Over the past four decades, China has experienced unprecedented rapid economic growth, with surging output, accelerated urbanization, improved access to education, and technological innovation collectively driving the country toward modernization. An increasing number of young people have found that individual effort alone cannot overcome structural barriers to the resources. Social phenomena such as poverty traps, exam fever, school district housing, and lying flat ideology reflect the ongoing exacerbation of social inequality. This paper adopts Bourdieu's theory of capital and social reproduction as its analytical framework, focusing on the accumulation and transmission mechanisms of economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital across generations, and on how these mechanisms shape individuals' social mobility pathways. Through the combination of statistical data and regional case studies, this paper reveals that Chinese society is gradually evolving from a mobile society to a stratified society. Specifically, the imbalance in development between eastern, central, and western regions has caused structural fractures in mobility opportunities; the urban-rural dichotomy has led to a marked concentration of educational resources among the urban middle class and elite groups; and skyrocketing housing prices have emerged as a new barrier to mobility. Additionally, relationship capital often proves more critical than individual ability in the job market, further compressing the upward mobility space for the lower strata.
Zhendan Shi (Wed,) studied this question.