Objective Status and Perceived Equality in Contemporary China: Positive Indirect Channels and a Countervailing Direct Effect

Extensive research links objective and subjective status to health, well-being, and distributive attitudes. This paper investigates how objective status (RSES) shapes perceived social equality (PSE) through two theoretically separable perceptions: perceived socio-economic status (PSES) and perceived social mobility (PSM). Using nationally representative CGSS 2021 data ( N = 6,468), this paper estimates a parallel-mediation model via the PROCESS macro (Model 4) in SPSS, employing percentile bootstrap confidence intervals (5,000 resamples) to assess indirect effects. RSES is positively related to both PSES and upward PSM, and each perception is positively associated with PSE. After accounting for these perceptual channels, the direct path from RSES to PSE is negative, yielding an inconsistent-mediation (suppression) structure in which a negative direct path counteracts positive indirect effects. As a result, the total association between objective status and perceived equality is not positive once these countervailing direct and indirect effects are considered. The contribution is to jointly model objective position and two subjective channels within a parallel-mediation framework for an evaluative outcome in the Chinese context and to verify robustness using ordered logit and probit specifications, thereby explaining why bivariate status–fairness associations often appear weak or unstable.