Downward Social Mobility in Pre-Revolutionary China
Abstract
Downward Social Mobility in Pre-Revolutionary China SAGE Publications, Inc.1977DOI: 10.1177/009770047700300101 Edwin E.Moise Appalachian State University Most analyses of social mobility in traditional China have concentrated on the gentry-the people who had obtained degrees in the Confucian examination system. For one thing, these were the most influential people in the society. For another, it is possible to define them rather precisely; a man either had a degree or he did not. Still, the gentry formed less than 1 % of the population. The overwhelming majority of the Chinese people were not members of the gentry and had no reasonable prospect of having their children join the gentry. For them, social mobility meant movement upward or downward within the category sometimes referred to as the commoners. For instance, a tenant farmer might hope that his sons would someday have land of their own, while fearing that they might lose even the position of tenants and sink to become landless laborers. This paper will deal with this kind of mobilit.y, within the mass population; it will have nothing to say about the gentry. The data on which it is based refer mainly to the period from 1850 up to the Revolution