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,ChairmanMao 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.[1] Usually only the oldest child had to go,but younger siblings could volunteer to go instead.
Chairman Mao's policy differed from Chinese PresidentLiu 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.[2]
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.[citation needed]
Resettlement in the countryside (chāduìluòhù) was a more permanent form.[3][4]
Background
Certificate in honor of Down to the Countryside Movement
The Great Leap Forward campaign's aim was to increase agriculture,industrial productions,social change and ideological change. The Great Leap's goal of developing China's material productive forces was inextricably intertwined[5] with the pursuit of communist social goals and the development of a popular communist consciousness. This failed and could have ended Mao Zedong's influence. Instead of moving forward into a more modern country,Mao and the CCP took a step back to the past. Harsh weather and gross economic mismanagement resulted in the worst famine in history. Mao's position with the party was weakened,so he worked on a plan that would be his defining moment and would give the Chinese a national identity. From here,he plotted his return to the pinnacle of power,which resulted in the Cultural Revolution.[6]
The Cultural Revolution did bring important changes in the social character and political climate of life in China but not so much in its formal institutions.[7] Mao's power base was paramount. The revolution aimed to bring new social change in the 1960s and early years of the decade. The changes were important,nevertheless,vitally affecting the lives of the vast majority of the Chinese people.[7] The revolution was an urban movement. It fought what was seen as excess successes of a growing population of urban workers,students,and intellectuals,who were seen as the prosperous bourgeoise.[further explanation needed] Mao wanted those classes to be more well-rounded in their approach to seeking societal success. This would occur even at the cost of economic growth.[citation needed]
The Cultural Revolution consisted of many different smaller sub-campaigns that affected all of China,some of which came about quite quickly. One of these campaigns was the Monsters and Demons campaign that ran from 1966 to 1967.[8] The campaign's name refers to metaphors such as "cow demons and snake spirits" that were used to demonize one's political opponent during the Cultural Revolution.[9] Once someone was labeled as a "cow demon",they were to become imprisoned in a cowshed,storehouse or dark room.[10][pagesneeded] The country ended up in complete chaos once the Red Guards entered the picture. Therefore,the images displayed on posters showed a clear idea of what behavior and slogans were acceptable during this movement. From 1966 to 1968,all schools in China were closed,and the college entrance exams cancelled. Secondary and primary school students had the option to still go if they wished,which many did because they were curious as to what was going on. Schools were used as a rallying ground to interrogate those who were considered to be class enemies,such as teachers. In the beginning,the Cultural Revolution empowered the Red Guards into helping interrogate the class enemies and finding out whose houses to search and possibly destroy.[citation needed]
The Cultural Revolution started with Mao reaching out to high school students for ideological and material support. They were asked to target teachers viewed as possessing or propagating capitalist views and rebelling against them,which many were open to due to high academic pressure. During that time,the Red Guards participated in parades,mass meetings,and propagation and distribution of the Little Red Book. At this point,the politics initiated by Mao's government,along with the diminishing crops,had left the country in dire financial straits. Mao saw this as a prime opportunity to sow chaos and push the country towards the downfall of the old system,leaving a blank slate from which a reconstruction based on complete Communism would emerge. Thus,the central government did little to nothing to stop or discourage the Red Guards' acts,no matter how abusive.[citation needed]
Eventually,though,once Mao's cabinet tried to rein them in to start their program,most Red Guard squads refused to stop their activities,believing their fight not to be complete yet (or being unwilling to lose the privileges they held in the name of class struggle). Mao drastically changed his views about them and set up to break their power base by splitting them up.[citation needed]
From December 1968 onward,millions of educated urban youth,consisting of secondary school graduates and students,were mobilized and sent "up to the mountains and down to the villages" i.e. to rural villages and to frontier settlements. In these areas,they had to build up and take root,to receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle peasants".[11] Ten percent of the 1970 urban population was relocated. The population grew from 500 million to 700 million people in China. One way for Mao to handle the population growth was to send people to the countryside. Mao was from the countryside and wanted all educated youth to have experience there. This was a way for high school students to better integrate themselves into the working class. "In the beginning,the Cultural Revolution exhilarated me because suddenly I felt that I was allowed to think with my own head and say what was on my mind".[10][pageneeded] While many believed that this was a great opportunity to transform themselves into a strong socialist youth,many students could not deal with the harsh life and died in the process of reeducation.[citation needed]
McLaren, Anne (July 1979). "The Educated Youth Return: The Poster Campaign in Shanghai from November 1978 to March 1979". The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs. 2 (2): 1–20. doi:10.2307/2158728. ISSN0156-7365. JSTOR2158728. S2CID131104421.
Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese politician, political theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during that time. His theories are known as Maoism.
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his death in 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese socialism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. Though it failed to achieve its main objectives, the Cultural Revolution marked the effective return of Mao to the center of power in China after his political sidelining, in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine.
Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign within the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into an industrialized society through the formation of people's communes. Millions of people died in mainland China during the Great Leap, with estimates based on demographic reconstruction ranging from 15 to 55 million, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest famine in human history.
