text: People in the urban work units were also divided into workers and cadres. College students fell into the category of professional cadres. In the Republic era, most university students were from wealthy families closely tied to the gentry or merchant class. After the establishment of the PRC, the background of university students became more diversified. The party recruited more students from poor family backgrounds to higher education. Based on sociologist Deborah Davis's interview, of the sixteen people who were professional workers back in the 1950s, over half of them came from the rural household, urban working-class families, and small business families.
  Still, the state's stricter control over migration and household registration made social mobility from the countryside to cities less plausible. Before the strict migration control, it was easier for rural migrants to gradually establish themselves from the beginning as temporary workers or small business holders. After the state systematically imposed household registration, rural migrants had fewer chances to gain footholds in cities and achieve upward social mobility through migration. The birthplace, in cities or the countryside, became crucial to one's status in the social hierarchy.
  Meanwhile, under the state monology over economic and social capitals, upper-middle classes in cities lost most of their access to resources to achieve mobility. Under the urban work units, social life was closely tied to the workplace. The former upper middle classes were no longer allowed to establish independent associations or other professional organizations to expand professional social networks and set their distinct class boundaries. During the Three-anti and Five-anti Movement, the distinct lifestyle of upper middle classes was labeled “bourgeois crimes.” The Cultural Revolution intensified the tendency of demoralizing the refined lifestyle.