User:Yuy041/Sent-down youth

Prelude (1953-1967)

In the years immediately following the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) central leadership largely promoted primary education. From 1949 to 1952, the number of elementary schools increased by 50% and student enrollment had more than doubled, from 23,490,000 to 51,100,000. Although the number of enrolled middle school students saw an increase of 140% in the same period, elementary school students outnumbered their middle school counterparts over twenty to one. In response to the severe disproportion between the numbers of elementary and middle school students, as well as the overheated development of primary education in the early 1950s (especially in rural areas), the Ministry of Education of the PRC made sweeping cuts in elementary and middle school admissions in 1953. This policy immediately had a huge impact on elementary and middle school graduates or the educated youths, as there were over two million of them that could not go on to higher education in the same year.

Rural Educated Youths

Rural educated youths were worst affected. In 1953, the CCP initiated the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) following the Soviet-style development of heavy industry in urban areas. Such a Stalinist model demanded the PRC to develop more efficient ways to extract resources from agriculture to subsidize industrialization. Therefore, the CCP's central leadership introduced centralized requisition for grain from villages and rationing in cities (better known as the "unified purchasing and selling of grain" system or tonggou tongxiao 統購統銷). The system mandated peasants to sell "surplus" grain of the harvest to the state at a fixed low price while provided city residents with guaranteed rations, which furthered existing gaps between urban and rural China.

Because of the urban-rural gap, many educated youths considered going on to higher education (and thereafter acquiring an official job allocation in the city) as the primary, if not the only, way out of the countryside and peasantry. For instance, a rural youth wrote to his elder brother in 1955, "I failed (to go on to higher education)...I could not calm down, because it mattered to my youth, even to my life...I would rather make a living by picking up trash in the city than stay in the countryside!"

Some rural educated youths then turned to working opportunities in cities. However, the PRC's gradual nationalization of the state's private sector and the reform of handicraft industry in cities (and the reform of agriculture, knowncollectively as the "Three Socialist Reforms" (1953-1956) or sanda shehui zhuyi gaizao 三大社會主義改造), as well as the accumulation of excessive laborers during the First Five-Year Plan left a considerable unemployed population with urban societies. Moreover, the PRC's urgent and termless need for having as many peasants/food producers (and therefore more "surplus" grain to be extracted) and as less consumers (city residents) as possible, made rural educated youths' countryside-to-city movements unfavorable in the eyes of PRC policymakers.

Eventually, the CCP's central leadership institutionalized the two-tiered household registration or the hukou system in1958. Initially designed as a surveillance tool for the police to monitor the population to prevent counterrevolutionary sabotage in the early 1950s, the post-1958 hukou system assigned every individual in China a rural/agricultural or an urban/non-agricultural registration according to one's residence. Such a classification system aimed to fix everyone in place. While city residents/individuals with an urban or non-agricultural hukou were entitled to guaranteed food rations, housing, health care and education, rural or agricultural households were bound by strict control over physical mobility. They were also expected to be self-sufficient in the countryside. Therefore, the 1953 reform of primary education permanently shut down most rural educated youths' opportunities for physical and upward social mobility.

Experience Varied

Returned (Rural) Educated Youths (Huixiang Qingnian), Send-Down (Urban) Educated Youths (Xiaxiang Qingnian) and Border Support Educated Youths (Zhibian Qingnian)

In the face of both pressures from excessive educated youths that could not go on to higher education and mass unenrollment in cities, the CCP's central leadership saw redirecting rural educated youths to go back to their place of origins a reasonable measure. On December 3 1953, the People's Daily first proposed the plan to organize educated youths to participate in agricultural production in outskirts of cities and towns, as well as rural areas. This editorial became the origin of the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement (shangshan xiaxiang yundong 上山下鄉運動). By late 1954, Liaoning, Jilin, Shaanxi, Qinghai, and Gansu provinces organized around 240,000 educated youths to participate in agricultural production, a great majority of which came from rural areas.

