S14: Sent-Down Generation

• How did the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution end? Why did it give way to more violence?
• What is the sent-down youth movement? How did it change China?
• Were the sent-down youth victims? Why did many feel nostalgic about the Cultural Revolution?

• Mass insurgency: stigmatized individuals and political leaders targeted by Red Guards and workers (1966-1967)
• Armed clashes among factions: competition for power after collapse of civilian government (Mid to late 1967)
• Repression under military rule (1968-1976)

• Red Guard activism structured by existing party organization
  • Extensive hierarchy linking party organization to network of political loyalists
  • System of loyalty and activism
• Elite sponsorship from Mao and the Central Cultural Revolution Group

• Replaced Politburo in Feb 1967 in wake of top leadership purges
• Led by Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing, and allies from Shanghai propaganda dept
• Marginal political figures dependent on Mao’s political patronage
• Leadership role in Beijing insurgency: meetings with student leaders, intelligence networks, etc.

“Bloodline theory”

• Red Guards made up of revolutionary cadres’ children
• Political elites as hereditary political aristocracy
• “The son of a hero is a real man; the son of a reactionary is a bastard”

Student violence

• Red Guards attacked old educated elites in name of workers and peasants
• Official directives in Aug 1966: Local army and public security bureau prohibited from restricting Red Guards

• Escalation of economic demands: Higher wages, welfare, and urban household registration status, etc.
• Factory and gov officials held hostage and struggled
• New fault lines: Radicals (against local leadership) vs. Moderates (loyal to party apparatus)
• In Shanghai: Workers’ General Headquarters vs. Scarlet Guards

Impact:

• Military under renewed attack; factions against army found upper hand in struggle with rivals
• Summer 1967: climax of armed battles between rebel factions

Factional identities are defined by:

• Common interests and prior status of individuals, or
• Interactions that generate choices and outcomes?

Three distinct phases:

• Mass insurgency: stigmatized individuals and political leaders targeted by Red Guards and workers (1966)
• Armed clashes among factions: competition for power after collapse of civilian government (1967)
• Repression under military rule (1968-)

• Military commanders dominated top posts in new revolutionary committees
• Rebel organizations disbanded: “Struggle, criticize, transform” campaign against rebel leaders
• “Cleansing of the Class Rank” campaign and “May 16 Conspiracy”: witch hunts against former rebel leaders and counter-revolutionaries

• Sent-down youth: 17 million urban youth sent to the countryside
• Bureaucratic administrators re-educated through manual labor at rural May 7 Cadre Schools

• How could Mao’s chosen successor have fled China after an abortive coup?
• How could China realign with the United States, after thirty years of denouncing it as the primary enemy?
• Could the party still be trusted? What should people believe?

• Mao’s physical decline: Heart attack in 1972; in poor health and seclusion till end of life
• Zhou Enlai: Cancer diagnosis in 1972

• Retired Research & Learning Librarian, Dartmouth College Library
• Curator of Down to the Countryside Movement Collection at Dartmouth

Dec 10: The All China Sent-Down Youth Working Meeting stated that sent-down youth at border region farms would be treated as state factory workers, not enjoying special policies.

Dec 24: The news of the policy change was broadcast at Mengding Farm, causing anxiety.

Dec 25: Demand for urban residency permits back; beginning of a hunger strike after hearing of a state council investigation.

• What is their message to the state council?
• Why, according to the students, did they receive a different treatment from that of Educated Youth in the production and construction corps?

• How united were the sent-down youth?
• “We look forward to the arrival of the investigation team like children look forward to seeing their mothers.” Explain the imagined relationship between the state and the students.

• Harbingers of a progressive future
• Antithesis of the Four Olds (Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits)
• Examples: “Model operas”, “Barefoot doctors”, “Sent-down youth” campaign, including the Cultural Revolution itself

• Chinese medicine revived from stigmatization as “feudal” or “unscientific”
• Three folk resources: folk remedy, folk medicinal herbs, and folk drugs
• Foundation of rural public health system
• Combining Western and Chinese medicine

• Pioneering scientist who developed the world’s first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s and contributed to the Green Revolution
• Increased rice yields significantly, helping to alleviate hunger and improve food security.
• Advocated for the importance of sustainable farming practices alongside high-yield crops.

• Discovered artemisinin, derived from the sweet wormwood plant, in the early 1970s.
• Developed dihydroartemisinin, a more potent derivative of artemisinin, significantly improving malaria treatment.
• Received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015; the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science.
• Continued her research and advocacy for traditional medicine and its integration with modern science.

• Not tension between “pro-science” and “anti-science” factions
• “Combining indigenous methods with foreign methods”
• Emphasis on “home-grown policies”: local inventions and experimentations
• Instead of relying on trained experts, mobilization of peasants, rural cadres, women, youth

• A story of resilience, perseverance, and success
• Went down voluntarily to rural Shaanxi after purge against father Xi Zhongxun
• Recommended by local people to study at Tsinghua University as “worker-peasant-soldier student”
• Sent-down years as foundation of “man-of-the-people” leadership