Educating the new Chinese middle-class youth: the role of quality education on ideas of class and status

Abstract

This article attempts to answer the questions: “Why is quality education so important for the new Chinese middle class and what implications does quality education have on ideas of status and social standing?” My efforts to answer these questions are guided by two key concepts: social distinction and capital convertibility, which have been presented and analyzed in the work of Bourdieu. The present article advances a new framework for analyzing the different effects of schooling and youth education on ideas of class and social status for the new Chinese middle class. I do this by exploring different dimensions of cultural capital and their effects on social standing and class membership. My core argument is that youth quality education, which implies the accumulation of cultural capital, and therefore of suzhi, is the strongest driving force affecting middle-class families’ life strategies, as well as their ideas of status. Furthermore, cultural capital is the primary resource that can generate other forms of capital, essential for middle-class reproduction. Ultimately, due to the fact that in China the access to quality education is strongly connected to housing strategies, housing and neighborhood have been selected as the salient lens for analysis.