Following accusations that China’s Communist Youth League Central Committee’s 2019 so-called “Youth Building Action to Deepen rural Revitalization” is an attempt to stage a “new movement to the countryside,” a Beijing-based government-run organization published an article last week with high-profile praise for the intellectual youth advocated by Mao Zedong A Beijing-based government-run organization published an article last week praising Mao Zedong’s campaign to send intellectual youths to the countryside, touting the fact that the campaign has created a new generation of Party and state leaders. Some veterans who worked in the countryside in the past pointed out that the compulsory movement of the youth to the countryside was an anti-human catastrophe in the midst of the decade-long catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao mistakenly launched, and that the Communist Party has long been convinced that the authorities are now rehabilitating the movement in order to rehabilitate the Cultural Revolution and reinforce its legitimacy by recreating Mao’s glorious image. Some commentators also argue that driving backwards in history on the Cultural Revolution and the issue of the youth going to the countryside will doom them to failure.
The chapter writes: 52 years ago today, an article in the People’s Daily quoted Mao’s instruction: ” It is necessary for the intellectual youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor peasants.” Immediately afterwards, a nationwide campaign was launched for intellectual youths to go to the countryside. More than half a century later, the article says, it is clear that “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” is a great feat to promote social progress. According to the article, for some time, there have been some views that deny the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” movement. For example, “Zhiqing” is a “ruined generation” and “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” is “persecution”. The article by the Institute of Chinese History, founded in 2019, describes these views as “false statements” and says that they are “not meant to be drunken”, but are actually an attempt to deny the struggle of the new China.
The article by China’s top official research institute was quickly deleted after it generated much debate, but was republished on some Maoist websites.
The “Down to the Countryside” Movement Creates Leaders?
In addition to highlighting the supposed strategic significance of Mao’s promotion of the rural movement, the 4,000-word article highlights the fact that a large number of young people who went to the countryside are now playing an extremely important role in the economic and social life of the Chinese Party and state at all levels of leadership. The article further points out that four of the seven members of the Standing Committee of the 18th Communist Party Congress, including Xi Jinping, had gone to the countryside.
The article, launched by the 2019-established China Institute of History, claims that the youth movement to the countryside back then promoted social progress and uses the example of Party and state leaders to prove that the youth movement to the countryside successfully cultivated talents, prompting a tide of vicious comments, ridicule and criticism from some veteran youths and online commentators.
The blogger Alpine Eagle writes: “For those who later became a pillar of talent, it was not the rural experience that made them successful either. In developed countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and South Korea, there were no intellectual youths who went to the countryside, but still achieved world-renowned achievements in various fields.”
The blogger pointed out, “People who say this are standing around talking! Everyone is not stupid, do not underestimate the intelligence of others!”
Wang Ping, author of the philosophical treatise on life, “The Happiness Quotient,” went to the countryside to a May 7 youth farm in 1971, began eavesdropping on the Voice of America to learn English after Nixon’s visit to China, and then took the highly competitive college entrance exam in 1977 and enrolled in Henan University, majoring in English.
He told the Voice of America that leaders such as Xi Jinping were able to be recommended as workers, peasants and soldiers cadets for college and later had a smooth career, while the majority of youths who went to the countryside were not so lucky.
“Li Keqiang is a 77th-year college student, which is different.” Wang Ping said, “Other workers, peasants and soldiers cadets who went to university or something, including Xi Jinping, stayed in the countryside for a long time. But Xi Jinping’s case (special), his father Xi Zhongxun’s influence in northern Shaanxi was so great that it played a key role in his later development. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. He soon joined the party as a grassroots cadre, and later was successfully recommended to Tsinghua University. This is not something that other people can imagine?”
Youth without regret? Wasted youth?
Ma Ke (a pseudonym), a retired scientist from Los Angeles, California, is a graduate of the “Old Third Class” high school who went from the city to rural Jiangsu. He believes that the movement to the countryside has created a talent gap. He also said that it was impossible to educate the more advanced people from a backward culture when the youth were being re-educated in the countryside, while the reality on the ground was the opposite.
