Music divisions and cultural hierarchy in China: how transnational, political, and historical forces shape symbolic boundaries

Abstract This study maps the division of music in China and examines the mechanisms underlying its formation. Methodologically, it introduces multidimensional item response theory (MIRT), a latent-trait approach rarely used in cultural sociology, to identify the social divisions of taste before examining their social stratification through regression analysis. The findings reveal six taste profiles: high-status traditional music; pop music stratified into middlebrow Hong Kong and Taiwan classics, unstratified mainstream Chinese pop, and low-status local music; and foreign music divided into high-status selective forms and unstratified trendy foreign pop. These divisions do not cleanly align with genre categories, a highbrow–lowbrow hierarchy, or omnivore–univore patterns in established accounts. Instead, they reveal dual forms of high-status taste—state-consecrated heritage and cosmopolitan selective foreign pop—reflecting a multidimensional structure organized around region of origin, historical prestige, cohort, and popularity. More broadly, this study reveals how cultural stratification in China extends beyond Bourdieusian models centered on domestic field competition to encompass global flows, state-directed legitimation, and historical local trajectories. These findings extend theories of cultural distinction beyond the assumptions derived from dominant Western liberal-market societies and offer a framework for understanding how cultural hierarchies are constituted across wider national contexts.