CHINESE OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE - A COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS

Prestige ratings of 46 occupations from a 1988 sample of adult residen ts in Tianjin, a large industrial city of China, are reported and anal yzed in this paper. Tianjin's prestige ratings are similar in overall pattern to rating scales from Beijing, Taiwan and the US and to Treima n's Standard International Occupational Prestige. However, certain occ upations received significantly different ratings from Tianjin's rater s than from those in these other studies. Both intra- and interstudy c onsistencies and variations in occupational ratings are examined. In a ddition to such conventional variables as education and income, the au thor suggests two macro-social factors to explain interstudy variation s in ratings of certain occupations in Tianjin, Beijing and Taiwan.