Mao’s China · CHAPTER 10 ·
Down to the Countryside Movement
Chapter 10 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976: “Down to the Countryside”
From December 1968 Mao sent educated urban youth to be “re-educated” by peasants, and over the next decade about seventeen million school leavers went to villages and army-run frontier farms. The policy dispersed the Red Guards, and in September 1971 Mao’s chosen heir Lin Biao died fleeing China.
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The map above is the world of China, September 1971 — Lin Biao’s flight; Beijing takes China’s UN seat.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
By the end of 1968 Mao had a problem with the young people who had made his Cultural Revolution. His 1966 movement had turned against the Communist Party, the single party governing every level of China, and the army had restored order. In December 1968 Mao declared that educated youth should go to the countryside to be “re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants”. About seventeen million urban school leavers went “up to the mountains and down to the villages” over the next decade, following routes like the red arrows from Shanghai and Beijing.
Most joined production teams, village work groups of a few dozen households within communes, like the smallest branch of a very large firm. Others went to army-run state farms on the frontiers. Their departure dispersed the Red Guards, the student militants of 1966–68 who had acted much like a youth militia, and eased unemployment in stalled city economies. It also served Mao’s belief that city people should learn from peasants. For the young, the result was years of hard labor, interrupted education and separation from family; many compared it to exile.
The army governed more directly than at any time since 1949. Soldiers dominated revolutionary committees, the army-backed local governments established in 1967–68, rather like emergency administrations after a coup. They ran factories and schools and led purges, including a hunt for a supposed “Inner Mongolian People’s Party” that killed tens of thousands.
At the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969—a national conference of delegates much like a party convention elsewhere—Defense Minister Lin Biao was written into the Party constitution as Mao’s successor. Within two years Mao distrusted him. After a plot by Lin’s son against Mao was exposed, Lin fled with his family on 13 September 1971. Their jet crashed in Mongolia, shown by the dark arrow and the marker at Öndörkhaan. The map shows solid red provinces and an armed northern border, but the army that had restored Mao’s order had produced a rival he could not tolerate. The announcement that his chosen successor had died as an alleged traitor shook public faith in Mao more deeply than anything since 1949.
The full story
Mao’s directive of 22 December 1968 expanded an existing, small policy into a mass movement. Sending urban youth to the countryside solved several problems at once. Schools had closed in 1966, and three years of graduates had accumulated with nowhere to go in the cities. Their departure relieved the cities of mouths to feed and removed the Red Guards, who had fought in Mao’s name since 1966, as a political force.
Mao also saw a lesson in the move. At the Communists’ wartime base at Yan’an, his own generation had learned through labor and contact with peasants; he wanted the young to acquire similar toughness and values. Some volunteered enthusiastically. Most went under pressure: refusal meant losing household registration, the internal residence permit tying a person to one place, rather like a passport valid in one town. The ration book went with it. In January 1969 fifteen-year-old Xi Jinping was sent to a cave village in northern Shaanxi. Members of this generation would later rule China.
Conditions depended on where the young people were sent. Many joined production teams, groups of a few dozen households within communes, and lived among peasants who often resented extra mouths to feed. Their work earned points paid out in shares of the harvest, yet these were too small to live on. Food, housing and permission to leave depended on cadres, local Communist Party officials who acted as employer, landlord and police at once. On army-run farms from Heilongjiang to Yunnan, young people cleared forest and marsh under military discipline.
Abuse was common. In the 1970s the state acknowledged the sexual abuse of young women by local officials. For most, education stopped; marriage and family life were delayed. The young eventually pressed to leave. In 1978–79 workers on the Xishuangbanna rubber farms struck and petitioned Beijing, while others blocked railways in Shanghai. The policy was abandoned and most returned to cities by 1980. The historian Michel Bonnin calls them a “lost generation”; their testimony shaped China’s memory of the Mao years.
