ANALYSIS: Cultural Revolution Redux? China Revives ‘Down to the Countryside’ to Address Youth Unemployment

Youth at a job fair in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China, On June 14, 2023.. (CNS/AFP)

Fifty-five years ago, during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong introduced the “Down to the Countryside” movement to address rampant youth unemployment and quell potential threats against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Also known as “rustication,” (literally, “to be sent to the countryside”) it forced millions of urban young people into rural areas, leading to tragic consequences for an entire generation.

Now, faced once again with alarming levels of youth unemployment and fearing public unrest, the CCP is considering a second round of the unpopular policy.

Recent official data has shown an alarming surge in the unemployment rate among Chinese urban youth aged 16 to 24, reaching a historic high of 21.3 percent in June of this year. Further exacerbating the situation is an anticipated influx of 11.58 million college graduates into the job market this year.

According to research by Zhang Dandan, an associate professor of economics at Peking University, the actual youth unemployment rate is much higher than what the official figures indicate.

Ms. Zhang published her findings in financial news magazine Caixin on July 17. She wrote that if non-working young adults who are “lying flat” or relying on their parents are considered unemployed, the actual youth unemployment rate in China hit a whopping 46.5 percent in March of this year. That far exceeds the 19.7 percent that was reported for that month.

If the entire 16 to 24-year-old non-working population, which is reported at 16 million, is categorized as “unemployed,” the number of unemployed Chinese youth in this age group could soar as high as 22.3 million.

Youth Unemployment Threatens CCP Rule

China’s communist regime recognizes that a high youth unemployment rate could pose a significant challenge to its stability.

In November 2022, a 17.1 percent youth unemployment rate coincided with the largest government-targeted protest movement since the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident—the White Paper Movement—a protest largely led by college students.

The White Paper Movement refers to the large-scale wave of demonstrations that spread throughout China initiated by Nanjing University of Media and Communications on Nov. 26, 2022, commemorating the 10 victims of the Urumqi fire incident.

Participants held a piece of blank paper expressing their mourning for the victims of the fire while detained in their apartments under lockdown in Urumqi, in western China, on Nov. 24, 2022. The exits of the building were locked due to the CCP’s “zero-COVID” measures and firefighters had difficulty reaching the fire.

The white paper expresses opposition to the stringent COVID lockdowns as well as people’s demand for freedom of speech.

Recent data indicates that the youth unemployment rate has risen an additional 4.2 percentage points since then.

Deep concerns within the CCP were reflected in an article published by state media the People’s Daily in July. The editorial urged young people to contribute their talents and energy to areas of need within the nation, fields such as rural revitalization, green development, social services, national defense, and border security. It reminded them of their potential to become pioneers and a driving force, while also fulfilling a sense of purpose.

Not surprisingly, these ideas align with policies promoted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Quoted in People’s Daily in February 2021, China’s Central Agricultural Office repeated Mr. Xi’s goals, stressing the need to “adhere to the development of rural human capital ... vigorously cultivate local talents, guide urban talents to go to the countryside, promote professional talents to serve the countryside, [and] attract all kinds of talents to make contributions in rural revitalization.”

In December 2022, just weeks after the sweeping White Paper Movement protests that swept China, Mr. Xi spoke at the Central Rural Work Conference, once again pointedly stressing the need to revitalize the countryside: “to guide college graduates to their hometowns,” along with “skilled individuals, migrant workers,” and entrepreneurs.

At the same time, he made it clear that this was not merely a suggestion, but an effort that would be directed by numerous levels of party organization, forming a “strong battle fortress to effectively realize the party’s leadership.”

In April, Guangdong—considered one of China’s most economically liberal and prosperous provinces—took the lead in implementing the regime’s directives, rolling out a three-year action plan that will send 300,000 college students to the countryside by 2025. The plan aims to send hundreds of thousands of young people into rural areas for practical work and to enhance their rural development or entrepreneurial skills.

