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This article reviews research on inequality and social stratification in China since the mid-1990s. Going beyond the theoretical framework of the market transition debate, research in the field has been advanced by paying more attention to the roles of the institutions of Chinese state socialism, such as the household registration ( hukou) and urban work unit ( danwei) systems, and workers' self-selective mobility. Empirical studies have benefited from the systematic collection of well-designed and high-quality survey data and from the application of advanced statistical methods. Substantive analysis has been extended to new themes related to social class, gender, ethnicity, education, and housing wealth. This review concludes by seeking to identify the wider implications of empirical findings from China for comparative research on inequality and social stratification and by providing some suggestions for the future direction of the field.

AbstractOver the past decades income inequality has been sharply increasing in both mainland China and Hong Kong, two Chinese societies that have distinct paths of institutional development. While previous studies on income inequality have attempted to document the trend and investigate its causes, this article focuses on people's perceptions of legitimate income inequality and how these perceptions are related to their attitude towards inequality. Analyses of data collected in separate population surveys in China (2005) and Hong Kong (2007) reveal a higher degree of tolerance of income inequality and a higher degree of perceived fairness of income distribution in Hong Kong than in the mainland. In both societies, such normative support for income inequality is positively associated with people's perceptions of opportunities.

The impact of market transition on economic returns to political power in post-socialist regimes has been the topic of heated debate in past decades. This article aims to provide new answers to this old question by examining how the economic opportunities available to former political elites have been shaped by the process of privatization. Based on firm-level data from a nationally representative survey on private enterprises and entrepreneurs, the authors show that former political elites have actively pursued new opportunities in the growing private sector either by acquiring privatized firms or by establishing their own ones. The extent to which they could convert their political power into personal wealth was contingent upon how the privatization process was structured and regulated in a local context. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This article analyses the data from the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to investigate the effects of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on people's political trust and policy expectations in China. Results from difference-in-differences (DID) analyses show that those in the NRPS pilot areas reported higher levels of trust in government at both central and local levels than their counterparts in non-NRPS areas, with the former gaining more support than the latter. Moreover, the potential NRPS beneficiaries show similarly higher levels of trust in both central and local governments than non-NRPS beneficiaries. However, the policy did not increase rural residents' rights consciousness that the government should take the main responsibility for the provision of the old-age support. These findings suggest that citizens' political trust under an authoritarian regime is mainly determined by the material benefits they receive. (China Q/GIGA)