This chapter discusses the major differences between China's counterelite and ruling elite, explains the counterelite's composition, and describes its efforts to capture existing institutions and form new ones. By presenting a number of cases of the counterelite's ventures, the chapter illustrates the prevalence of institutional parasitism in nonconformity and opposition in China from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.

Before rendering a detailed characterization of the counterelite and its institutional underpinnings, this chapter provides a brief look at the larger population from which the counterelite came, in order to give the reader a sense of the position of the counterelite within Chinese society.

According to China's 10 percent sampling population census of 1982, the most comprehensive data of the kind published so far, “mental workers” with post–high school education totaled about 30 million, 3 percent of China's population of 1 billion. Post–high school education here includes formal schooling, on-the-job training, and vocational and television schooling. Of those 30 million, scientific, technical, medical, and cultural personnel counted about 17 million; educators, 9 million; and administrative and managerial personnel, 4 million (Shehuixue Yanjiu No. 5, p. 69; No. 6, pp. 18–19, 1988). In addition, 1.88 million nationwide were enrolled undergraduate and graduate students in 1986, the midpoint of the time covered by this study (China Statistical Yearbook 1989: 796).