Ma Ke considers this article, which commemorates Mao Zedong’s supreme directive to the rural areas to promote “youth without regret”, to be “nonsense”.
Speaking to Voice of America, Ma Ke pointed out that except for a few who went on to make a difference, the vast majority of the youth who went to the countryside ended up as a disadvantaged group in society due to the interruption of their formal schooling.
“We’re just saying we wasted our youth, and those seven or eight years in the countryside were a total waste,” he said. “No talent came out of it. Not many, except for the ones who went to school later and had a little bit of success. Most of them didn’t make it. And then how to say, how to mend, every day to coax future generations of juniors, that is possible. Our generation does not believe in this set. We also have a group of young people who talk about positive things, but very few.”
The Southern California Youth Association member said that there are different voices among the old youths about how to evaluate the youth movement to the countryside, but those who think it is good are very few, and they are mostly powerful people who hold the power of speech.
Lu Nan, an independent commentator in the U.S., is also a veteran youth who spent five years working on a local youth farm in Henan province in the 1970s, and in 1978 he took the college entrance exam to enter the journalism department of Renmin University of China.
Lu told VOA that the expulsion of 20 million urban youths to the countryside was undoubtedly one of Mao’s major heinous crimes, which reached its peak and became a regular pattern from 1968 onward.
He wrote that every year, as the youth left for the countryside, the train stations in every city were crowded with people, sorrowful clouds, and the cries of separated flesh and blood.
In 1969, Lili, from Beijing, traveled for a week by train, bus, ferry and tractor to reach the paramilitary Nongkeng Water Conservancy Corps on the China-Myanmar border in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province. She recalled to Voice of America that the corps’ receptionist spoke of building a beautiful frontier with tropical scenery, but once she arrived at her destination, the 16-year-old and the other young Beijingers and Shanghainese who went to the countryside with her were stunned.
“Do you know the Olive Dam? There are peacocks, the pearl of Xishuangbanna, blah blah blah. It was particularly well said. When we arrived, we were all dumbfounded. There is nothing. This desolation, let’s not mention it.”
Wang Ping, who is concerned about China’s contemporary history, said, “What about training the successors of the proletariat? Anyway, the basic fact is that 15 million of us, 20 million of us, we lost the best years of our youth, the ten years we should have spent in the classroom, in the classroom receiving education.”
The youth in the countryside is accused of “labor reform in disguise”
Independent commentator Lu Nan recalls that at that time, all industries were in decline, factories had no work to do, there was an extreme shortage of materials, and the cities were unable to provide employment opportunities.
Lu pointed out that after the revolutionary strike, students who had defeated political opponents for Mao Zedong were brought back to school under the slogan of resuming classes for the revolution, and several classes of primary and secondary students who had been suspended during the Cultural Revolution graduated at the same time. Since no employment could be arranged, allowing these Red Guards, who had gone through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, to roam around the city jobless would inevitably pose a new threat to the Chinese Communist authorities, who had just taken a brief respite from the power grab and armed struggle. In this context, the CCP regime, with its economy on the verge of collapse and its inability to manage the cities, scattered urban youth into exile in the countryside and remote areas and left them to fend for themselves.
According to public information, Lin Liguo, son of Lin Biao, a close comrade of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, wrote the “Summary of Project 571” in 1971, saying that young intellectuals going to the countryside was tantamount to disguised labor reform. After this statement was published, it was resonated by the majority of young intellectuals who went to the countryside.
Lili, who was assigned as a soldier in the Water Conservancy Corps company at the Jinghong Military Reclamation Farm in Yunnan, said, “For me, it was labor reform.” Lily’s father, a professor of history, was branded a “reactionary academic authority” and was being criticized at the time.
Lili herself was criticized at a company meeting for leaking state secrets after she was traced to a friend who had privately discussed the Lin Biao 913 incident.
Lily recalled that every day, she had to “ask for instructions and report back at night,” wake up at 6 a.m. and finish work at 8 p.m. There were political studies after dinner, and almost all the girls in her company suffered from gynecological diseases in the process of repairing the dam and in the difficult labor environment.