Despite the rhetoric, the term “Down to the Countryside” evokes deeply painful memories for many Chinese. The phrase has long been associated with starvation, violence, and mass atrocities.

An Old Tactic

The CCP has promoted the “Down to the Countryside” policy from its early days as a means of alleviating employment pressure.

On Aug. 11, 1955, six years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Daily published an editorial acknowledging that “Since the establishment of New China is relatively short, it is not yet possible to completely solve the employment problem in the cities ... Some of the graduates from high schools in the cities currently face certain difficulties in finding employment.”

In December of that year, Mao Zedong suggested that “All intellectuals who can work in the countryside should be happy to go there.” Subsequently, in January of 1956, China’s Central Political Bureau issued instructions, mandating “young people who graduated from junior high schools in cities, except for those pursuing further studies or finding employment in urban areas, to relocate to the countryside and actively participate in agricultural production.”

In early 1964, the CCP proposed a 15-year plan to send 12 million educated youth to the countryside between 1965 and 1980.

In all, from 1955 to 1966, approximately 1.5 million young people in China relocated to rural areas.

After the start of the Cultural Revolution, due to a severe backlog of high school and junior high school graduates in 1966, 1967, and 1968, the CCP escalated the rustication policy.

In December of 1968, CCP leader Mao Zedong initiated the effort, stating: “It is very necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo re-education with poor and lower-middle peasants. We must persuade urban cadres and the masses to send their children who have graduated from junior high school, high school, college, and university to the countryside. Let’s mobilize. Comrades in all rural areas should welcome them.”

‘It’s Not an Option Not to Go’

Over the next decade, more than 16 million young people in China were sent to rural areas. In 1969, the first year of the “Going Down to the Countryside” movement, nearly 2.7 million people were relocated, setting a record for the highest number of relocations in history. The age of those who went down to the countryside ranged from 15 to 25, but most were high school graduates.

At that time, the government employed compulsory measures to enforce the policy, pressuring young people to comply. Officials visited their homes to mobilize them, exerted workplace pressure on their parents, canceled their urban household registrations, and even withheld wages from their parents and siblings.

Propaganda slogans included, “It’s an honor to go down to the countryside, and it’s not an option not to go.”

Even after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, the push continued. In 1977, the CCP’s 11th National Congress called for the continued implementation of the “work of sending educated youth to the mountains and countryside.” As a result, about 2.2 million more educated youth were sent to the countryside.

Hopes and Dreams Cut Short

The history of the “Down to the Countryside” policy paints a picture of significant suffering and devastation experienced by countless young people. Caught in the waves of compulsory rural relocations, their potential and aspirations were cut short.

Unfortunately, for many of these educated youth, the reality of life in the countryside was far from what they had hoped for. Despite possessing knowledge and skills, they were often relegated to labor-intensive work. They faced hardships, political persecution, a lack of cultural opportunities, shattered dreams, and numerous other difficulties.

Chinese-British author Jung Chang candidly shared her challenging experience as a rusticant in her family memoir, “Wild Swans”:

“I began to learn to cook the hard way. The grain came unhusked and had to be put into a stone mortar and beaten with all one’s might with a heavy pestle. Then the mixture had to be poured into a big shallow bamboo basket, which was swung with a particular movement of the arms so that the light shells gathered on top and could be scooped away, leaving the rice behind. After a couple of minutes, my arms became unbearably sore and soon were shaking so much I could not pick up the basket. It was an exhausting battle every meal.”

Thousands of Rapes

Female rusticants also endured heinous acts of violence. Thousands were raped by active-duty officers in the Production and Construction Corps, according to internal reports from Xinhua News Agency.

According to a report by The Epoch Times Chinese language edition, tens of thousands of female rusticants suffered brutal rapes during the Cultural Revolution. The number of Chinese women raped by their fellow Chinese is thought to surpass the number of rapes perpetrated by the invading Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937-38.

Many women were subjected to rape by local brigades, commune officials, or CCP soldiers. Some were raped in exchange for job opportunities, college admission, or a chance to return to the city. Tragically, finding no help or justice, many of these young women resorted to suicide or met untimely deaths.

