The Lost Generation: The Rustification of Chinese Youth (1968-1980) 9629964813, 9789629964818

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THE LOST GENERATION

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The Lost Generation The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth (1968–1980)

By

Michel Bonnin Translated by

Krystyna Horko

The Chinese University Press

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The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth (1968–1980) By Michel Bonnin Translated by Krystyna Horko English edition © The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN: 978-962-996-481-8 This translation of Génération perdue: Le mouvement d’envoi des jeunes instruits à la campagne en Chine, 1968–1980, originally published in France in 2004, is published by arrangement with Éditions de l’ÉHESS, with the support from Centre national du livre in France. Copyright © 2004 Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris The Chinese University Press The Chinese University of Hong Kong Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong Fax: +852 2603 7355 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.chineseupress.com Printed in Hong Kong

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No, I’m not complaining about my own fate, my lost youth, and twisted soul, those cruel memories left over from countless sleepless nights. One by one, I overthrew the precepts, and broke the chains. Now all that remains in my heart is a vast field of ruins … But I got up and now I stand on a vast horizon where no one can throw me to the ground again by any means.

Shu Ting, “Cry of a Generation,” 1980

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INTRODUCTION

Contents

Preface................................................................................................................. xiii Introduction ........................................................................................................ xvii Illustrations .......................................................................................................... xli PART ONE MOTIVATIONS Chapter 1. Ideological Motives ........................................................................... 3 Training Successors to the Revolution ............................................................. 3 Reeducating Young Intellectuals ...................................................................... 7 Reducing the “Three Great Differences” ........................................................13 Chapter 2. Political Motivations ........................................................................19 Reining in the Red Guards ..............................................................................19 Reinforcing Mao’s “Charismatic” Power.........................................................22 Chapter 3. Socioeconomic Motives ................................................................... 25 A Positive Motive: Developing the Countryside and the Border Regions .................................... 25 A Negative Motive: The Solution to Urban Unemployment and Overpopulation ...........................32

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PART TWO THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE XIAXIANG MOVEMENT: POLICY CHANGES Chapter 4. The Managers and the Ideologue: The Prelude and Interlude of the Cultural Revolution (1955–1966) .......................49 Modest Beginnings .........................................................................................51 Acceleration after the Failure of the Great Leap Forward ..............................53 Institutionalization and Long-term Planning...................................................56 Contradictions and Reluctance ....................................................................... 60 The Cultural Revolution: An End to Departures and Spontaneous Returns ............................................63 Chapter 5. The Mass Movement (1968–1976) ..................................................65 A Vigorous Start (1968–1969) .........................................................................65 Transforming the Red Guards into Educated Youths ..........................65 Massive Mobilization ...........................................................................70 Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed Behind.................................74 High on Fervor, Low on Organization .................................................78 The Lowest Ebb (1970–1972) ..........................................................................81 Reform and Relaunch of the Movement (1973–1976) .....................................88 Li Qinglin’s Letter and the National Conference .................................88 From Romanticism to Realism: The Zhuzhou Model and Improvements in Living Conditions ............93 Xiaxiang and the Two-line Struggle: From Blank Exam Papers to Going through the Back Door .............101 Models Who Had Taken Root ............................................................107 Educated Youth in the Fight for Succession....................................... 114 Mao’s Last Directive .......................................................................... 118 Chapter 6. Irresistible Agony (1977–1980) .....................................................123 1977: Hua Guofeng’s Vain Desire to Continue ..............................................123 1978: From Uncertainty to a Limited Reassertion of the Policy ...................127 The End 1978 to the End 1979: Popular Resistance and Government Obstinacy............................................139 A Ferment of Protest ..........................................................................140

