Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013. xiii, 229 pp. (Figures, boxes, B&W photos.) US$32.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-58901-987-4.
China’s Sent-Down Generation is a rare and detailed piece of scholarship into the management of a core part of the 1968–1978 Chinese Cultural Revolution, namely, the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside” rustification program which sent 17 million urban Chinese youth to rural communes, state and military farms for their “socialist reeducation.” These youths, referred to as “sent-downs,” typically laboured for long hours under harsh conditions. While at these farms, many also suffered hunger, injury and abuse, though some ended up at better locations, perhaps using their family’s connections. They are collectively referred to as China’s “lost generation” as their adolescent and young adult lives were thoroughly disrupted and deprived of educational, social and economic opportunities. Some youth were sent for undefined periods, sometimes until the program ended.
Rene’s book is largely based on extensive interviews of 54 sent-downs and others affected by the rustification program. It is an excellent piece of historical research, focusing on program administration. The program is placed in the context of Mao’s political struggles against the inevitably rising bureaucracy, Mao’s last stand to rid China of elitist tendencies of bureaucracy and technocracy and return to the revolutionary ideal of building a communist society based on peasantry. Here, rustification was to address the bourgeois tendencies of urban youth and help them reconnect with revolutionary ideals through physical labour with the peasantry, thereby also providing opportunities for self-actualization and contribution to the country’s development, as well as addressing problems of rising urban unemployment and social strife. Large programs often have precursors, which are described.
Rene describes a highly efficient design for recruiting people, documenting the working of the totalitarian state. At the national level, top leaders in China’s Communist Party (CCP) committees focused on rustification, and the State Council had special task forces. In the middle, trade unions, women’s federations, the Young Communists Leagues and schools were instrumental in assigning sent-downs to locations. At the bottom, neighbourhood or street offices of the government actively persuaded youth to sign up, “often by haranguing them at their homes all day and night” (81). Because of China’s strict hukou (locality registration) system, it was quite easy for the local Knowledgeable Youth Resettlement Office to gather information at the public security offices regarding families with eligible children. As one sent-down put it, “simply put, there is no way they will miss you and you can’t find any loopholes” (104). After youth reported to their neighbourhood school, they were told how to prepare for departure (cancel their hukou, receive tickets and clothes), and soon sent off to their new location. People had to go, because failure would have one’s hukou cancelled, leaving one without food rations and other necessities. An entire logistics chain was set up to ensure their transit. In some cases, volunteers readily signed up for the adventure. Surely, such state strategy and efficiency sound eerily familiar to some other dark parts of modern human history.
Interviewees reported that receiving sites were not well prepared for integrating arrivals with local communities, reporting that farmers often thought they were mere volunteers. Youth slept in sheds and emptied, substandard homes. Food was insufficient and horrible. Sanitary conditions were poor. Accidents were common on farms, and advanced medical care was typically lacking. As one person stated, “you simply could not imagine… how backwards everything was” (170). Language barriers existed. Some sent-downs suffered from sadistic treatment, especially on military farms. Rape and sexual favours were not much reported among interviewees who went to villages, but young women did find strong incentive to marry local men in order to reduce their physical labour in the fields. It was difficult to return to the cities, requiring bureaucratic discretion and connections. To be fair, the qualitative inquiry finds many different situations, including some in which the sent-downs were well treated and even discouraged from doing heavy work.
Some sent-downs report studying Mao’s thought in the morning, and at night reporting their own thoughts and consciousness in “struggle sessions.” Some interviewees found that it was not landownership that was at the root of all evil, but rather a system that failed to distinguish among individual performance: good or bad, efficient or inefficient. Some peasants were poor not because of landowners, but because they could not get ahead in the system; some were lazy or had no incentives. Every now and then an incentive was offered to which they would respond, including going home early when they finished some task. In short, many sent-downs awoke to a reality that was opposite the propaganda. Mao wanted youth reeducated but in the end they became the lost generation also because their ideas were now incompatible with official doctrine.
Some sent-downs found strength in surviving adversity, while others did not. The author also notes a paradox that while Mao’s rustification policy was partly a response to his disdain for rational, Weberian bureaucratic public administration, socialist reeducation would have been served better had it been better organized on the receiving end. All in all, the book relies a bit too heavily on the qualitative interviews, and better integration with existing studies and writings would have been nice, as well as insight into the coercive mechanisms of the state at different levels, and of the logic of people working in them. But the book operates in an area where access to officials and official documents is difficult or impossible. The relevance of this book to current-day affairs is also evident. Those familiar with public administration in East Asia may readily point to other instances of central governments embarking on power-driven and insufficiently conceived plans that are motivated more by political calculations. While the political context in the book has since passed, aspects of the portrayed decision-making style of the leadership still persist today. This book is a very valuable piece of scholarship that is to be celebrated as a significant addition to knowledge.
Evan Berman
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
pp. 839-841