A movement for change

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-11 08:00

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the central government faced an economy in crisis and struggled to deal with mass unemployment among young urbanites.

From 1955 to 1962, these youngsters were encouraged to establish farms in remote towns to make use of the land. Then the government began to more formally organize the movement of young urbanites to the countryside.

During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), university entrance exams and school classes were suspended. Vast numbers of school graduates and students could neither go to university nor get jobs.

On Dec 22, 1968, Chairman Mao Zedong summoned young people to countryside areas to "receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle farmers".

The young people who moved to rural areas became known as zhiqing or the "educated youth".

In the following 10 years, an estimated 12-18 million youngsters were caught up in the zhiqing movement, known as "up to the mountains and down to the villages".

Zhiqing spent their youth across the frozen northeast borders, in the desolated deserts in Inner Mongolia, on the barren fields of the Loess Plateau in the northwest and the humid forests in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

Many problems came to light in the early 1970s and in 1977 the national university entrance exams were reinstated and many zhiqing began to leave the countryside.

Finally, in 1980, the central government decided to end the movement and allowed zhiqing to go back to the cities.