Social Class Transformation in Urban China: Training, Hiring, and Promoting Urban Professionals and Managers after 1949

Assesses the Communist Party's influence on the urban middle class as evidenced by early-1950s newspapers & interview data from managers & other professionals. With the centralization of the urban opportunity structure, urban professionals & managers became dependent on the party-state to get jobs, secure promotions, & even to resign. A definition of the upper middle class is presented, & changes in training & hiring are illustrated. Job promotion is detailed, & post-1949 class closure & stratification dynamics are assessed. The relationship between the upper middle class & the party state, characterized by the former's loss of socially reproductive resources & mobility, reduced the middle class to a subordinate civil service stratum. 27 References. R. Larsen