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The Big Xishuangbanna Strike and the “Return Wind” ....................144 Tension and Conflict in Shanghai and Elsewhere ..............................149 Government Strategy in 1979.............................................................154 Implementation at the provincial level and reassertion of the policy defined at the national conference ...............................154 Political, administrative and police strategy in response to various forms of social resistance.................................................158 Re-launch of “down-to-the countryside” propaganda ................. 161 1980: The End ................................................................................................170 Returns and Employment Problems (1979–1980) .........................................178 The Return of Examinations: A Saving Grace for Some Zhiqing ................................................................184 Chapter 7. The Shadow of Xiaxiang in the 1980s ..........................................187 Disappearance of the “Zhiqing Bureau” and Closure of Accounts.......................................................................................188 Keeping the “Little Fish Abandoned on the Shore” in Place ........................191 A Special Case: The Shanghai Zhiqing in Xinjiang ..........................192 Placing Zhiqing Married to Peasants and Sick Zhiqing ................... 203 The Case of Zhiqing Who Obtained Nonagricultural Work in the Countryside ................................................................... 204 A New Rustication Campaign? ..................................................................... 206 The Seniority Issue ........................................................................................210 PART THREE FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE Chapter 8. The Conditions of Departure: “Voluntary” Deportation ..........215 Mobilization ..................................................................................................216 Destinations .................................................................................................. 224 Departure Songs and Laments.......................................................................229 Chapter 9. Material Difficulties and Low Morale .........................................235 Difficulties in Adapting to Rural Conditions.................................................236 The First Shock: Discovering the Backwardness...............................236

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The Main Problems ............................................................................238 Housing and living environment ...................................................238 Work, income, and food ............................................................... 248 Sickness and accidents ..................................................................257 Leisure and cultural life ................................................................261 Difficulties Fitting into the Rural Community ..............................................265 The Main Obstacles ...........................................................................265 Obstacles to being accepted by the peasants ................................265 Obstacles to the zhiqing wanting long-term integration ..............271 A second surprise: discovering the peasant mentality .................275 Relations between the Zhiqing and the Receiving Communities ......279 Relationship based on realism ......................................................279 A limited reciprocal influence .......................................................283 Poor integration ............................................................................287 Problems of Social Status and Group Identity...............................................291 Demoted and Displaced .....................................................................291 Defenseless .........................................................................................295 Solidarity and Competition ................................................................303 Problems with Individual Prospects and Self-fulfillment............................. 307 Ruined Projects ................................................................................. 307 A Rural Future? ................................................................................. 309 Means of Returning ...........................................................................312 The Marriage Issue ............................................................................319 PART FOUR SOCIAL RESISTANCE Chapter 10. The Social Control System ..........................................................329 Chapter 11. Passive Resistance and Its Effects ..............................................337 Deviancy, Delinquency, and Parallel Culture ...............................................338 Negative Attitudes and Deviant Behavior ..........................................338 Underground Literature..................................................................... 344 Schmaltzy Music as a Political Crime ...............................................349 Political Deviancy ..............................................................................354

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The Stampede Home and Its Consequences..................................................356 Strategies for Returning Legally ........................................................356 Tricks and intrigues .......................................................................356 Extended celibacy, divorce, and marriage motivated by self-interest ...............................................................................365 Hit and Run ........................................................................................370 Illegal return to the city.................................................................370 Defecting abroad ...........................................................................374 Chapter 12. Open Resistance ...........................................................................387 End-of-reign Tremors ....................................................................................387 1978–1979: A Trial of Strength between the Government and Society ........392 PART FIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE XIAXIANG “MOVEMENT” IN HISTORY Chapter 13. Socioeconomic Assessment .........................................................401 Diverting away from the Cities .....................................................................401 Xiaxiang and Urban Employment......................................................401 The Influence of Xiaxiang on Urban Growth ................................... 408 Xiaxiang and Delinquency................................................................. 411 Rural Development and the Closing of the Urban-Rural Gap .......................413 Xiaxiang and Development ................................................................413 Reducing the Urban-Rural Gap.......................................................... 417 Chapter 14. Political and Ideological Assessment .........................................421 Xiaxiang’s Political Stakes ............................................................................421 The Ideological Objectives ............................................................................423 Selection by Virtue .............................................................................424 Transforming Zhiqing into “New-type Peasants” ..............................427 Training “Revolutionary Successors” or Remodeling Youth ............. 429 Conclusion .........................................................................................................441 Economic Program or Political Movement? ..................................................441 International Influence ...................................................................................445

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Xiaxiang and the Limits of Totalitarian Power ............................................451 Death of Utopia and the Rebirth of Society ..................................................453 Glossary ..............................................................................................................457 Bibliography ........................................................................................................467 Index of Places ....................................................................................................499 Index of Persons ..................................................................................................505 Thematic Index .................................................................................................. 509