The time period in China from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 until Mao's death in 1976 is commonly known as Maoist China and Red China. The history of the People's Republic of China is often divided distinctly by historians into the Mao era and the post-Mao era. The country's Mao era lasted from the founding of the People's republic on 1 October 1949 to Deng Xiaoping's consolidation of power and policy reversal at the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress on 22 December 1978. The Mao era focuses on Mao Zedong's social movements from the early 1950s on, including land reform, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The Great Chinese Famine, one of the worst famines in human history, occurred during this era.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement and the Double Hundred Movement (双百方针), was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong, proposed to "let one hundred flowers bloom in social science and arts and let one hundred points of view be expressed in the field of science." It was a campaign that allowed citizens to offer criticism and advice to the government and the party; hence it was intended to serve an antibureaucratic purpose, at least on the Maoists' part. The campaign resulted in a groundswell of criticism aimed at the Party and its policies by those outside its rank and represented a brief period of relaxation in ideological and cultural control.
The Socialist Education Movement, also known as the Four Cleanups Movement was a 1963–1965 movement launched by Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China. Mao sought to remove reactionary elements within the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), saying that "governance is also a process of socialist education."
From November 1978 to December 1979, thousands of people put up "big character posters" on a long brick wall of Xidan Street, Xicheng District of Beijing, to protest about the political and social issues of China; the wall became known as the Democracy Wall. Under acquiescence of the Chinese government, other kinds of protest activities, such as unofficial journals, petitions, and demonstrations, were also soon spreading out in major cities of China. This movement can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Democracy Movement. It is also known as the "Democracy Wall Movement". This short period of political liberation was known as the "Beijing Spring".
Li Dazhao or Li Ta-chao was a Chinese intellectual and revolutionary who participated in the New Culture Movement in the early years of the Republic of China, established in 1912. He co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with Chen Duxiu in July 1921. He helped build a united front between the CCP and Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party (KMT) in early 1924. During the Northern Expedition, Li was arrested and then executed by warlord Zhang Zuolin in Beijing in April 1927.
Kang Sheng, born Zhang Zongke, was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, best known for having overseen the work of the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A member of the CCP from the early 1920s, he spent time in Moscow during the early 1930s, where he learned the methods of the Soviet NKVD and became a supporter of Wang Ming for leadership of the CCP. After returning to China in the late 1930s, Kang Sheng switched his allegiance to Mao Zedong and became a close associate of Mao during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and after. He remained at or near the pinnacle of power in the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1975. After the death of Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four, Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and in 1980 he was expelled posthumously from the CCP.
The Red Guards were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolishment in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.
Big-character posters are handwritten posters displaying large Chinese characters, usually mounted on walls in public spaces such as universities, factories, government departments, and sometimes directly on the streets. They were used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication. A form of popular political writing, big-character posters did not have a fixed format or style, and could appear in the form of letter, slogan, poem, commentary, etc.
The "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture" Campaign was a campaign organized by Mao Zedong in 1963. The campaign encouraged peasants from all over China to follow from the example of the farmers of the village Dazhai in Shanxi by practicing self-sacrifice and upright political activity.
The sent-down, rusticated, or "educated" youth, also known as the zhiqing, were the young people who—beginning in the 1950s until the end of the Cultural Revolution, willingly or under coercion—left the urban districts of the People's Republic of China to live and work in rural areas as part of the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement".
Founded in 1911, the Tsinghua University is located on the site of Tsinghua Garden in Beijing, the former residence of Prince Yinzhi, the third son of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty.
The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi (土改), was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War after the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945 and in the early People's Republic of China, which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants, with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.
Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan or Inquiry into the Peasant Movement of Hunan of March 1927, often called the Hunan Report, is one of Mao Zedong's most famous and influential essays. The Report is based on a several month visit to his home countryside around Changsha, capital of Hunan in early 1927. The Report endorses the violence that had broken out spontaneously in the wake of the Northern Expedition, makes a class analysis of the struggle, and enthusiastically reports the "Fourteen Great Achievements" of the peasant associations (农民协会).
Iron Girls is a term that was popularized in China during the 1950s through the 1970s. It was used to define a new idealized emerging group of working women who were strong and capable of performing highly demanding labor tasks, usually assigned to men. These tasks included repairing high-voltage electric wires, working at farmland, or heavy physical work. Beginning during the Great Leap Forward, Iron Girls were a symbol of shifting gender norms during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and in the years following the cultural revolution they faced harsh criticism. Iron Girls relied on the idea that men and women were inherently equal, but this idea was criticized by some feminists for its emphasis on the division of labor.
The Shengwulian or Sheng-wu-lien, derived from the Chinese acronym for the full name of Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee, was a radical ultra-left group formed in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. The rebel group became known for its opposition to local authorities installed by Beijing and for creatively re-interpreting the Cultural Revolution's official doctrine, becoming active during a period when the political trends of the Cultural Revolution were moving away from mass political mobilization.
Poor and lower-middle peasants include Poor peasants and Lower-middle peasants. This term was first used by Mao Zedong in 1955.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