One example highlights the plight of a group of young women from Chongqing who settled in the Dabashan area of China’s northeastern Sichuan Province, in the mid-1960s. During the Cultural Revolution, nine out of the ten were raped by local officials, and two of them committed suicide by jumping into the water. Their deaths were misreported as “drowning while swimming” by the government investigation.

The Real Motive Behind Rustication

Mao Zedong justified sending urban youth to the countryside as an opportunity for them to “undergo re-education with poor and lower-middle peasants.” On Dec. 22, 1968, People’s Daily took a disparaging tone towards unemployed youth in an editorial entitled “We too have two hands, let us not laze about in the city.”  It quoted Mao as saying, “The intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in poverty.”

Following Mao Zedong’s death, however, official CCP documents acknowledged that the true motive behind the “Down to the Countryside” campaign was to address the escalating urban youth unemployment rate.

In October 1981, the CCP State Council Office of Leadership for Educated Youth admitted in a document titled “A Review and Summary of the Work of Educated Youth in the Past 25 Years” that the movement was initiated in the 1950s as a response to China’s challenges of a large population, weak foundations, and employment difficulties.

The CCP admitted that re-education was a pretext. The “History of the Communist Party of China,” published by the Central Research Office for Party History, acknowledged that Mao Zedong began the campaign to address the unemployment issue. The book points out,

“After the start of the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ because universities stopped admitting students, factories basically stopped hiring workers, and commercial and service industries were stagnant, urban junior and senior high school students could neither continue their education nor find jobs. In 1968 alone, the backlog of junior and senior high school graduates from the 1966, 1967, and 1968 batches reached more than 4 million.”

Therefore, under the pretext of “receiving re-education with poor and lower-middle peasants,” the CCP, through “Down to the Countryside,” disposed of several million unemployed university and high school graduates as if getting rid of a burden.

Historians Glenn Kucha and Jennifer Llewellyn wrote about the “Down to the Countryside” movement, stating, “The Cultural Revolution was slowing, and Mao’s power had been restored but China’s cities still housed millions of militant young students, and there were insufficient jobs and university enrollments for them. Having cities awash with millions of politically volatile youths was an untenable risk for Mao and the CCP.”

55 Years Later, the Same Dilemma

After the CCP’s COVID-19 lockdowns led to the tragic apartment fire in Urumqi, the White Paper Movement started and people chanted slogans like “Long live the people.”

The gathering sparked a wave of demonstrations across 21 provinces in China and many locations overseas, with crowds gathering in several major cities. The wave of protests that started in Nanjing and Shanghai spread to Beijing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Changchun, Chongqing, Xi'an, Wuhan, and other places. At least 207 universities responded by organizing protests.

Although the immediate cause of the protests was anger at the CCP’s strict zero-COVID measures, it went hand in hand with growing economic anxiety. In Shanghai, protesters shouted, “It’s been three years, and we still don’t have jobs!”

On the social media platform Douban, more than 55,000 people have joined the “Fresh Graduate Anti-Anxiety Group,” where they expressed their frustrations with the dismal job market.

In June, as millions of students graduated from Chinese universities, the traditional pictures of joyful graduates tossing their caps into the air were replaced by viral photos of graduates discarding their diplomas, slumped dejectedly over park benches or laying on the ground in despairing poses.

The hopeless outlook of these college grads feeds into the “lying flat movement,” which began in April 2021 with a post entitled “lying flat is justice,” which shared the author’s philosophy: after years of joblessness, he embraced a lifestyle of renunciation and simple living, dropping out of the struggle to find employment or work relentlessly.

The CCP has not been silent on the movement toward a slower-paced life. State media expressed disgust and disapproval, with one state TV commentator scolding, “To accept misfortune is fine, but ‘lying flat’ is not.” The search function for “lying flat” was disabled on WeChat, where the phrase was trending, and “lying flat” discussion groups and merchandise were censored.