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INTRODUCTION

Preface

The movement to rusticate China’s educated youth was a fascinating experiment in Mao’s China, unequaled in history, including in other Communist countries (although there was a Soviet precedent). The imprint left by that movement, which attempted to transform millions of young urban secondary school graduates into peasants, supposedly for life, certainly bore deeper into the psyche of that generation than the chaotic experience of the Red Guard movement. Despite that, outsiders are familiar with the term Red Guards whereas very few have heard of the so-called educated youth. Even among scholars, this episode in China’s contemporary history has remained underresearched since the early 1980s, and many general histories of that period show a lack of knowledge and understanding about it. This is why I did not expect to have much difficulty in publishing an English translation of this book—the more so since the French edition received very favorable reviews in the English-language academic press from a few French speaking colleagues. On the other hand, I did not expect it to be published in Chinese, and that the Chinese version would receive such an enthusiastic response. After the Chinese edition was published by The Chinese University Press of Hong Kong in 2009 (and is now already in its second printing), a pirated version appeared five months later on the

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mainland (which can still be found in most large Chinese cities) as well as an authorized edition in simplified characters published in 2010 by the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House in Beijing, which is already in its fifth printing. Since it was published I have been invited to give lectures on the subject in many places in China and was surprised to see how vividly the memories of their experience (certainly the most important one in their lives) remained among the former educated youths, and the extent of their desire to understand it. I was also surprised to discover that almost half the audience was composed of their children, now approaching (or past) their thirties, who believe that their parents’ experience also indirectly influenced them. The reason for the success of the Chinese version of my book is probably its rather atypical nature. Although it is mainly based on my doctoral dissertation, it is the result of several periods of research on the topic spanning over thirty years, since the first time I met a group of Guangdong educated youths who had swum illegally across to Hong Kong in 1973, to the publication of the French version of this book in 2004 (see the Introduction for further details). The sources for this research are extremely varied and the objective is to provide a global perspective of the movement, viewed not only from the official stance but also from the people’s point of view. Its ultimate ambition is to raise questions about the Maoist regime that extend beyond the movement itself. This is why it is longer than the usual monographs on specific historical phenomena. The book’s atypical nature was, I discovered, a huge obstacle in the current standardized world of English-language publishing, where even in academe the number of pages depends more on the publisher’s business constraints than on scientific and didactic requirements. The translation issue was also a problem, since as one American friend put it, “publishers don’t understand why you didn’t write it in English in the first place.” Most Englishlanguage publishers want to see the entire book in English before signing a contract and refuse to pay for the translation, whereas the Commission Nationale du Livre in France will provide an allowance to cover part of the translation fees but only once a contract has already been signed. Obsessed by this Catch 22 situation, I had a flash of inspiration one night: since The Chinese University Press of Hong Kong also publishes books in English and since CUP has already published the Chinese version, why not ask them if they would consider publishing the English one? My deepest thanks therefore go to Gan Qi, Director of CUP, who immediately gave me a positive answer. She was ready to take the risk because she thought that this book deserved to be known outside of China as well. I would

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also like to thank Lin Ying, Managing Editor, Agnes Chan, Editor in charge of the English editing, and Angelina Wong, Business Manager with whom I have already worked in friendly cooperation on the Chinese version of this book. I would also like to mention Richard Gunde, who did a wonderful job as a copy-editor. And my special thanks too, to Krystyna Horko, who agreed to translate this long book mainly for reasons of friendship and also as a way of returning to the period when she was a foreign student in China, at a time when the movement to rusticate educated youth was still underway. I was lucky to have an English translator who is knowledgeable about Chinese affairs. Having a dual publication in Hong Kong is an honor for me. The Chinese University Press has done a remarkable job in publishing outstanding books on contemporary China, and Hong Kong remains the leading place for publications on contemporary Chinese history, especially the Cultural Revolution and the Maoist period. Even Maoist ideologues, like Deng Liqun, or Lin Biao’s (and Mao’s) comrades-in-arms Wu Faxian and Qiu Huizuo, published their memoirs in this “Special Administrative Region.” More than that, Hong Kong is where the study of the educated youth movement began. Most of the scholarly books and articles on this topic, including Thomas Bernstein’s seminal work Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside, have been the result of research carried out in Hong Kong, mainly with the help of the Universities Service Centre, now part of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. That was also the case for my own research. It is therefore only fitting that the English version of my book should be published where, in fact, it originated. Michel Bonnin

