its contexts. By reinterpreting the Theory of the Three Epochs from the classic Spring and Autumn Annals, Kang Youwei proposed that the establishment of the Idea of Cosmic Unity as the universal value for world history and the building of the Confucian religion for the cultivation of mores had resulted in the successful transformation of Chinese society from the Era of War to the Era of Peace. In contrast, Zhang Taiyan upheld the tradition of 'Six Classics are all Histories' and furthered the academic change of focus from classics to history, which Wang Guowei and Chen Yinque carried out. Through the method of synthetical deduction in the social sciences, Wang Guowei interpreted classics historically in Institutional Change in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, confirming the original principle of the Zhou regime and etiquette on the basis of the patriarchal clan system and its emphasis on law, mores, and institutions. On the other hand, Chen Yinque thoroughly investigated the Middle Period of Chinese history from the perspectives of concourse and inter-attestation and outlined a historical landscape of interfusion between Hu and Han nationalities, the mixing of various religions, the migrations of diverse groups, and the integration of different cultures and mores. In short, there are two waves of intellectual change in the Chinese modern transformation, which together have established the new discipline of Classical and Historical Studies as well as the subsequent institutional and spiritual sources of social and political construction.