Chinese Premier Li Keqiang recently set China’s GDP growth target at around 6 percent during his work report at the National People’s Congress, and it is believed that Xi Jinping intends to trumpet his economic success to consolidate his power and serve the 20th National Congress. For the same purpose, the authorities are eager to “absorb” the large number of unemployed people under the impact of the Epidemic and solve the employment crisis, and are using the “revitalization of the countryside” as an excuse to restart the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” campaign of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. He is a member of the Communist Youth League.
Mr. He is a respondent to the 2019 Communist Youth League’s “Opinions on the Further Development of rural Revitalization and Youth Construction Action. He recently told Voice of America that after going to the countryside, he realized that the reality was different from what was officially advocated.
“I studied economics in college, and my Family (helped) at that Time to have a relatively stable job in the city. I, because I was young and aggressive, always felt that I could not bring my abilities into play, because (the job) was too comfortable. So I resigned, just in time for a test in Tianjin, recruiting highly educated people to go to the countryside… At that time, I thought I could make a big difference in the countryside while I was young and energetic.”
“For a long time after I took office, and it was our group, what happened then was that we didn’t get the attention we deserved. After all, we were highly educated compared to other (rural) government employees in general. After we were recruited from above, we weren’t assigned to the same position we were in when we first took the exam, but were put into various departments like regular employees to complete simple tasks.”
According to Song Yongyi, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles and a scholar of the history of the Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” had a similar purpose to Mao’s – to peasantize intellectuals or intellectual youth and to drive them out of the cities to consolidate the regime. The purpose is to drive the intellectual youth out of the cities to consolidate the regime.
“Intellectual youth, or intellectuals, are a little more independent-minded, because they have knowledge and the advantage of knowledge. Then whether it was Mao or Xi, he did not want these people to have independent minds, so they were sent to the countryside, and that was peasantization. The peasantization of intellectuals is a regression as far as civilization is concerned, and a strengthening as far as his rule is concerned, because he has to control the people’s brains in order to do so, ah.”
Song Yongyi added that while Mao drove intellectual youth to the countryside with the aim, among other things, of solving the problem of the large urban population rendered unemployable by the Cultural Revolution, Xi is more focused on controlling minds: “The economy is not as bad now as it was in the Cultural Revolution, right, and that shows that Xi has put control of people’s minds, especially as he puts the peasantization of intellectuals and intellectual youth on his primary position.”
The movement to the countryside back then brought misfortune to nearly 20 million intellectuals. Some even considered it a disguised labor reform.
Ms. Zhang, who had been to Shanxi, recalled that she was 16 years old when she left Home, “What was unforgettable was when we went to Beijing Railway Station. The whole family sent us, the whole school teachers and students went to send. Beijing train station on August 5, 10 o’clock in the morning when the departure, the station can be said to be a cry.”
“Then six months after I went, my mother went to Shanxi and missed me so much that she almost had a nervous breakdown.”
In an earlier interview with Radio Free Asia, independent scholar Wu Jolai said that the “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” during the Mao era was officially glorified and was actually a decision of necessity.
“After the three-year famine in the 1960s, the population began to grow naturally, but the cities were fortified, factories and enterprises did not increase, there were no jobs, and Food was scarce. The government was not trying to promote the intellectualization of the countryside by sending a large number of intellectual youth to the countryside under duress.”
As for Xi Jinping’s reintroduction of “going to the countryside”, Wu Zorai believes that it is similar to the purpose of that year, which is to solve the crisis of the Chinese Communist Party‘s rule.
“The economic crisis that the CCP is now facing is very serious. Electricity shortages, which have not occurred for decades, are now appearing. This will set off a chain reaction. They then want to decimate the young force in urban areas and developed areas, which is prone to schooling and movements, and send these people to remote areas to ease the pressure on the CCP.”
In February of this year, the CPC Central Committee issued the No. 1 document emphasizing the “comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization” and a document asking all regions and departments to accelerate the implementation of the “rural talent revitalization” policy.
The official requirements are to encourage migrant workers, college (university) graduates, retired military personnel, science and technology personnel, and practical rural talents to start or lead family farms and farmers’ cooperatives; to establish a system for various talents to serve the countryside on a regular basis, and to make “grassroots work experience” an important reference for title evaluation and job hiring.
Officially, it is mandatory that doctors and teachers must have more than 1 year of grassroots work experience to promote their senior titles in the future.
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