ABSTRACT
Status attainment is closely associated with ascribed family background and acquired individual education. During the process of intergenerational conversion, families play a remarkable and resilient role, with the father's education imposing an influence on the education of his children. With higher rates of industrialization, an individual's own educational achievement more than the father's occupational status predicts, or at least significantly shapes, a person's own occupational success (Blau and Duncan 1967: 170–5 and 412). As a matter of fact, the stress on education, one of the important features of Confucianism and family values of Chinese, has survived the historical changes in China. In traditional society, those who wanted to become scholar-officials, or gentry, had to master Confucian classics and succeed in imperial civil service examinations (keju kaoshi) (Chang C. 1955; Ho 1962). From 1949 when the People's Republic was founded to the late 1970s, intellectuals were behind workers, peasants, and soldiers in political status and social honor, and sometimes even labeled as enemy, for example, “rightists” in the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and the “stink ninth category” (chou laojiu) during the Cultural Revolution. But except during extremely radical periods, admissions to higher education were based principally, if not entirely, on one's score in a nationwide standardized examination, and professionals such as scientists, engineers, physicians, and professors recruited from among university or college graduates. In the post-Mao era, meritocracy finally prevailed in education (Kwong 1983; Shirk 1984). However, educational credentials have been ambiguous assets in communist China in that the positive effect of a father's education was drastically reduced or reversed during the Cultural Revolution (Davis 1992; Deng and Trieman 1997; Zhou et al. 1998). To some extent, it is because the regime implemented a biased affirmative action that favored those of peasant and working-class origins (Cheng and Dai 1995; Walder 1989).