Participation in agricultural production meant more than cultivating lands, growing crops and other related manual labors. As part of the "Three Socialist Reforms," the PRC's reform of agriculture/agricultural collectivization campaign in the 1950s merged individual peasant households into agricultural producers' cooperatives (nongcun hezuoshe 農村合作社, better known as the three-tiered, rural production unit: people's commune-production brigade-production team after 1958) for collective production and distribution in the countryside. All adult members would receive work points (gongfen 工分) for the amount of labor they offered to the cooperative (measured by working hours). At the end of each year, agricultural producers' cooperatives paid their members with some proportion of the harvest and cash from grain sell to the state, according to one's work points, age, and sex. The large-scale agricultural collectivization in the PRC's countryside in the 1950s created a high demand for educated individuals that (at least) had received basic trainings in mathematics to serve as collective accountants and work point recorders. In 1955, Mao Zedong praised 32 rural educated youths who went back to the countryside to work for local agricultural producers' cooperatives. He commented, "all educated youths like them (those of rural origins) that could work in the countryside ought to be happy to do so. The countryside is a vast world where much can be accomplished." Mao's comment later became a famous slogan to promote the mass resettlement campaign during the Cultural Revolution, when tens of millions of educated youths, regardless of their household registration or residences, went to the countryside voluntarily or under coercion. It should be noted that since the very beginning of the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, those came from rural areas, although received much less public attentions as compared to their urban counterparts at the time and even in nowadays, have always been the majority of educated youths affected.

Redirecting rural youths to go back to their place of origins relieved but never resolved the gathering of elementary and middle school graduates that could neither go on to higher education nor acquire working opportunities in cities. By 1955, Shanghai alone had over 300,000 unemployed educated youths. Inspired by the Soviet Virgin Lands Campaign, the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) organized several model youth volunteer pioneer teams (qingnian zhiyuan kenhuangdui 青年志願墾荒隊) to establish the Chinese version of Komsomolsk in remote, mountainous regions and borderlands in 1955. A youth volunteer pioneer team usually consisted of dozens to hundreds of youths that included a small proportion of urban and rural educated youths and urban workers, and mostly young peasants from outskirts of cities and towns. Most of them were also CYLC members. As of 1956, about 210,000 youths participated in the Chinese Virgin Lands Campaign. Compared to urban youths, the CCP's central leadership and local cadres that were responsible for organizing youth volunteer pioneer teams considered rural youths in general to be more experienced in agricultural production and had more physical strength. There was at least a similar, if not a much larger size of young peasants that involved in the state-organized mass migration in Maoist China.

Another underrepresented subgroup of educated youths was the border support youths or zhibian qingnian 支邊青年--a combination of male and female party cadres, young peasants, workers, technicians, veterans, and educated youths(mostly those from rural areas). Instead of returning to their places of origins in the countryside, these rural educated youths voluntarily or were organized (dongyuan) to go to borderlands (known as "go up to mountains" or shangshan 上山). Rural educated youths took up 18.6% of all border support youths that arrived at Xinjiang in 1961, and 17.5% in 1962. Unlike the self-funded return journeys of rural educated youths and the CYLC-organized youth volunteer pioneer teams that primarily depended on their members' personal and/or family funding and public donations, border support youths relied on central (transportation, clothes, meal allowance en route, medical aid, etc.) and local government funding for resettlement. In 1959 and 1960, the National Treasury appropriated over 200 million yuan on the resettlement of border support youths. Such a resettlement plan--one that appropriated each resettled individual a government-stipulated, fixed allowance from the National Treasury--became the model during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement.

Throughout the 1950s, the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement remained largely intermittent and closely correlated with the ups and downs of the PRC's economy and admission policies. On the one hand, educated youths that had gone to the countryside would return to cities in years when employment and admission opportunities increased. On the other hand, fresh graduates would also remain in cities during those years. For example, the blindindustrial overexpansion during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) added over 20 million jobs in cities in 1958 alone. Since settling down in cities whenever possible has always been the most desired option as it would provide a promising future, tens of millions of youths swarmed into or returned to cities.

