Time Debt and Banked Time
Cora Lingling Xu
Durham University, UK
Lawrence* was so busy that he had no time to date! A schoolteacher in Hong Kong, Lawrence works from 7 in the morning to 9 in the evening from Monday to Saturday; on top of these, he gives extra private tutorial classes whenever he could. When I highlighted how he seemed to be working at all waking hours, he was shocked too. This conversation took place in 2022, when Lawrence had been a teacher for 5 years since 2017 when I first interviewed him. Then his father was retiring from his role as a restaurant chef, and Lawrence was about to shoulder his entire family’s financial burdens.
In 2022, Lawrence’s younger brother was only 14 years old, so Lawrence was to spend another 4 years supporting his younger brother until he reaches adulthood, and around another 3 years saving up some money for his family’s use, before he could start to pursue his own interests in life. 5+4+3=12: Lawrence was on a 12-year ‘debt-paying mission’ after he finished his first degree before he could have time to himself. This is what I call ‘time debt’ in my book ‘The Time Inheritors’ (Xu, 2025).
Lawrence is one of the more than 100 participants in this book whom I researched over the course of a decade on a mission to find out what quantity and quality of time they inherited from their families, their countries and at international levels (see Chiang, 2025; Cui 2025; Roe, 2025; Wang, 2025). I argue that individuals like Lawrence, who are from relatively modest socio-economic backgrounds (Lawrence’s father is a retired chef and his mother is a cleaner), tend to live in a mode of ‘borrowed time’; it was as if time was ‘on loan’ to them, and they had to pay back not only the ‘time debt’ through their economic income, but also the ‘time interests’ through their years of work, and in some cases, mental strain.
I evidence how individuals like Lawrence embody this ‘debt-paying’ mentality as shaped by their relations with time, i.e. always feeling short of time (i.e. time poverty) and pressed for time; and inclines them towards making ‘self-sabotaging’ decisions at critical life junctures (such as university choice making or career decision-making) which propel them to further ‘time-wasting’ consequences.
In contrast, I discuss in this book how, on the other end of the ‘time privilege continuum’ sit individuals who inherit ‘banked time’ from their families (e.g. well-educated parents, substantial economic wealth and social connections) and their urban hukou (i.e. China’s household registration system) status which provided them a head start (i.e. saving time) to achieving things. I also draw on post-colonial theories to argue that at international levels, former and current imperial and colonial powers such as countries in the West tend to pass on ‘banked time’ to their citizens. For example, Angolo-phone countries can accord temporal privileges to their citizens who have English, the global language, as their native tongue. They also pass on temporal privileges to their higher education institutions in the form of global reputations and prestige, which in turn, pass these ‘banked time’ onto their graduates, who spend less time looking for a job, get better jobs (thus their work time receives higher remuneration) and get promoted quicker (thus saving time).
Crucially, inheriting ‘banked time’ is not only about the amount of time that one is advantaged by, but also by the quality of time, which I call an ‘entitled’ temporal disposition. This refers to the secure relation an advantageous inheritor has with time—they are at ease, feel entitled, and exude confidence thanks to their abundant resources and fall-back options. As such, they are better able to ‘take their time’, to plan strategically at critical junctures in life (e.g. university and career-choice making) and reap bigger rewards in the future, thus end up saving and even gaining more time.
This is how ‘time inheritance’ as a mechanism works to reproduce educational and social inequalities at familial, national and international levels. Individuals do not always have advantageous time inheritance across all three levels. For example, a working class-origin individual from an ethnic minority background in the UK may have English as their native tongue and relatively easier access to globally highly ranked universities and thus benefits from time inheritance at the international level, but they inherit ‘time debt’ at the familial (e.g. working-class) and national levels (e.g. being an ethnic minority).
It is worth noting that time inheritance does not work in a mechanistic way. Time inheritance as a mechanism does impose conditions of such inheritance, e.g. it has geographic, political constraints and it demands the inheritors to have a certain degree of agency in order to activate such inheritance. In the third part of my book, I illuminate these constraints and elaborate on how disadvantageous time inheritors at familial and national levels can leverage ‘time wealth accelerators’ such as their English language proficiency, which places them in an advantageous position at the international level, to compensate for their ‘time debt’ at the familial and national levels.
*a pseudonym
Bio
Dr Cora Xu is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Durham University. She is a sociologist interested in education mobilities and social inequalities. Her research examines how the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity, rural-urban divides, time, and geopolitics can shape social agents’ educational and life trajectories. Dr Xu draws heavily on social theories to inform her empirical research, including Bourdieu’s theory of practice, sociology of time, and postcolonial theories. Her geographical focuses include China (mainland China, Hong Kong) and the UK.
References
Chiang, Y.-L. (2025). (Book Review) The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China Cora Lingling Xu. New York: SUNY Press, 2025. 256 pp. $35.95 (pbk). ISBN 9798855801910. The China Quarterly, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741025101094
Cui, D. (2025). (Book Review) The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China. Canadian Journal of Education Revue Canadienne De l’éducation, 48(2), xviii–xxi. https://doi.org/10.53967/cje-rce.7395
Roe, J. (2025). (Book Review) The time inheritors: How time inequalities shape higher education mobility in China. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 47(4), 650–653. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2025.2529015
Wang, F. (2025). (Book Review) The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China. British Journal of Educational Studies, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2025.2548093
Xu, C. L. (2025). The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China. State University of New York Press.