Down to the countryside movement (China)
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- Work cat.: Chen, G. Tuhe sui yue, 2015:t.p. (上山下乡 = shang shan xia xiang; the author's personal narratives of experiencing the Down to the Countryside Movement)
- Wikipedia, June 2, 2017:Down to the Countryside Movement (The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement; many fresh high school graduates, who became known as the so-called sent-down youth (also known in China as "educated youth" and abroad as "rusticated youth"), were forced out of the cities and effectively exiled/deported to remote areas of China. Some commentators consider these people, many of whom lost the opportunity to attend university, China's "lost generation"; traditional Chinese: 上山下鄉運動; simplified Chinese: 上山下乡运动 = shang shan xia xiang yun dong; literal meaning: The Up to the Mountains & Down to the Villages Movement)
- Gore, L. Chinese politics illustrated, 2014:p. 20 (The "Sent-down Movement"; The "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement" (or simply "sent-down movement") was a policy instituted in the late 1960s and early 1970s.)
- Cockain, A. Young Chinese in urban China, 2012:p. 120 (shangshan xiaxiang (上山下乡, "up to the mountains and down to the villages") movement)
- Identity of zhiqing, 2016:p. 2 (Outside China, little is known about the process and implications of the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside (UMDC) Movement, a Chinese state policy from 1967 to 1979 in which more than 16 million secondary school leavers in different cities were relocated to rural areas. The movement shaped the lives of these young people and assigned them a shared group identity: Zhiqing, or the Educated Youth.)
- Chen, Q. Globalization and transnational academic mobility, 2017:p. 56 (According to interview data, most of the senior scholars had gone through an extremely difficult time with "down to the countryside movement" (shangshan xiaxiang) during the Cultural Revolution, and then experienced New Enlightenment (xin sixiang jiefang yundong) in the 1980s when Western ideas of freedom and emancipation streamed into China.)
- Encyclopedia of contemporary Chinese culture, 2009:p. 440 (Laosanjie ... They were the initiators of and main participants in the Red Guard Movement (1966--8) and the 'Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages Campaign' (Shangshan xiaxiang yundong, 1967--79), two movements that together spanned the entirely of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76))
- Zhongguo yan jiu, 1996:p. 115 (the Shangshan-Xiaxiang Movement as an integral part of the Cultural Revolution. In other words, I intend to stress its function as a cultural revolutionary mass movement)
- 'Down to the countryside', via alpha history website, June 6, 2017(In 1968 the Chinese government began its rustification campaign, colloquially known as the 'Down to the Countryside movement' or 'Up to the mountains, down to the villages'. The stated aim of this campaign was for young Chinese raised in the cities to relocate into rural areas, to live and work with the peasantry so that they could discard their bourgeois ideas. ... Over the next decade more than 16 million young Chinese would be relocated into rural areas, farming villages and mountain towns. Most of them were recent graduates from high school, in their late teens or early twenties; many were 'veterans' of the Red Guard brigades and the Cultural Revolution, which by then was in decline. Some went voluntarily, however those who resisted were forcibly relocated.)
- Mao's children in the new China, 2000:p. 6 (the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages movement)
- Google search, June 6, 2017(13,200 results for "Down to the Countryside Movement"; 6,240 results for "Down to the Countryside Campaign"; 2,890 results for "Sent-down movement"; 97 results for "Shangshan xiaxiang Movement"; 26 results for "Shang shan xia xiang Movement"; 550 results for "UMDC Movement"; 6 results for "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Campaign"; 2,070 results for "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement"; 768 results for "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages Movement")
The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, often known simply as the Down to the Countryside Movement, was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China between the mid-1950s and 1978. As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement. Usually only the oldest child had to go, but younger siblings could volunteer to go instead. Chairman Mao's policy differed from Chinese President Liu Shaoqi's early 1960s sending-down policy in its political context. President Liu Shaoqi instituted the first sending-down policy to redistribute excess urban population following the Great Chinese Famine and the Great Leap Forward. Mao's stated aim for the policy was to ensure that urban students could "develop their talents to the full" through education amongst the rural population. Many fresh high school graduates, who became known as the so-called sent-down youth (also known in China as "educated youth" and abroad as "rusticated youth"), were forced out of the cities and effectively exiled to remote areas of China. Some commentators consider these people, many of whom lost the opportunity to attend university, "China's Lost Generation". Famous authors who have written about their experiences during the movement include Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Jiang Rong, Ma Bo and Zhang Chengzhi, all of whom went to Inner Mongolia. Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress has received great praise for its take on life for the young people sent to rural villages of China during the movement (see scar literature). General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping was also among the youth sent to rural areas. Xi was a send-down youth for seven years until he enrolled in Tsinghua University's chemical engineer program in 1975. In 1978, the government ended the movement, but the sent-down youth were not allowed to return to their homes in urban areas, with exception of those who enrolled the university through Gaokao and some whose parents or relatives were high-level officials. After a huge wave of protest across the country by the send-down youth especially in Xishuangbanna, the State Council eventually allowed the send-down youths to return to urban areas in early 1979. Resettlement in the countryside (chāduì luòhù) was a more permanent form.
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