The succedent, unprecedentedly large-scale redundancy and decline in school admission generated an even more severe population issue in post-GLF PRC cities. As a result, between late 1962 and early 1963, the CCP officially institutionalized educated youth resettlement policy and established a central resettlement leading small group (zhongyang anzhi lingdao xiaozu 中央安置領導小組) to oversight the campaign. In a meeting held from June to July 1963, Zhou Enlai demanded that each province, city and autonomous region make a fifteen-year resettlement plan (1964-1979) for urban educated youths. A central resettlement leading small group's report on August 19, 1963 explained the reasoning behind Zhou's proposed time span of fifteen years: "children born within fourteen years after the Liberation (1949-1963) would reach to the working-age in the next fifteen years...It was estimated that there would be around a million middle school graduates that could not go on to higher education every year...For this reason, the party's central leadership demand that each province, city and autonomous region make a fifteen-year plan (1964-1979) that is centered on the resettlement of urban educated youths that reached the working-age." In another meeting in October, Zhou raised the number of rural and urban educated youths to be resettled to the countryside in the next eighteen years to 35 million. In the meanwhile, Zhou warned that such a number would further increase if birth control measures in cities were not well implemented. In other words, Zhou pointed out that the educated youth resettlement campaign must be cooperated with strictly enforced birth control measures in cities and the two-tiered household registration system. Zhou did not mention rural educated youths in particular, indicating that the CCP's central leadership expected to continue redirecting most rural elementary and middle school graduates to return to their places of origins. Therefore, during the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement and afterwards, PRC policymakers, as well as scholars referred to resettled urban educated youths as sent-down urban youths (chengzhenxiaxiang qingnan 城鎮下鄉青年  or xiafang qingnian 下放青年), and those that came from rural areas as returned rural youths (huixiang qingnian 回鄉青年).

Resettlement and Inequalities

Following the model of resettling border support youths in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the PRC provided each resettled educated youth a fixed allowance. Such an allowance was aimed to cover educated youths' resettlement expenses, including costs of transportation, home building, food, farming tools, and furniture, in the transitional period between their departure places and their first "paycheck" received after their arrivals (usually at the end of each year). On average, urban educated youths that resettled at state-owned farms--agricultural farms (nongchang 農場), tree plantations (linchang 林場), or fish farms (yuchang 漁場, known collectively as cha chang 插場)--received 883 yuan, 1081 yuan and 1383 yuan respectively in 1964. By comparison, the average resettlement allowance for those whoresettled at collectively owned production teams (shengchan dui 生產隊, known as cha dui 插隊) was only one-fifth of that of cha chang, around 200 yuan. In addition, the amount of allowance also varied by location (225 yuan in northern China and 185 yuan in southern China in 1964, and 250 yuan and 230 yuan respectively in 1965) and the distance between one's place of departure and destination (those who resettled in another province, or kuasheng anzhi 跨省安置 would receive an extra 20 yuan on transportation). On the contrary, rural educated youths could only receive 50 yuan for their return journeys to the countryside.

Urban educated youths to be resettled preferred state-owned farms or cha chang over collectively owned production teams or cha dui. Not only did those who resettled at state-owned farms have a much higher resettlement allowance, they also receive salary-based monthly payment from central and local financial allocations, which was considered more promising than production team's end-of-year distribution system, not to mention that the latter's income largely varied by the local situation and annual harvest. Moreover, state-owned farms employees considered themselves to be of higher political status or zhengzhi diwei than production team members/peasants. In other words, the conceptual and perceived gaps between workers and peasants, urban and rural areas, and manual and mental labors (later known collectively as the "Three Difference" or sanda chabie 三大差別) persisted and had impacts on peoples' decisions and/or reactions to the PRC policies. As a result, one of the primary propaganda slogans that the CCP's central leadership adopted to promote the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement during the Cultural Revolution was to eliminate the "Three Differences." Similarly, another form of cha chang, resettling at Production and Construction Corps (shengchan jianshe bingtuan 生產建設兵團) as soldiers in borderlands, became popular among urban educated youths because that being a soldier was considered to be honorable and have a better political future or zhengzhi qiantu. However, the PRC sent 870,000 out of 1,290,000 (67%) of all urban educated youths to be resettled from 1962 to 1966 to production teams out of financial concerns. Notably while seldomly discussed, there were over 8.7 million rural educated youths returned to the countryside in the same period.

Return Home or More Exile?

"Return to Cities to Make Revolution": The Cultural Revolution and the Great Networking (Da Chuanlian)

On May 16, 1966, an expanded session of the CCP Politburo meeting approved Mao Zedong's agenda and political declaration of the Cultural Revolution, later known as the 16 May Notification. In August, Mao Zedong met with over a million Red Guards from across the country that gathered in and around Tiananmen Square. Envisioning a nationwide revolution, the party's central leadership announced in September that the state would provide all revolutionary students and faculties a free ride to Beijing and living subsidies en route. Benefited from the location and their connections back in Beijing, Beijing and Tianjin (urban) educated youths that resettled at production teams at outskirts of major cities were among the first to be informed.

