What is the most hidden yet effective way to mark inequality inheritance? For sociologist Xu Lingling, the answer is time.

In her new book, “The Time Inheritors,” released this year, Xu unpacks the way people use — and “misuse” — their time based on their class and family backgrounds. After nearly a decade of observing and interviewing over 100 students, administrators, and parents across the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong SAR, and the UK, she found a stark contrast between what she calls “inherited time wealth” and “debt.”

“Whether through the direct transfer of estates or the indirect transfer of social and cultural advantage at birth, time figures as a crucial and constant force of inequality,” Xu tells Sixth Tone.

According to Xu, inherited assets generate passive income that frees their owners from years — even decades — of wage labor, giving them the leisure to pursue what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “freely chosen, gratuitous ends.” Likewise, inherited social connections and cultural fluency offer shortcuts that would otherwise take years to acquire, especially for those unaware of such shortcuts, who end up making “self-sabotaging” decisions that hold them back.

While journalists like Malcolm Gladwell have deconstructed meritocracy by researching environment and individual circumstances, Xu’s scholarship points to how class and regional inequality play major roles in notions of success — particularly in the psychological effects associated with time wealth or debt.

“Substantial time wealth can cultivate a very secure relation with time — a sense of security, assuredness, and entitlement about the future,” Xu says about the mentality needed to confidently play the long game. Conversely, she adds, those who live on “borrowed time” (because of their families’ sacrifices) often carry a “debt-paying mentality” and are anxious for quick returns, pressed for speed, and haunted by low self-esteem and stress.

In the UK, where Xu teaches, access to resources still hinges on location in what scholars call the “postcode lottery.” Likewise, under China’s household registration — or hukou — system, educational resources and job opportunities remain concentrated in urban areas. Consequently, those from more disadvantaged backgrounds take longer to reach milestones than those with more resources available to them seem to sail through. Indeed, as Xu says in her book, the first time many from rural areas even step foot on a university campus is the day they register for their first year of classes, thus lacking the time and opportunity to get a feel for the “game” of higher education.

Xu has had firsthand experience with this time inequality. Born into a rural family on the Chinese mainland, she remembers her 23-year-old housemate — a white male who came from a line of university alumni — laughing in her face when she revealed that she was beginning her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge at age 30. In many ways, her research has been cathartic.

“When I developed the concept of the debt-paying mentality, I often cried,” Xu says. “It was both painful and comforting — painful because it confronted old wounds, but comforting because it helped me understand both myself and my participants more deeply.”

Xu’s research is urgent in today’s China, where how young people use their time has even deeper implications. Now, many young professionals find themselves in a race against time, sharpened by pregnancy discrimination, as well as institutions often only hiring non-managerial candidates under 35, despite recent efforts to combat age discrimination in certain sectors.

To learn more about her scholarship and views on what this means for the rampant “time anxiety” in China, Sixth Tone sat down with Xu.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sixth Tone: Can you share some examples of time inheritance that may seem trivial at first glance, but can profoundly affect an individual’s chance of success?

Xu: In the book, I argue that for the disadvantaged, time inheritance often comes with time debts (trying to “break even” with extra time and labor).

There is what I call the “survival trap.” For this, I want to evoke the case of Ku, who was born in the 1980s in a small village in Hubei province. He was an “extra child,” and his parents were fined heavily under the one-child policy, which drove his already cash-strapped family further into hardship. After Ku’s arduous journey into academia, his ideal was to focus on research aligned with his interests. However, he confided that he could not say no to requests or projects irrelevant to his passions. He felt a burning need to earn more money to support his family and make ends meet while remaining in the top-tier city where his institution was based. This forced him to bend how he arranged his time, dealing only with immediate financial needs while neglecting his long-term career prospects.

An example of what I call the “qualification trap” is a participant who goes by the pseudonym Norman. He is originally from a working-class, lower-income family in Hong Kong, and when I interviewed him in 2022, told me he regretted wasting three years pursuing a master’s degree in international law. Norman had already completed his undergraduate degree at an elite university in Beijing (which meant he then only needed to take the qualifying exam). He had been determined to be a litigating lawyer from day one, but realized too late that he did not need a master’s degree for that career path. When I asked why he pursued the degree, he said: “Everybody around me was going to graduate school, so I thought I had to, as well.”

This example shows how limited time inheritance at the family level — his lack of cultural understanding about the rules of the game in his field — prevented him from acquiring insider knowledge of what it really takes to become a litigating lawyer.

This is in contrast to those with privileged time inheritance, who often deploy leaves of absence or gap semesters to accrue temporal advantages, which help them seek employment or pursue more ideal jobs. Rather than following the regulated temporal structures of undergraduate study (graduating on time and finding a job) like Norman or Ku, these students capitalize on extra time to position themselves in more productive arenas (such as with unpaid internships at desirable companies). In the end, these gap years or semesters become time well spent, enabling them to make better-informed decisions and gain even more time.

Sixth Tone: A central insight in your book is how time inheritance not only influences educational and career opportunities but also molds people’s dispositions. How does this play out in everyday life?

