Chinese universities controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have directed college graduates to go to the countryside for work, as China’s youth unemployment rate remains high.
It’s reminiscent of the massive Mao Zedong-era “sent-down youth” movement, which forced tens of millions of students to permanently relocate to rural areas from cities, observers say.
According to public data, the number of college graduates in mainland China is expected to reach 11.79 million this year, an increase of 210,000 from last year. The surge is likely to exacerbate the already intense employment competition. In response, authorities at colleges and universities across China have recently issued open letters urging graduates not to focus on finding civil servant positions or continuing their education.
Some colleges and universities also have suggested that students go to rural areas to “help poverty relief.”
Heilongjiang’s Heihe University’s Admissions and Employment Office posted an announcement titled “Employment Initiative for the Class of 2024” on its WeChat public account on March 2. It stated that students who haven’t yet found employment should be realistic about their current situation and adjust their expectations.
The letter also stated that students shouldn’t solely focus on government job entrance exams but also apply for grassroots service projects, such as going to rural areas to engage in poverty alleviation, supporting agricultural production, medical services, and education, or joining the “Western Plan,” which involves working in the less developed western regions of China.
The Fujian Normal University’s School of Economics recently issued a similar initiative.
“The supply of jobs within the official system and policy-based positions is limited, the demand for corporate jobs has shrunk, and the structural contradiction between supply and demand is prominent,” it said. “Against this background, the employment competition for graduates is fierce and the employment situation is severe. Students and parents should make a reasonable judgment of the current employment situation and pay attention to changes in employment policies in a timely manner.”
It also recommends that graduates join national grassroots service projects, “enlist in the military,” or go to remote areas for work after graduation.
High Unemployment Rate
China’s economy has continued to decline since the three-year draconian “zero-COVID” control measures that put the entire economy under lockdown.Last summer, more than 11.5 million college students graduated at a time when youth unemployment was at an all-time high. According to the CCP’s official statistics, 21.3 percent of Chinese youth between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas were unemployed in June of the previous year. Chinese scholars, who estimate that the real number could be as high as 46.5 percent, predict that the high youth unemployment rate and unemployment crisis will continue for a decade.
CCP authorities have repeatedly called on college graduates to “go to the mountains and countryside” to help alleviate poverty in underdeveloped areas. In 2023, several CCP provincial governments made plans for it.
A document posted online in 2023 by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs revealed that the Guangdong Provincial Communist Youth League Committee planned to organize 300,000 young people to move to the countryside over the following three years. The announcement evoked sensitive memories for many Chinese people.
From 1968 to 1978, about 17 million Chinese college and high school students, known as the “sent-down youth,” were forcibly sent to the countryside permanently to be “re-educated by poor and lower-middle peasants.”
Many of these students were the Red Guards who were active at the beginning of the “Great Cultural Revolution,” which the CCP initiated to erase traditional Chinese culture and Western ideals of democracy and freedom.
The Red Guards, comprised of college and high school students, formed militant groups across the nation. They were mobilized by the then-CCP leader Mao to attack officials whom he deemed not revolutionary enough. Their mission also included eliminating all remnants of traditional Chinese culture and purging society of all supposedly bourgeois elements through violence from 1966 to 1968.
In the process, they destroyed temples, artifacts, and historical buildings, and subjected officials, intellectuals, and innocent people to beatings.
After Mao regained full control of the regime from his political rivals within the CCP through the movement, the large number of Red Guards, having lost their usefulness, became a potential threat to the regime. That situation arose because schools had been closed during the Cultural Revolution, leaving them unemployed amid an economic recession and widespread poverty. Consequently, Mao forcefully relocated them to the countryside and remote areas.
China observers have pointed out that the CCP’s approach under current leader Xi Jinping of relocating youth to rural areas mirrors Mao’s strategy. The initiative masks an economic recession and the embarrassment of a high unemployment rate, thereby deceiving young people into moving to the countryside as a way to address the regime’s youth unemployment problem.