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INTRODUCTION

Xiaxiang, the Movement That Shaped a Generation

Between 1968 and 1980, some 17 million young urban Chinese were forcibly rusticated after completing secondary school. This massive organized migration was undertaken as part of one of the most radical political movements ever to emerge in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), because in principle those urban youths were to become peasants until the end of their days. Similar migrations had already taken place from 1955 to 1966, though on a far smaller scale and on a voluntary basis. The first of these, generally portrayed in China as being initiated by Chairman Mao himself, was directly inspired by a Soviet model launched by Khrushchev in 1953. However, in the PRC the form and the scale of this movement after 1968 made it an unprecedented phenomenon in both Chinese and world history. This experience deeply marked an entire urban generation. It overturned the lives of the millions of young people involved (more or less half their generation) and the lives of their parents, brothers and sisters, and impacted urban society as well as a broad swathe of rural society, which was obliged to accommodate these burdensome guests. The movement, a deliberate policy of Mao Zedong’s, had a devastating effect on the quality of education during that period. Even the urban youths who managed to avoid rustication suffered from the effects, which is why this entire generation has been dubbed the “lost

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generation” (shiluo de yidai 失落的一代). The sense of belonging to a specific generation was especially strong among the young people in secondary schools at the launch of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, who were packed off en masse to the countryside in 1968 and 1969. For these young people, contemporaries of the “’68 generation” in the West, their stay in the countryside (which lasted an average of six years but as long as ten or eleven years in some cases) had a more lasting impact than the Red Guard movement, which, though exceptional, was short-lived and largely disconnected from what preceded or followed it.

Finding the Right Words An overview of the Chinese terms related to this policy is useful to understanding its origins, objectives, and the forms it took. Historically, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a special relationship with the countryside. In contrast to most Communist parties elsewhere, which largely depended on the support of the urban working classes for their rise to power, Mao’s party relied on an army of peasants and a strategy of “encircling the cities from the countryside.”1 The term xiaxiang 下鄉 (“going down to the countryside”) was used by Chinese Communists as early as 1942, in the red (and overwhelmingly rural) bases of Yan’an, to refer to the temporary sending down of young cadres and intellectuals to the villages. After seizing power in 1949, and especially after 1955, the authorities called on young urban primary or secondary school graduates to “go to the villages” (dao nongcun qu 到農村去), “go down to the countryside” (xiaxiang), or “go up to the mountains” (shangshan 上山). Put together, the term xiaxiang shangshan 下鄉上山 was used in this context for the first time in 1956, in the “Plan for a National Program of Agricultural Development, 1956–1967” proposed by the Politburo (Political Bureau) of the Central Committee.2 At that time the expression was also used to describe the

1

2

For more information on the CCP’s rise to power, see Jacques Guillermaz, A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–1949 (New York: Random House, 1972), as well as Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971). Zhang Hua, “Shilun ‘wenhua da geming’ zhong zhishi qingnian shangshan xiaxiang yundong” (A Tentative Discussion of the Movement to Send Young Intellectuals Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages during the “Great Cultural Revolution”), in Tan Zongji et al., Shinian hou de pingshuo (An

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sending of cadres and intellectuals to rural areas.3 In reverse order (shangshan xiaxiang 上山下鄉), the expression was used specifically when referring to mountainous regions.4 The expression was increasingly used after the launch of a movement to develop mountainous areas in 1965, and eventually supplanted the other term used to designate sending down to the countryside. The headline of the People’s Daily editorial on July 9, 1967 read: “Uphold the correct line of sending educated youths to the mountains and countryside.” The great mass movement launched at the end of 1968 was called shangshan xiaxiang yundong 上山下鄉運動 (the movement to go “up to the mountains and down to the villages”). The reason for the term being inverted was not a genuine desire to promote departures to high altitudes, but more likely a reflection of the authorities’ desire to elevate the heroic and glorious aspect of the movement (Mao’s grandiose poems often refer to lofty mountains) and to play down the idea of “descending.” In everyday life, however, the term generally used in all these cases was xiaxiang and this is the one I shall use here. The young people involved were called zhishi qingnian 知識青年, an expression that was shortened in everyday language to zhiqing 知青. In English this term, which literally means “knowledgeable young people,” has been translated variously as “intellectual youth,” “urban youth,” “educated young people,” or “educated youth.” I will use the last here since it was the most common translation, notably used by the Beijing Foreign Languages Press in the 1970s, and frequently taken up by other sources since then. If this term seems slightly clumsy in English it is because the Chinese term itself is a coded expression that did not refer to all young people who had been educated, but exclusively to those who had been sent to the countryside or

