Since the 1980s, China has embarked on a path of economic reform that has profoundly changed the landscape of the Chinese society. The impressive progress China has made since the 1980s and the distinctive characteristics of the Chinese experience, especially the coexistence of a strong state and striving market economies, have stimulated active social science research on China's institutional transformation.

In the next four chapters, we turn attention to the second theme of this study – the examination and assessment of the extent and sources of institutional changes in the era of economic transformations. These chapters are organized around particular topics of theoretical interest. Similar to the previous chapters, we present empirical evidence across the historical periods, from 1949 to 1994, and continue our discussion of social stratification patterns. But the emphases of these discussions will be primarily on assessing changes and continuity in the reform era (1980–1994), in contrast to the patterns in the Mao era (1949–1979). Chapter 7 focuses on changes in the determinants of manifest economic benefits personal income. Chapter 8 calls attention to, and presents evidence on, the importance of latent economic benefits under redistribution, and reports a detailed analysis of one aspect of the latent economic benefits – housing allocation in urban China. In Chapter 9, we assess the extent of institutional changes over time based on patterns of job shifts across types of organizations and economic sectors.