In 1966, Chinese youth were sent to remote rural areas in large numbers during the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” movement.
The State Council of the Communist Party of China (CPC) recently issued a document claiming to accelerate the “revitalization of rural talents” and guide the flow of talents to the countryside, which has sparked a lot of public debate. Analysts believe that the Chinese government is restarting the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” campaign of the Cultural Revolution to solve the employment crisis.
On February 21, the Communist Party issued Document No. 1 emphasizing “comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization,” and on February 23, the official issued a document asking all regions and departments to speed up the implementation of the “rural talent revitalization” policy.
The official approach includes encouraging 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.
The establishment of various types of talent to serve the countryside system on a regular basis, “grassroots work experience” will be an important reference for title evaluation, job hiring. Officials have made it mandatory for doctors and teachers to have at least one year of grassroots work experience to be promoted to senior titles in the future.
The Chinese Communist Party‘s promotion of the so-called “revitalization of rural talents” has sparked heated public debate. It is widely believed that the authorities are invoking the spirit of the Cultural Revolution and repeating the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” campaign of Mao Zedong’s era.
Some veteran youths who have experienced the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” movement believe that the authorities are doomed to fail by reversing the history of the Cultural Revolution and the issue of sending the youths to the countryside.
As early as the end of last year, the Chinese Communist Party media started to make a campaign for “going to the mountains and going to the countryside”. In an article published on Dec. 22, 2020, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Chinese Academy of History said that the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” movement was “a feat of social progress”.
The article sparked vicious comments from some veteran youths and online commentators, and was later deleted. The blogger, Eagle of the Mountain, wrote: “Whoever said this is standing and talking. Everyone is not stupid, do not underestimate the intelligence of others!” “Stop rubbing salt into other people’s wounds. Stop consuming other people’s sufferings. Everyone’s youth is very short, who does not want to live in style? Don’t take other people’s youth as dry Food!”
A blogger with the screen name “Jun Tian” called the “Go to the mountains and go to the countryside” a “blind political scam”, saying that “the Go to the mountains and go to the countryside movement left A generation of young people (and, in most cases, their Parents and children) may never heal from the mental and physical wounds of the movement.”
Ma Ke (a pseudonym), now a retired scientist in Los Angeles, is a graduate of the “Old Third Class” high school who went from the city to rural Jiangsu. Ma Ke criticizes articles that promote “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” as “nonsense.
He told Voice of America that, except for a few who went on to make a difference, the vast majority of those who went to the countryside ended up as a disadvantaged group in society because of the interruption of their formal schooling.
Wang Ping, author of the philosophical treatise on Life, “The Happiness Quotient,” said, “We intellectual youth, 15 million or 20 million, what we lost was the best years of our youth, the decade when we should have been in the classroom, receiving Education in the classroom.”
Lu Nan, an independent American commentator on current affairs, said that the expulsion of 20 million urban youths to the countryside was one of Mao’s main heinous crimes. Every year, as the young people left Home in the countryside, the train stations in every city were crowded with people, sorrowful clouds, and cries of separation of flesh and blood.
Lili, who was assigned as a soldier in the Water Conservancy Corps company at the Jinghong Military Reclamation Farm in Yunnan, said, “For me, [going to the countryside] was labor reform.”
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