3

4

Assessment Ten Years On) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 1987), p. 141. It seems to have been used in this context for the first time by Liu Shaoqi in his report to the Second Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee; see Renmin ribao (RMRB), May 27, 1958, p. 2. Jiangxi, for example; see RMRB, February 17, 1960, p.  4. On terminological problems, see work by T. A. Hsia (unfortunately written before the Cultural Revolution), A Terminological Study of the Hsia-Fang Movement (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1963). The term xiafang 下 放 (sending down) is normally used to designate the sending down of cadres and intellectuals, but is sometimes (inappropriately) used to designate the rustication of educated youth.

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who were about to go there.5 It is thus a perfect example of jargon. When the expression came into use in the early 1950s, a primary school certificate was all that was required to be an “educated youth.” At the time, this term was mainly used to designate young people from rural areas who had been educated in a town or a city and who were encouraged by the government to return to their home villages. But from 1955, and especially in the 1960s, the term was also applied to urban youth whom the government was persuading to work in the countryside after finishing secondary education. From that time on there were two categories: urban youths “going down” to the countryside (xiaxiang zhiqing 下鄉知青) and rural youths “returning” there (huixiang zhiqing 回鄉知青).6 Since this book will focus on the rustication of urban youth, I will not deal in depth with the “returning” group. Departures of young people from the cities to the countryside were organized from 1955 to 1980. However, I shall not address the 1955–1966 period in detail here, but concentrate more closely on the great mass movement launched after 1968, i.e., at the end of the Cultural Revolution in the strictest sense of the term. Although this movement inherited in part the institutions and practices that preceded it, it actually constitutes a specific historical entity by virtue of its size and authoritarian nature as well as the justifications used for it and its role in the political struggle that marked the end of Mao’s reign. Since we are dealing with what Confucius called the “rectification of names,” I will explain the definition of the Cultural Revolution used in this book. It is not used to refer to what the current Chinese authorities define as “the ten years of Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976). If that term is to have any real meaning, it can only be to describe the period of roughly three years from May 1966 to April 1969, during which violent struggles overturned part of the power structure and resulted in the establishment of a new regime at the Ninth Party Congress, during which the “victory” (and therefore the end of) the Cultural Revolution was officially enshrined.7 The only “revolutionary” aspect of this period was the active participation of a part of the population. Though encouraged and manipulated by Mao, this “rebellion” nevertheless had an element of autonomy and spontaneity, which means that the Cultural 5 6

7

See Zhengming, September 1984, p. 65: “She was still an educated young girl, but [once she had returned to Beijing] no one called her ‘educated youth’ anymore.” We must be careful, however, because in certain cases this term is used to designate urban youth going to the home village of one of their parents according to a system formally called touqin kaoyou 投親靠友 . See Note 42, Chapter 8. See the report made by Lin Biao to this congress, in Hongqi (HQ) 5 (1969), esp. p. 7.