As the news spread, more sent-down or urban educated youths followed. Some indeed responded to the party's central leadership's call and united (chuanlian 串連) to "revolt" (zaofan 造反) and "return to cities to make revolution" (huicheng nao geming 回城鬧革命). In the meanwhile, many also chose to return to cities because that they had conflicts with local cadres and peasants. For example, some urban educated youths with "good" political/family background or zhengzhi beijing considered themselves more “revolutionary" than local cadres and therefore demanded the latter to resign during the Socialist Education Movement (1963-1965). When the Cultural Revolution began, local cadres launched counterattacks and forced those resettled urban educated youths to leave.

Others suffered from local cadres and peasants' discriminations. Several female urban educated youths that resettled at production teams in Inner Mongolia reported in 1965 that they had been prohibited from getting in touch with local "poor and lower-middle class peasants" (pin-xia-zhong nong 貧下中農) due to their "bad" family background. Even those did not belong to the "five black categories" (hei wulei 黑五类), were subjected to potential bias and abuses. For instance, a production brigade in the Zengcheng county, Guangdong province prohibited all urban educated youths and "bad elements" (huai fenzi 壞分子) of the "five black categories" from participating in the mass gatherings. Shanghai send-down youths that resettled in Anhui province were even expelled and repatriated to Shanghai by the Huangshan tea and tree plantation as a result of the local class struggle campaign. Some Shanghai send-down youths resettled at the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp reported abuses by local cadres. In some cases, these send-down youths not only had to complete heavy works in the harsh environment but received no salary from their labor. Abuses of female sent-down youths were even worse. Some Production and Construction Corp cadres claimed that "(marriages of female sent-down youths) were only open to members of the Production and Construction Corp" (bingtuan guniang duinei bu duiwai 兵團姑娘對內不對外). In the face of harsh living and working conditions, as well as threats to personal safety, these Shanghai sent-down youths caught the opportunity of the "great networking" (da chuanlian 大串連) and returned home.

Last but not the least, there were also a considerable number of urban educated youths, especially those who arrived at the countryside only a short while ago, simply took advantage of the offer of a free ride to return to cities. Indeed, sent-down or urban educated youths showed more enthusiasm and capacity to return to cities through the "great networking" than their rural counterparts. On the one hand, they had families and/or other supporters in cities and were therefore more likely to have a secured livelihood after their returns. On the other hand, urban educated youths lost their urban or non-agricultural hukou and welfare of city residents to resettlement. It was the time to reclaim their rights.

Most local state-owned farms and Production and Construction Corps, as well as production teams rarely attempted to prevent urban educated youths from returning to cities. Instead, most local cadres supported these return journeys and provided supplies, allowance, or accommodations en route. For example, cadres in Guangxi province proposed to provide every revolutionary student or faculty, sent-down youth and cadre that participated in the "great networking" an monthly allowance of 7 yuan and 45 jin grain coupons (liang piao 糧票). One urban educated youth that resettled in the Bayan county of Heilongjiang province recalled that some "capitalist roaders" (zou zi pai 走資派, i.e., local cadres) encouraged sent-down youths to return to cities and provided each of them 300 yuan to cover expenses en route. Most cadres at the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp turned to support the "great networking" in late 1966, after some attempts to prevent urban educated youths from returning to cities by setting up checkpoints on main roads failed.

The “great networking” soon went out of the party's central leadership's control. In November 1966, it was announced that after 21 November, revolutionary students and faculties would receive a free ride only if they were on return journeys. In the following month, the party's central leadership demanded all revolutionary students and faculties to return home by December 20, 1966. By the end of 1966, nearly all educated youths from Shanghai, 70% of those from Nanjing, and 90% of those from Chengdu returned to cities from the countryside.