Xu: For the disadvantaged, there is what I call a “debt-paying mentality.” For the more advantaged, there is what I call an “entitled disposition.” Both play a critical role in shaping class-based differences, and they profoundly influence how my interlocutors experience time and make decisions.

Let’s begin with the debt-paying mentality. One of my participants, whom I refer to as Meng, comes from a rural background. During her years of study, her father repeatedly wrote letters asking for money, so nearly all of her income, even when she was just a university student, was sent back home. When I interviewed her in 2018, she told me she often dreamed of her father demanding money, waking up in tears. By then, she’d already had her Ph.D. for 10 years. For her, the debt-paying mentality was not just financial, but also emotional.

For the entitled disposition, I turn to an interviewee, whom I call Li, who used to run a bubble tea shop in London as a pathway to secure residency. By our second conversation, he had already secured indefinite leave to remain in the UK and transitioned into his true passion — luxury goods retail. Asked about his sense of strategy, he immediately mentioned family support, with his family having purchased a house for him in a prime London location. His sense of security, confidence, and entitlement to play the long game came directly from family resources.

Within the entitled disposition is also the ability to evaluate time quality. Another interviewee, Chang, who had worked for a year at a Big Four accounting firm in London, felt the quality of her time was undermined by long work hours and high taxes. She then moved to Switzerland, where she found fulfilling work in finance with a much better work-life balance. With resources, knowledge, and family support, she had the entitlement and composure to migrate and change careers.

By contrast, another interviewee named Jingpi, a surgeon and doctoral advisor from a rural background, devoted nearly all his hours to study and work. When his wife commented on how this didn’t get him promoted any faster than the others, he replied, “Not everyone is equal. I have to work harder to achieve the same results.” This mentality left him in a state of feeling that he could never stop. Even as he approached retirement, he struggled to relax and was anxious about losing status and resources.

Everyone I talked to was striving. But differences in time inheritance — resources, cultural knowledge, relationships with time, and sense of control — produced vastly different outcomes. Those with a debt-paying mentality had aspirations but were pulled back by fragmented, tightly constrained time or were haunted by a sense of vigilance. They lacked the room to experiment or take risks and, unfortunately, often ended up making self-sabotaging choices that required even more time, energy, and resources to recover from.

Sixth Tone: One frustrating finding in inequality studies is that even when disadvantaged students catch up academically, say, by gaining admission to an elite university, they may remain at a disadvantage for lacking the knowledge of how to “play the game.” Do you think targeted support from universities can narrow this gap, or does the problem run deeper than what universities can address alone?

Xu: Targeted support at the university level does help narrow the gap, but the problem runs much deeper than what universities alone can adequately address.

For example, many of my participants from working-class or rural backgrounds recalled how mentors pointed them to resources they hadn’t known existed, broadened their sense of possibilities, and sometimes even devised strategies with them.

One participant, Tian, recalled how her master’s supervisor deliberately created opportunities for her to host foreign guests so she could practice her English. He also funded her field research, which helped her graduate and publish. Even after her Ph.D., he continued supporting her career with references and advice on funding. These interventions enabled her remarkable upward mobility from a remote rural village in Shandong province to an academic position in a major Chinese city.

But I also saw cases where inherited dispositions prevented participants from taking full advantage of opportunities. Others, like Ku, were compelled by survival needs to focus on immediate income rather than long-term development. These issues must be addressed much earlier in life and at broader societal levels. The rural-urban divide, unequal resource distribution across provinces, wealth gap, and gender inequality all contribute to this. Universities alone cannot solve these systemic problems.

Sixth Tone: For individuals, is it possible, even desirable, to opt out of this “game” altogether?

Xu: The growing time anxiety among young Chinese stems from several sources. One is patriarchal temporal demands — particularly on women, but also on men. For instance, norms around marriage and childbearing impose rigid “time rules.” If you don’t marry by a certain age, say, by 27, you risk being labeled “leftover,” facing ridicule, stigma, and even isolation.

The second source is the tendency to extract as much productivity as possible from both blue-collar and increasingly white-collar workers, as manifested in long working hours and workplace surveillance. Imagine a machine that devours workers’ energy, then discards them once they reach their mid-30s, replacing them with younger, cheaper labor. Under these rigid temporal structures, salaried workers are rendered highly disposable.

So, it is less a matter of individual “time management” and more about discerning these temporal rules and figuring out how individuals can respond. One option, as you ask, is to say no — to opt for alternative, more humane temporal structures. Some of my participants did this by relocating abroad or to the countryside. Unfortunately, these options are often available only to those with substantial family resources or with advantageous, officially recognized residential statuses, and we do not know the extent to which these alternatives are replicable or sustainable.

Sixth Tone: Did time inheritance also shape your own life trajectory? Did you find yourself mirrored in your participants’ stories?

Xu: My own journey of growth and education is, in many ways, a lived embodiment of the time inheritance theory I propose in the book.