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Revolution cannot be viewed simply as a coup d’état or a factional struggle. After the Red Guards were brought to heel by the army and sent down to the countryside (at the end of 1968), a new regime was established in April 1969 and a period of fierce factional struggle ensued. However, this was limited to the internal power structure and came to its logical conclusion in a coup d’état: the arrest of the Gang of Four in October 1976. The victors, those very people who had been defeated in 1966, have since used the same term to describe both periods, thereby rejecting the Cultural Revolution’s antibureaucratic rebellion (which was undeniably and inextricably linked to fascistic violence) and the sinister repressive period 1969–1976, which, strictly speaking, should be referred to as Mao’s fi n-de-règne. This terminological manipulation, which was based on a directive from the Great Helmsman himself in October 1974 when he decided that the time was ripe to resuscitate the Cultural Revolution, is now a vital element in the official reevaluation of the history of the regime, which Deng Xiaoping and the other victors of the internal party struggle transformed into an undeniable truth in 1981.8 In the 1970s, this distortion of meaning had yet to be fully accepted by the population. When the people I interviewed told me, without prompting, that they had gone to the countryside “after the Cultural Revolution,” they obviously did not mean “after 1976” but “from the end of 1968 onward.” In the 1980s, both meanings of the term were used in unofficial discourse and publications.9 Since the end of the 1990s, however, the official version has become assimilated into everyday language, along with its truncated conception of the history of this period. Since I believe that a lie, however many times repeated, never becomes a truth—and certainly not from any historical perspective —I will use the term with the meaning it had before Mao, and later Deng Xiaoping (each for their own reasons) decided to change it. When quoting sources that employ the other, later, definitions of the “Cultural Revolution,” I will always put it within quotation marks. To conclude this point, which is no

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9

See “Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi” (Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the PRC), HQ 13 (1981), pp. 3–27. We find an example of the term “Cultural Revolution” used, in my opinion correctly, in this sentence taken from the postface of a collection of short stories published in the 1980s: “After the Cultural Revolution, our fates were all alike: nearly all of us left our towns and our schools to go to the villages or the frontier regions.” See Lu Xing’er, Yiliu zai huangyuan de bei (The Stele Left on the Steppe) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1987), p. 459.

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minor detail, I would like to point out that many Western academics and former Red Guards exiled abroad also refute the current official definition. Even some historians working in the PRC now agree on this.10

The Questions The aim of this book is to provide broader all-round knowledge of the xiaxiang movement by presenting not only the proclaimed or hidden motives of the leaders who launched it and the means they used to fulfill their aims, but also the consequences those decisions had on society at large. This analysis of the movement will serve to illustrate the limits of totalitarian power and the paradoxical consequences of the Maoist utopia. When analyzing the termination of this policy, which coincided with the start of the reforms at the end of the 1970s, I shall also reflect on the changes that occurred in the relationship between the government and society during this period. The motives behind this policy most commonly emphasized by Western researchers, and later by Chinese researchers, are economic and demographic. Since the start of the 1950s, the PRC implemented a wide range of administrative measures aimed at limiting urban growth. It established a rigid household registration system which enabled it to control population movements, and sent graduates from rural backgrounds back to their villages, as well as a large number of cadres, specialists and, as we have seen, young graduates from urban backgrounds, to the countryside and the frontier regions. These measures made China a rare, if not unique, example of a third-world country able to equip itself with a fairly effective system of control over the influx of peasants into the cities, even to the extent of being able to organize an inverse population flow, from the cities to the countryside. This policy as a whole,

10

See Anita Chan, “Editor’s Introduction” to Liu Guokai, “A Brief Analysis of the Cultural Revolution,” Chinese Sociology and Anthropology (Winter 1986– 1987), p.  13, and particularly “Dispelling Misconceptions about the Red Guard Movement: The Necessity to Re-examine Cultural Revolution Factionalism and Periodization,” Journal of Contemporary China 1(1) (September 1992), pp. 61–85, and Liu Guokai (ed.), Fengshabuliao de lishi (History That Cannot Be Suppressed) (Hong Kong: Chongxin pingjia wenhua da geming congshu, 1996), Preliminary remarks, pp. 1–5, as well as Bu Weihua, Zhalan jiu shijie: wenhua da geming de dongluan yu haojie (1966–1968) (Smashing the Old World: Havoc of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–1968) (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2008), pp. xx and 793–94.

