Guanxi Exclusion in Rural China: Parental Involvement and Students' College Access

Abstract

Market reforms have re-stratified rural China, maintaining advantages for cadre households and creating space for an emergent economic elite, both with better college access than peasant households. Most research suggests that economic and cultural resources are predictors of rural students’ college access. This study, based on intensive fieldwork in two townships and three villages of a county in central China, argues that there is an increasing tendency of rural parents to involve themselves in their children’s education, and that this involvement has also become a determining factor in college access for all rural groups. Moreover, parental involvement includes a process of capital conversion, similar to that described by Bourdieu, but is mediated by how households capitalize on rural transition from a planned to a market economy.