Abstract:This paper looks at social mobility in China and Britain. It explores whether the rapid economic development in China in the last thirty years has brought its mobility closer to that in Britain. It also examines the effects of China’s household registration system (hukou) on people’s mobility chances. Using national representative surveys in the two countries, we found a convergence in total mobility in the two countries but higher levels of inequality in China in terms of relative mobility. Chinese women faced the greatest disadvantages. The prime driver for social inequality in China was the hukou system. Rural people in China had very limited opportunities for education but even those who had similar levels of education were still very much hampered by the hukou penalty in trying to gain access to advantaged positions. Both societies are highly unequal but China has an additional barrier.

Using the 2019 China Invested Firms and Employees Survey (CIFES), this study explores the convergence of Chinese enterprise and employee (E&E) evaluation in Southeast Asian countries. The results show that convergence varies greatly across the nine Southeast Asian countries. Union organisations and economic factors play a key role in convergence. Firms with labour unions report a more effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance than others, while employees in the construction sector report their firms’ CSR and those in the manufacturing and service sectors. Interestingly, the number of years worked by an employee correlates positively with their perception of firms’ CSR performance.