Meanwhile, the force that had restored order was acquiring exceptional power. At the Ninth Congress, the Party’s national conference, in April 1969, Lin Biao was named Mao’s “close comrade-in-arms and successor”. Nearly half the new Central Committee came from the military. This ruling council of some two hundred members was roughly the Party’s national executive, and the war scare with the Soviet Union that year made the army more important still.
Mao grew suspicious of that concentration of power. At Lushan in August 1970 Lin’s supporters pressed to restore the post of head of state, which Mao read as a bid for power. In 1971 Lin’s son, Lin Liguo, drew up a coup plan codenamed Project 571. When it collapsed, the family fled north from Shanhaiguan. Their plane crashed near Öndörkhaan on 13 September, killing all nine aboard. The official account made Mao’s chosen successor a traitor. For many Chinese, the supposedly infallible chairman now looked fallible.
FULL EXPLANATION
Why send seventeen million young people down?
The movement sent about seventeen million young people down between 1968 and 1980, a well-documented figure. Why did it become so large? As sources have opened, historians have given different weight to economic, political and ideological reasons. Michel Bonnin’s The Lost Generation uses official statistics and documents to identify employment as the decisive pressure: disrupted cities and closed universities could not absorb millions of baby-boom school leavers. Sending Red Guards away also ended factional fighting that the army had struggled to contain. Mao’s ideological justification mattered too. He sincerely believed the young should learn from peasants and narrow the distance between town and countryside. Pan Yihong’s study of frontier state farms follows some volunteers from initial enthusiasm to disillusionment. Revolutionary idealism and a practical answer to an employment crisis could operate in the same policy.
The army state, 1968–71
Between 1968 and 1971 soldiers governed China more directly than at any time since 1949. Their presence was visible in both the leadership and the daily work of institutions. Officers chaired most revolutionary committees. Under “three supports and two militaries”, the army supported the left, industry and agriculture and imposed military control and training, placing soldiers in factories, schools and ministries. Workers’ and soldiers’ propaganda teams took over universities. The army also led the period’s bloodiest purges: the “cleansing of the class ranks”, the “One Strike, Three Anti” campaign of 1970, and the hunt in Inner Mongolia for a fictional Inner Mongolian People’s Party. Official figures later acknowledged 16,222 deaths in that hunt; scholars estimate up to 100,000. Government officials meanwhile went to “May Seventh Cadre Schools”, farms where they did manual labor and studied Mao’s works. Historians such as Andrew Walder call this military rule. Its dismantling began with Lin Biao’s fall in 1971.
What really happened to Lin Biao?
According to the official account, Lin Biao plotted to kill Mao and fled toward the Soviet Union as a traitor. Historians have complicated almost every part of that story. Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun argue in The Tragedy of Lin Biao that Lin was ill and passive, never sought the succession and had little to do with the coup plan. They attribute the plan to his son Lin Liguo and a few young officers. Jin Qiu, whose father was one of those officers, reconstructs the family’s last days. Lin’s daughter Lin Liheng alerted authorities to the flight; Zhou Enlai tracked the aircraft but did not have it shot down. Whether it ran out of fuel or attempted a forced landing remains disputed. The political effect is clearer. Project 571’s documents circulated for study, and millions read their criticism of Mao as a modern “First Emperor” in order to condemn it.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The Red Guards had served their purpose. The students Mao had hailed as the revolution’s vanguard became a problem for him. By 1968 factions fought with guns, universities such as Tsinghua had become battlegrounds, and the army was tired of policing them. In July Mao told Red Guard leaders they had failed him; workers’ propaganda teams took over campuses. Sending students to the countryside removed them from politics without admitting that the movement had gone wrong. They were now told they needed re-education.
No jobs in the cities. The cities faced a large group of school leavers without work. Two years of fighting had disrupted factories, and schools and universities had closed in 1966. The baby-boom generation born in the 1950s was leaving school, but city governments could neither feed nor employ it. Villages and frontier farms received the burden without the countryside having a say. Household registration made the transfer enforceable: refusal meant a young person could not legally live or eat in the city.
