Social Mobility in China- Francis L.K. Hsu

Hsu, Francis L.K.

1949    Social Mobility in China. American Sociological Review 14(6): 764-771.

            This is my attempt to catch up because I’m behind; I chose a short article for this week.

I must say I enjoy Hsu. He is to the point, while still being interesting to read. So without further ado…

            He starts out by clearly stating the purpose of his paper. It “…is to show that the Yin privilege notwithstanding, there is substantial evidence …that a fairly high degree of social mobility existed in Chinese society during the last thousand years” (764). The Yin privilege is where the son of an official gets a leg up into a bureaucratic position and skips the civil service exams that everyone else is subjected to.

            What Hsu did was take the district histories from 4 major districts. These histories are a sort of “Who’s Who” for a given district. They contain biographies of those from the district that have attained some level of prominence. Some were written relatively recently, while some where began hundreds of years ago. The older ones have been copied and edited several times over adding new material and new bios. Many men had their own bios, but a large number of people were famous enough to be mentioned in another man’s bio.

            Hsu analyzed and arranged the data in the records to see how many only mentioned the famous guy, and how many also mentioned relatives. In those that mention relatives, he examined how far back they go, generationally, to see how long that family was famous for. He was attempting to see how many ‘self-made men’ there were vs. those that got help from family. He considered it “continued prominence” if the grandfather and grandson were mentioned, but the father was not. If two generations were unsuccessful, it was not considered continued.

            He also took a look at the avenues to fame that were mentioned. There were four; becoming a bureaucrat, having an imperial degree, being an all-around awesome dude (upholding Confucian or other ethics), wealth through commerce, and lastly being a great artist, poet, writer or having extensive knowledge of sacred texts.

            He found that prominence that continued was less common that a self-made man. And of those where prominence continued, it was overwhelmingly only for two generations.

            In perfect Hsu style; “To sum up…With specifically defined criteria for the term prominence and a particular set of documentary material, it has been demonstrated that roughly 50 per cent of the local prominents in any district studied came from unknown origin and that roughly 80 per cent of the descendants beyond the grandson generation of the local prominents became unknown” (769).

            He also found that prominence due to bureaucracy was more likely to be inherited as compared to the other methods of success. Additionally, the path to success was narrow. Out of all the ways mentioned, the most widely cited was bureaucracy, while success due to commerce was only mentioned once out of the thousands of entries.

            Hsu concludes this article by discussing how his findings here jive with a few other studies done; one by himself, and another by a different scientist. They also match what he has witnessed personally during his life.