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especially the rustication of educated youth, set an example, or at least served as food for thought, for all third-world countries grappling with problems of excessive urbanization and lacking qualified personnel to promote the development of the countryside. But did the reality of the xiaxiang movement actually conform to this model? How important were the economic and political-ideological motives in launching and pursuing such an exceptional policy? The reduction of urban-rural differences and the union of intellectuals and manual workers were the proclaimed objectives of the movement and aroused a great deal of enthusiasm in the West, particularly among students at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s. But to what extent was xiaxiang actually motivated by the ideals put forward in official propaganda? Did it hasten their achievement? How significant, in this context, was the idea that urban youth needed to be “reeducated” by the peasants? Did the leaders have other political or ideological motives less explicitly put forward in official discourse? These are some of the questions I shall raise. The central issue will be that of the real-life experience of educated youths in the countryside, and the relations between them, the peasants, the cadres, and with work. I will then look at how the movement was terminated, and why, after twenty-five years, the practice of xiaxiang was brought to a definitive end in 1980; what effects the movement had on Chinese society, politics, and the economy; and what role it plays in contemporary Chinese history. Today it is at last possible to undertake an appraisal of the movement. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach because xiaxiang was a complex phenomenon situated at the intersection of numerous societal aspects. It cannot be studied without referring to the history of the CCP as well as the history of the PRC, or without addressing urban and rural economic problems, notably employment. Xiaxiang was also a political phenomenon at the core of the relationship between government and society, and it was equally a factor in internal leadership struggles. Moreover, the problems relating to the integration of urban youths in rural areas lie in the domains of sociology and psychosociology, and the impact of the experience on the mental development of the zhiqing had historical ramifications on the country’s attitudes and culture. Furthermore, xiaxiang brought about a large-scale migration whose effects, like its causes, need to be analyzed from a demographic perspective. Finally, in the domain of lexicography, a rich and specific vocabulary, both official and unofficial, emerged from this important social phenomenon (see the Glossary at the end the book).

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The Sources The difficulties of researching this subject lie not only in its multiple facets, but also in the varying degree of the reliability of sources. The movement took place at a time when information in China was firmly controlled and manipulated, and the principle of objectivity, even in statistics, was ignored if not derided. The government’s legitimacy was based on a fantasy image of sociopolitical reality. The people, namely the proletarian workers and their allies the poor peasants, all united behind the vanguard CCP and its glorious leader Mao Zedong, striding together toward socialist modernization while relentlessly struggling against the enemies of the people. Needless to say, for many years all that prohibited sociological research, and in fact any research into the country’s own history. The situation changed after Mao’s death and especially after Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic maneuverings at the end of 1978. Over the following years China partially opened up and began to publish statistics (including retrospective ones), and sociology reemerged as a valid discipline for research and teaching. However, since the political system remained fundamentally the same, the limits of these changes soon became apparent and many areas of study remained taboo. Until the beginning of the 1990s, that included the movement for rusticating educated youths, and the subject has remained a “sensitive” one even since then. Research is tolerated, but cannot be part of an official program.

Primary Sources The way to counteract the limited reliability of written sources is to find and critically compare as many sources as possible. Initially I relied primarily on oral sources. The large number of interviews I have carried out since the mid1970s have undoubtedly provided my most important material for understanding the real-life experiences of educated youth. In contrast to many (mostly American) specialists who, at the time, used this kind of source in a systematic and organized manner, I came to use it more or less by accident. In fact, my interest in this subject was the result of a personal encounter: a meeting with a small group of former educated youth from Guangdong who had managed to swim across to Hong Kong. Along with two other French students of Chinese also living in the then British Colony, I spent many hours talking with these refugees. The experiences they related, especially those in the countryside, both shocked and fascinated us. As with most things that went on behind the “bamboo curtain” in 1975, very little was known about

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the reality of xiaxiang. For their part, those ex-Red Guards were interested in what we could teach them about the West and, notably, the political ideals and social experiments of students from the May 1968 generation in France. As a result, we decided to write a book together about the experiences of rusticated Chinese urban youths, which was published in the form of collective interviews.11 This series of interviews was the starting point of my research and its primary source. Collective interviews are rarely used in sociology or in oral history. They can, however, provide an excellent starting point for an investigation into social (and thus collective) phenomena. As one specialist of oral history has remarked, we are always feeling our way at the start of any research project and consequently don’t always ask the right questions.12 The discussions that take place between participants in collective interviews help to offset these shortcomings. Obviously it was necessary to refer to other sources to complete and, to a certain extent, verify what I had learned in these interviews. With the benefit of hindsight, however, I realize that the facts reported by the interviewees, as well as their judgments of them, have overwhelmingly proved to be correct. In fact I never hesitated between the professions of faith expressed by model zhiqing in the official propaganda jargon of the time, and the living, authentic, testimony of interviewees who had no reason whatsoever to spend hours lying to us. But if I trusted them, it was not just because they seemed sincere. It was because the behavior and the emotions they shared with us seemed to be rational in their situation and therefore probably representative. Personally, I endorse using this kind of “empathy” in social science research. Obviously the first set of collective interviews was insufficient, since they focused solely on eleven ex-zhiqing, all belonging to the same small circle of friends, and whose experiences and ideas were fairly similar.13 In 1978 and