Mao’s faith in the peasant revolution. Mao’s own revolution had been won in the villages. He feared that educated city people might become a privileged class separated from the masses, and wanted peasants to teach the young while labor toughened them. The term “re-education” gave a practical measure the force of a moral duty. Parents who wanted their children home had to argue against the Chairman’s words, and opposition could look like opposition to the revolution itself.
An army that had become indispensable. The army had made itself indispensable by restoring order through revolutionary committees. The 1969 border war with the Soviet Union increased its importance. Officers filled the Central Committee, and their leader Lin Biao became Mao’s designated successor. Mao had used the army to defeat the Party, but its accumulated power now alarmed him. Lin’s position depended on Mao’s favor, and that favor could be withdrawn.
THE TURNING POINT
Öndörkhaan, 13 September 1971. Lin Biao had helped build Mao’s cult and was named as his heir in the Party constitution. After the crash at Öndörkhaan on 13 September 1971, the chosen successor was announced as a traitor who had plotted murder. The announcement raised a damaging question for a cult built on Mao’s infallibility: how had he chosen such a man? Many people later recalled this as the moment they stopped believing. Lin’s generals were arrested within days, ending the army’s political dominance. The affair also pushed Mao to rely on Zhou Enlai, restore purged officials such as Deng Xiaoping and pursue an opening to the United States.
What it changed
Washington becomes the answer. The Soviet threat remained on China’s northern border after Lin’s fall. Mao and Zhou Enlai accelerated their secret approach to the United States, and Nixon’s visit was confirmed within months. In October 1971 the People’s Republic took China’s seat at the United Nations. Zhou managed the crisis at home as well as the opening abroad, becoming the most powerful figure after Mao.
The soldiers sent back to barracks. Lin’s leading generals were arrested within days of the crash, and civilian Party committees regained authority in the provinces. In December 1973 Mao rotated commanders of eight military regions so that none could build a personal power base. Military government ended, though soldiers remained powerful. Mao had used the army to break the Party; now he used the Party to rein in the army.
Deng Xiaoping returns. The return of purged officials supplied Mao with experienced administrators and gave those officials a quiet constituency for ending campaigns. Deng Xiaoping became a vice-premier again in 1973 and soon ran the government for the ailing Zhou Enlai. That position made him the radicals’ main target and prepared the succession struggle that would decide China after Mao.
A generation that remembered. Sent-down youth began returning to the cities from 1978, carrying memories of lost years and skepticism about slogans. Their memoirs, stories and films, beginning with the “scar literature” of the late 1970s, shaped China’s memory of the Mao years. Village life had shown them rural poverty and how little slogans could change it. Some, including Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, later led the country.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — How far did the movement to send urban youth “up to the mountains and down to the villages” achieve Mao’s aims?
The movement met its immediate political aims. Within two years millions had left the cities, dispersing the Red Guards, ending urban factional fighting and reducing unemployment. Mao also wanted young people to learn revolutionary values from peasants and narrow the gap between town and country. Here the result was much less favorable. Many peasants resented the newcomers, while most young people wanted to return home. Bonnin’s research shows the divide reinforced: their greatest wish was to recover the urban residence permits the state had taken away. Experience and memory varied with the place and the person. Some former sent-down youth found resilience and knowledge of rural poverty in those years. Strikes and protests ended the movement in 1978–79. Coercive social engineering had achieved short-term political goals while producing the opposite of the society it promised.
An interesting fact
Li Qinglin, a primary-school teacher in Fujian, wrote to Mao in December 1972 about his son, who had been sent to a village and could not earn enough food to live on. Li reported exploitation and abuse of other young people too. Mao replied in his own hand in April 1973, in words that translate roughly as: “Comrade Li Qinglin, I am sending you 300 yuan to make up for your shortage.” He recognized that such problems existed throughout China and needed an overall solution. The letter circulated to officials; a national conference that summer raised allowances and ordered punishment for officials who abused sent-down youth.
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