She said, “Soak in the water for one or two hours, four or five hours. It was winter. I just got my period in the morning, but I didn’t dare say no! If you don’t go, the leader must say, you Beijing and Shanghai from the young lady arrogant two gas. If you go, think about it, you can not do the disease?”
Many female youths fell victim to power
Lu Nan, who experienced the campaign, sympathizes with the youths who have no life experience and labor skills. He said that the youths who left their homes experienced mental disorientation and hardship, and many of them were raped, making it a hot social issue at the time and a permanent pain for more than 10 million families separated from their flesh and blood.
According to official documents, a large number of female youths were raped by unit leaders or local authorities during the 10-odd years of the mandatory movement to the countryside. According to an analysis, most of the humiliated women were reluctant to reveal the truth, and those who were raped and went to university, joined the Party, or were promoted to the top would not tell the truth.
Zhang Lina, who went from Beijing to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to become a soldier in the regiment, told the Voice of America that many young female regiment soldiers had to sell their bodies in exchange for a pass to return to the city.
Lily, who went to Yunnan to join the military reclamation, told VOA that the battalion commander of her regiment, who is an active duty soldier, was also investigated for the crime of sexually assaulting the female youths under his command.
Lili returned to Beijing to visit her family after nearly four years in the Yunnan regiment, then overstayed her welcome to study English at home and enrolled in night classes at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute in the 1980s.
She said that almost all of her comrades from that year have returned to the city, and now some people occasionally go back to visit, while she does not want to go back to the place called Xishuangbanna where she went to the countryside.
Analysts: the reintroduction of the youth to the countryside is to reopen the case for the Cultural Revolution
The article by the Chinese Academy of History touts Mao Zedong’s policy of going to the countryside as a way to invoke the soul of the Cultural Revolution, thus making it more logical for Xi Jinping to return to Mao’s line and increasing his legitimacy in power, according to Lu Nan, a former intellectual from Henan province.
It is noteworthy that the article by the Chinese Academy of History, which promotes Mao’s policy of sending tens of millions of young people to the countryside, makes no mention of the Cultural Revolution, which led to the destruction of countless families and lives, and mentions the term “re-education” only once.
Wang Ping, who is concerned with contemporary Chinese history, believes that Mao threw out the theory of “class struggle” and launched the Cultural Revolution as a “nonsense” in order to cover up the fact that at least 36 million peasants were starved to death in the Great Famine and to bring down the number two figure in the Party who posed a threat to his power Liu Shaoqi. The veteran historian pointed out that the study of the events during the Cultural Revolution, including the movement to the countryside, cannot be separated from the definitive case of the 10-year catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution. He said that some people’s attempts to reopen the case of the Cultural Revolution by boiling frogs in warm water, including unlimited worship of leaders, are doomed to failure and “will become an unbearable pile of strange garbage in the history of world civilization.
The official media preached the backlash from the people
Under the news section of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on the People’s Daily Online, there is an account of the major event of “the fever of intellectual youths going to the mountains and going to the countryside”: “On December 22, 1968, the revolutionary masses banged gongs and drums, rallied and marched; the revolutionary committees at all levels immediately formulated measures for implementation; a large number of A large number of intellectual youths went to the countryside with great enthusiasm.”
This short article describes the social reaction to Mao’s top instruction that “it is necessary for the intellectual youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor peasants,” and the tone of its propaganda is similar to that of the deleted article of praise by the Chinese Academy of History.
However, it seems that the current Chinese public opinion is not buying the official praise and propaganda.
In his article, blogger Eagle of the Mountain dislikes: “Stop rubbing salt into other people’s wounds. Stop consuming the suffering of others. Everyone’s youth is short, who doesn’t want to live in style? Don’t take other people’s youth as dry food!”
Recently, there are some sarcastic remarks circulating among Chinese people against the authorities’ propaganda: to mobilize for vaccination, please ask the chief to do it first, and to mobilize to go to the countryside, please ask the princess to go first.
A blogger with the screen name “Jun Tian” called “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” a “blind political scam. The blogger pointed out seven months ago that “the movement to the countryside has left a generation of young people (and in most cases, their parents and children) with mental and physical wounds that may never be healed.”
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