Social Mobility in a Hybrid Chinese Economy: Social Capital and Emerging Entrepreneurs

As China develops and progresses as a nation, unique patterns of social mobility are emerging. For many years a centrally planned economy, the country is now a hybrid economy characterised by its authoritative political structure while allowing its entrepreneurs to experiment with innovative ways to accumulate wealth and ‘get ahead’. The research is particularly interested and aims in understanding how a specific group of people, namely the home-grown entrepreneurs, have been able to achieve social mobility within the contemporary Chinese economy. It focuses on the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. Suzhou was chosen as the research setting because, since the beginning of the 1980s, it has been rapidly transformed into a business and industrial centre by implementation of economic reforms shaped by Deng Xiaoping and the production of infrastructure, such as the Economic and Technological Development Zones, from Communist Party initiatives. Home-grown entrepreneurs were ready to take advantage of the booming business opportunities by using their personal resources and networks afforded by the economic reforms that introduced foreign direct investment to coincide with private business reform. Specifically, it examines how the economic reforms have fostered conditions that allowed home-grown entrepreneurs to emerge and prosper and, in turn, how these entrepreneurs cultivate and utilise their social capital to form strategies to create pathways leading to social mobility. Qualitative research uncovers the social mobility of these entrepreneurs by interviewing in-depth a total of 50 home-grown entrepreneurs from different generations currently operating in Suzhou. The research reveals that while the economic reforms did provide a favourable environment for conducting private businesses, it has been equally important for each generation of home-grown entrepreneurs to take specific risks and seize opportunities to acquire various forms of social capital and to adjust personal values and imposed goals to reflect the complex social and political dynamics of their times. They had to make appropriate decisions to consolidate their businesses through careful consideration and manipulation of a variety of social capital. While social mobility may seem more accessible under the new hybrid economy, business failures and growing social inequalities have not been uncommon. Data analysis provides insights to conclude that the research may construct a new normative theory about a value driven society with economic aspirations within social controls constructed by authoritarian capitalism. As home-grown entrepreneurs begin to dominate, they are not only redefining how various forms of social capital should be linked to trajectories for social mobility, increasingly they are also transforming the social landscapes of China’s business world