The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League (CCCYL), the leading authority of the communist organization for young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight, recently announced that, over the next three years, it will send ten million college students to the countryside, in order to implement president Xi Jinping’s “important thoughts on youth work” and his Strategic Plan for the Vitalization of Rural Areas.
CCCYL issued the “Opinions on Further Implementing the Movement of Rural Vitalization and Accomplishment for Youth.” It swears that it will let Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, also known as Xi Jinping Thought, enter into young people’s minds and show in their actions.
The Opinions ask China’s young generation to participate in the rural projects to improve the local humanitarian environment without mentioning the details. It also includes entrepreneur projects where the young people start businesses and get rich. In addition, there are rural e- commerce fostering projects which are supposed to help 10,000 young people to use e-commerce to create jobs in the agricultural sector. College students will need to volunteer themselves to go to poor regions to gain experience.
It was very easy for Chinese people to relate to a Mao Zedong era movement half a century ago. In 1968, Mao believed that “it was necessary for young intellectuals to go to the countryside and be re-educated by the poor peasants.” He launched the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement.” It is estimated that more than 16 million young Chinese intellectuals, including Chinese president Xi Jinping, were forced to relocate to the countryside during the ten-year Great Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.
Many parents worry that the state will inevitably force their children to go to the countryside. Possible means (the state might use) include not issuing a diploma and youth not being able to work for the government.
Source: Central News Agency, April 10, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201904100216.aspx