I loved reading from a young age, but my family couldn’t afford books, and there were no libraries in my village. I begged my father to buy me one book from Xinhua Bookstore. I devoured it in two hours and asked for another, but he said there was no money. Reading became a luxury, and I felt guilty for even asking. That lack of cultural capital cropped up later. For instance, I attributed my poor performance in the Chinese language section of the college entrance examinations not to structural inequalities, but to my own lack of reading.

Even years later, after finishing my Ph.D. at Cambridge in 2017, I still did not own a single book, and I didn’t realize it until I met my partner, who had a large home library and marveled at how I, an academic, had no books. That was when I began to recognize that the sense of not deserving to have books had stayed with me for decades.

Back during the college entrance examinations, I didn’t know how to proceed, so I only listed some well-known, top-tier universities (when applying for universities). I missed my first choice by just two points, and others had capped admissions before I could even be considered. Later, a high school friend told me her father had meticulously planned her application with tiers of schools and subjects. I was stunned. I hadn’t even known such a strategy existed. That moment crystallized for me how different levels of time inheritance, even in the same county, produce very different outcomes, and that disparity continues to shape people’s careers in invisible yet significant ways.

Sixth Tone: On a global scale, there are also striking inequalities in time inheritance. How does this global disparity affect the experience of your interviewees who moved abroad?

Xu: For global time inheritance and its consequences, I draw on the sociology of time and postcolonial theories to argue that global colonial and former imperial powers exercise global-level time classifications. In these classifications, countries, populations, and languages are given different statuses and, in turn, different time privileges.

For example, countries are classified into “developed” and “developing.” In this global hierarchy, developed countries are framed as modern, advanced, and desirable. By contrast, so-called developing countries are relegated to the past — backward, lagging behind — and urged to “catch up.” In other words, developed countries are endowed with significant temporal wealth, while developing countries inherit temporal deficits.

This lineage of global temporal classification is amplified in higher education, which is widely acknowledged to be an unequal playing field. Anglo-American higher education institutions pride themselves on being “the future,” to which the rest of the world must aspire. This positioning is itself a form of global-level time wealth because it controls and shapes educational imaginations, aspirations, and subsequent resource allocations. Consequently, educational credentials from dominating Western universities enjoy far higher purchase power than their counterparts in the Global South. Graduates of Western universities spend less time seeking jobs, are promoted more quickly once employed, and earn higher salaries — in other words, their work time is valued more than that of their counterparts.

This aspect of global temporal infrastructure is crystallized in English as the lingua franca. In my research, I have found how participants with disadvantaged inheritance managed to turn English proficiency into what I call a significant “temporal accelerator.” It enabled them to access highly sought-after degree courses in Anglophone countries, curate transnational academic careers, and achieve steep upward mobility.

I even got a scholarship to study in Hong Kong, and I followed my cousin’s suggestion to major in English despite knowing virtually no English at the time. I’m forever grateful for that advice because English became my temporal accelerator, unlocking countless opportunities, including pursuing a Ph.D. in the UK later.

Sixth Tone: I’ve heard that during your UK book tour, some Chinese students were moved to tears by the stories you presented. Which aspects of your research do you think have resonated most deeply with your readers?

Xu: After the publication of my book, the feedback I’ve received has often moved me deeply. One British white male reader told me that the book’s international perspective on temporal inheritance helped him reexamine his own privilege. At the other end of the spectrum were young people grappling with the anxiety of graduate entrance exams, the pressures of job hunting, and the stress of applying for student or work visas in foreign countries. Too often, they attributed their struggles to a lack of ability or discipline, but after reading my book, they became less self-critical as they better discerned the problematic and often invisible temporal structures that shaped their decision making and life trajectories.

Another moment that stayed with me was after I gave a TED Talk-style presentation in Durham to a group of educational agents from around the world. After my talk, a middle-aged white woman came to me in tears — her eyes red, her cheeks still wet. She said, “I have never felt so seen.” In that instant, I realized how much my research could resonate.

Some of the interviewees featured in my book also read it. One of them even arranged to meet with me on Zoom to discuss her reflections. We talked for over two hours. I was quite anxious beforehand, because although I use pseudonyms, participants can easily recognize themselves. I worried whether my analysis was accurate and whether I had honored their experiences. But she told me it was not only accurate, it had helped her better understand her own life choices and circumstances. She then asked: “Now that we have this framework of time inheritance, what’s the next step?”

I told her that beyond proposing the framework, there is much we can do on three levels: individual, societal, and international.

On the individual level, we can begin to reconcile with ourselves: analyzing our own time inheritance profiles at familial, national, and international levels, identifying both disadvantages and potential temporal accelerators. This allows us not only to treat ourselves more kindly but also to be more strategic, better informed, and to plan more effectively.

On the societal level, we can advocate for policy reforms, such as addressing age discrimination in the workplace or tackling maternity penalties, as well as challenges faced by families with children.

On the international level, we can explore ways to provide more temporal resources to international students. For example, in my book, I cite research showing that non-native English speakers spend at least twice as much time as native speakers reading academic publications and writing academic papers. Evidence like this can shape university-level policies for supporting international students — and should go beyond mere quantitative aspects.

Portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header and in-text illustrations: Wang Zhenhao for Sixth Tone)