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See Jean-Jacques Michel and Huang He, Avoir 20 ans en Chine ... à la campagne (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1978). Jean-Jacques Michel is a collective pseudonym. Huang He (Yellow River) is the name of the magazine founded by our Chinese friends. See Philippe Joutard, Ces voix qui nous viennent du passé (Paris: Hachette, 1983), p. 225. Only one of them was not from the city of Guangzhou. There was one young woman in the group. All of them were sent to counties of Guangdong (although two of them had initially spent two years in Hubei). They had all been sent to villages, except for two young people sent to farms, one of whom had gone there

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1979 I therefore interviewed eighteen other former zhiqing on an individual basis (one of whom had later been an accompanying cadre for other educated youths) as well as three former peasants whom I questioned about how villagers perceived the urban youths.14 Our interviews were conducted and recorded on a semi-directed basis, in other words using identical interview guides for everyone, to which we added numerous other questions based on each interviewee’s responses. The interviews were conducted in two, sometimes three, sittings of roughly three hours each, with several days’ interval between them. Our questions focused on all the facts surrounding xiaxiang, but also on how the respondents felt about it at the time and what they thought about it at the time of the interview. We also questioned them about their reasons for coming to Hong Kong. All those from Guangdong had left illegally, with the exception of one of the three peasants. The two former zhiqing from Shanghai and the accompanying cadre from Zhejiang had left China legally thanks to family connections. The problem of bias in research based on interviews of mainland Chinese refugees in Hong Kong (as a result of their supposed hostility to the regime) no longer requires a detailed response today. Like Lucian Pye,15 we observed that far from trying to undermine the image of their country by exaggerating its negative aspects, the people we interviewed in Hong Kong were more likely to tone down the most difficult parts of their experiences in front of a foreigner, for reasons of national pride and a fear of not being believed. These types of interviews formed the foundations of the best works produced about China in the 1960s–1970s by Western researchers, and those that have best resisted the test of time.16 In order to supplement the oral accounts, which expressed the point of view of the people concerned, I also used two written sources: published

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before the Cultural Revolution. Other than these eleven people, a young “poor and lower-middle peasant” who also swam across, took part in some of the interviews. These interviews took place in Hong Kong in the offices of the Universities Service Centre, in accordance with the usual rules of this remarkable institution: the free use of a room and complete freedom of choice as to who could be interviewed. Lucian Pye, “Reassessing the Cultural Revolution,” China Quarterly 108 (December 1986), pp. 604–6. A partial bibliography of works largely based on interviews of refugees in Hong Kong can be found in Michael Frolic, Mao’s People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 257.

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eyewitness accounts and literature. Some interesting eyewitness accounts have been published by Chinese people currently living in the West, in Hong Kong, or in Taiwan. Among the sources available in Western languages, I have mainly used those collated by Michael Frolic, Liang Heng, and Yue Daiyun.17 In the 1980s, eyewitness accounts were also published inside the PRC, mostly in literary magazines and outside official propaganda. The two most interesting ones were from a series of interviews (including some with former zhiqing) conducted and edited by well-known authors.18 By guaranteeing anonymity to their interviewees, these authors were able to obtain “confessions” about events such as rapes or illegal activities in a way that no foreign researcher ever could, and which normally only the protagonists themselves, or people very close to them, would know about. For this reason, they are of special sociological value. Among these eyewitness accounts, the “thoughts on creation” (chuangzuotan 創作談) and autobiographies of authors or other well-known personalities are also very interesting.19 In China, “thoughts on creation” are a particular literary genre and form specific collections.20 The postscripts of literary works often adopt this form, which is a combination of autobiography and reflections on the process and vocation of literary creation. I have also made use of “reportage literature,” a genre that developed extensively in China during the 1980s, where it tended to compensate for