Protests

Moreover, returned urban educated youths formed various local and cross-regional “rebel” organizations, protested about abuses of educated youths, and demanded local governments to reclaim their urban/non-agricultural hukou andwelfare and. "Rebel" organization leaders were well aware of the danger to challenge the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. Instead, returned sent-down youths tactfully attributed the movement to Liu Shaoqi, who had been labelled a "traitor" and also a "capitalist roader" and was removed from office, as a result of Mao Zedong's attack on him in Bombard the Headquarters-My Big-Character Poster on August 5, 1966.

In 1957, the party's central leadership entrusted Liu Shaoqi to promote the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement in Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Shandong provinces. In a series of talks, Liu admitted that the state was facing temporary unban unemployment and admissions problems and encouraged urban and rural educated youths that could not go on to higher education to participate in agricultural production and become the first generation educated "new peasants" (xinshi nongmin 新式農民). Liu addressed most educated youths' biggest concern--the future--and promised that educated "new peasants" would have promising lives. According to Liu,educated "new peasants" could earn local peasants' trusts by learning (agricultural skills) from the latter. Trusted by the local population both for their personalities and abilities, Liu concluded that educated "new peasants" could become local cadres several years after their arrival at the countryside. Moreover, Liu claimed that the state would also need educated "new peasants" to promote rural development in the near future.

It should be pointed out that Liu Shaoqi's interpretations of the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement in 1957 were consistent with the party's central leadership's design--to resolve urban unemployment and admissions problems and accelerate rural development concurrently. However, it turned out that the movement generated massive discontent and social unrest. Accordingly, the demoted Liu became the safe target for returned urban educated youths to vent their dissatisfactions. Returned urban educated youths and their parents gathered in cities that included Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan and Shanghai and protested about Liu Shaoqi and his "black talons and teeth's" (hei zhaoya 黑爪牙) abuses. Some "rebel" organizations also organized members to go back to the countryside to lead local protests about the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement.  For example, Shanghai educated youths' parents sent a delegation to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp to "set fire" (dianhuo 點火, i.e., to organize protests). In the same period, there were also rural educated youths that swarmed into cities, demanding for official job allocations and the immediate elimination of the urban-rural gap.

Where was the "Hometown?"

In January 1967, a Japanese newspaper reported that there was an ongoing development of a nationwide “rebel” headquarter. Several days later, on 11 January, the party's central leadership made the first official announcement on the return of educated youths since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. The announcement claimed that it was "capitalist roaders" within the CCP who instigated the return of educated youths to cities, as well as their protests. The party's central leadership demanded all formerly resettled educated youths to go back to the countryside and continue participating in agricultural production. Another editorial on 18 January stated that the return of formerly resettled educated youths was "capitalist roaders'" conspiracy to undermine the country's agricultural production and to expand the urban-rural gap. This editorial not only quoted Mao Zedong's comment on the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement back in 1955 to justify the righteousness of the movement, but encouraged all urban educated youths to "return to hometown (i.e., the countryside) and make revolution locally" (da hui laojia qu, jiudi nao geming 打回老家去，就地鬧革命). It was noteworthy that the editorial on January 18, 1967, deliberately distorted the meaning of "hometown" or laojia--regardless of educated youths' actual places of origin, the party's central leadership now demanded them to go to the countryside. Last but not the least, these official announcements further incited class struggle. As a result, the Up to Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement that remained largely a part of the PRC's economic development plan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, became a large-scale political movement during the Cultural Revolution.

Selected bibliography

In English:

Bernstein, Thomas P. Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.

Brown, Jeremy. City versus Countryside in Mao's China: Negotiating the Divide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Harrell, Stevan. An Ecological History of Modern China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023.

In Chinese:

Ding, Yizhuang 定宜莊. Zhongguo Zhiqing Shi: Chulan (1953-1968 Nian) 中國知青史：初瀾 (1953-1968 年)  [History of Chinese Educated Youths: Prelude (1953-1968)]. Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe [China Social Sciences Press], 1998.

Liu, Xiaomeng 劉小萌. Zhongguo Zhiqing Shi: Dachao (1966-1980 Nian) 中國知青史：大潮 (1966-1980年) [History of Chinese Educated Youths: High Tide (1966-1980)]. Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe [China Social Sciences Press], 1998.

Wei, Wei 魏巍. "Chuangzao Xingfu de Jiaxiang 創造幸福的家鄉 [Create Happy Hometown]." Zhongguo Qingnian 中國青年 [Chinese Youth] 22 (1955).