Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    NEXT week, I will join some of my old comrades-in-arms to mark an unusual event — “shangshan xiaxiang yundong” or “the Movement of Educated Youth Settling Down In the Countryside.”

    The Movement roughly lasted between 1968 and 1980. In my case, it was 45 years ago in 1970 that I went to work with a farming unit in Xiaoshan, then a county bordering Hangzhou, my hometown.

    For Chinese born after the 1980s, the Movement was too remote to impress them. Few foreigners have heard of it.

    However, a lack of the knowledge of that history will not only leave one’s knowledge of the contemporary history of China incomplete, but will also miss the important key to understanding how China has evolved from a poverty-stricken country to the world’s second-largest economy in a mere 30 years and why China will achieve greater accomplishments in the coming decades in spite of serious challenges ahead.

    A brief review of that history will help readers form a more specific and vivid picture of China as is.

    In November 1970, when I was only 17 years old, I, like millions of other young students, answered “the revolutionary call” and went to the countryside to be “re-educated” through farming and manual labor.

    Believe it or not, at first, few considered it a painful experience to receive “re-education.” Two of my sisters and I found it exciting to start a new life in a “new world.” My sisters were sent to Heilongjiang, a remote northeastern province known as “the big north wild,” and I to Xiaoshan, then a farming county.

    It was not until the end of the Cultural Revolution, the ultra-left social disaster that almost destroyed the country, that the common people of China began to find out the background of the Movement and its nature.

    Before the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, China had suffered a severe economic setback during another failed movement — “the Great Leap Forward.” The nation was in extreme difficulties. But the ensuing Cultural Revolution added insult to injury, further bringing the nation to the brink of collapse.

    The nationwide turbulence soon threw the country into anarchy, resulting in the closure of many factories and every school. I barely finished my junior schooling before being “assigned” to be a farmer.

    It’s clear now that the Movement appeared to be the only option for the leaders at the time, as the government was unable to provide jobs for millions of graduates who abruptly left school. It was unimaginable what would have happened if millions of unemployed youths had stayed at home with nothing to do.

    In some sense, the Movement was an ingenious, though somewhat cruel, solution to a social crisis.

    Of course, as a bad policy, it hardly benefited anyone. As the victims of the policy, the young lost some of their best years that should have been spent in classrooms. Many of them lost the chance to acquire the knowledge or skills necessary to survive and compete with others in the upcoming market economy era.

    One of the few positive aspects of the Movement, however, was that the hardships we suffered in the countryside toughened many young people, bettered their personality and inspired their desire to change their destiny and that of the nation.

    Instead of groaning about my misery, I chose to seek an education on my own terms in my spare time. I read as many books as I could find to fill my pathetic knowledge gap. I sat the first college-entrance exam after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1977 and was admitted to a teachers’ university.

    Thousands of young participants in the Movement later became China’s elites, including President Xi Jinping.

    Taught by such grave mistakes as the Movement and the Cultural Revolution, China has adhered to people-oriented policies, placing the interests of the people before everything. Moreover, if China could withstand major crises like those, it can overcome any other problem.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)