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The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China's Educated Youth
The Lost Generation is a vital component to an understanding of Maoism. Bonnin provides a comprehensive account of the critical movement during which seventeen million young -educated- city dwellers were supposed to transform themselves into peasants, potentially for life. Bonnin closely examines the Chinese leadership's motivations and the methods that it used over time to implement its objectives, as well as the day-to-day lives of those young people in the countryside, their difficulties, their doubts, their resistance, and, ultimately, their revolt. The author draws on a rich and diverse array of sources, concluding with a comprehensive assessment of the movement that shaped an entire generation, including a majority of today's cultural, economic, and political elite.
- GenresChinaHistoryNonfiction
576 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 16, 2020
1. Overview: For people already in touch with that generation, this book contains well-known facts, just in a more scientific way.
For people unfamiliar with that, this book is a good historical study (and can help economic predictions).
2. Gold-thumb rule: Top-down social engineering can be too artificial to success in real society. Successful policies in history require instant feedback systems, law enforcement, and scientific system designers. Considering possible corruption or dogmatic implementation, democracy might also be a necessary condition for success.
3. Academic takeaway: Before this book, most outsider scholars, such as US researcher Bernstein and German researcher Scharping, think that the reason for this movement is to alleviate employment pressure in cities (as opposed to rural areas). This is a typical solution -- using an economic way of thinking to interpret Chinese social phenomena.
However, the author refutes such an approach by the fact that in that decade, 1.4M people went to cities for work, of which 800K are peasants. The labor exchange between urban and rural areas includes 800K people.
Constructively, the special social conditions, such as the political environment and socialism & Maoism trends, are the key to analysis on that generation. Numbers are the effect, but not the cause. Learning from the effect (numbers) is not as fruitful and incise as learning from the cause (political and social reasons).
4. Facts:
(1) The original motivation for Mao Zedong: (a) In his career path, he was at most a librarian but not a scholar who could receive respect. So he mentioned to his cousin that he disliked knowledgeable people, and, more importantly, knowledge is not key to his success, so knowledge must be useless. <- Beware of the logical fallacy here. So he urged all urban teenagers who should have gone to school at that age to devote themselves to villages and live with peasants. (b) Ideology engineering: He wished to insulate that whole generation away from knowledge, and learn the socialism type of selflessness, when they put their hands on real agriculture production. (c) Political strengthening: He aimed to strengthen his charisma and power as a leader of such a big country. (d) He wanted to develop economies of the rural areas, and alleviate population boost and unemployment in the cities.
(2) Before going to the rural areas, most urban teenagers, influenced by propaganda, thought that poor peasants are industrious and ambitious, as depicted in the ideal socialism picture.
After they were in the villages, they found that peasants only care about getting enough food to survive. Between peasants and urban teenagers emerged vicious competition, resulting in both parties’ reporting bad things about each other to officials in charge.
Another proof is that urban teenagers, after realizing the cruel truth, wanted to return to cities so eagerly that they bribe village officials, and females even use sex to exchange for opportunities to return to their homes in the city. In 1978, urban teenagers use their blood to write petition letters, strike, and went on hunger strike to show their wish to return. A survey by the communist party found that, in every village they went to, people kneed down to apply to go back.
Some distorted reward systems: If some urban teenagers wanted to return to their home cities, they must claim on the surface that they were willing to devote themselves to the villages for their whole life. In this way, they show their loyalty to socialism, so that they could have a chance to be one of the few to return. Blindly asserting socialism filtering systems resulted in more hypocriticism, and distortion of morality to exchange for survival needs.
(3) Result: The own 1950s generation was very scary -- later becoming either disappointed with life or opportunistic. That own generation lost themselves under the governmental propaganda and control of thoughts. This loss took place together with deprivation of education during their golden years, and later, their impossibility of good career paths. Even when you look at the “porcelain bumpers” in news articles, where fraudsters throw themselves in front of a vehicle and demand that the driver pay for their self-inflicted (or nonexistent) injuries, -- many of these people were the old, un-educated generation who were lost in the rustification movement.
For people unfamiliar with that, this book is a good historical study (and can help economic predictions).
2. Gold-thumb rule: Top-down social engineering can be too artificial to success in real society. Successful policies in history require instant feedback systems, law enforcement, and scientific system designers. Considering possible corruption or dogmatic implementation, democracy might also be a necessary condition for success.
3. Academic takeaway: Before this book, most outsider scholars, such as US researcher Bernstein and German researcher Scharping, think that the reason for this movement is to alleviate employment pressure in cities (as opposed to rural areas). This is a typical solution -- using an economic way of thinking to interpret Chinese social phenomena.
However, the author refutes such an approach by the fact that in that decade, 1.4M people went to cities for work, of which 800K are peasants. The labor exchange between urban and rural areas includes 800K people.
Constructively, the special social conditions, such as the political environment and socialism & Maoism trends, are the key to analysis on that generation. Numbers are the effect, but not the cause. Learning from the effect (numbers) is not as fruitful and incise as learning from the cause (political and social reasons).
4. Facts:
(1) The original motivation for Mao Zedong: (a) In his career path, he was at most a librarian but not a scholar who could receive respect. So he mentioned to his cousin that he disliked knowledgeable people, and, more importantly, knowledge is not key to his success, so knowledge must be useless. <- Beware of the logical fallacy here. So he urged all urban teenagers who should have gone to school at that age to devote themselves to villages and live with peasants. (b) Ideology engineering: He wished to insulate that whole generation away from knowledge, and learn the socialism type of selflessness, when they put their hands on real agriculture production. (c) Political strengthening: He aimed to strengthen his charisma and power as a leader of such a big country. (d) He wanted to develop economies of the rural areas, and alleviate population boost and unemployment in the cities.
(2) Before going to the rural areas, most urban teenagers, influenced by propaganda, thought that poor peasants are industrious and ambitious, as depicted in the ideal socialism picture.
After they were in the villages, they found that peasants only care about getting enough food to survive. Between peasants and urban teenagers emerged vicious competition, resulting in both parties’ reporting bad things about each other to officials in charge.
Another proof is that urban teenagers, after realizing the cruel truth, wanted to return to cities so eagerly that they bribe village officials, and females even use sex to exchange for opportunities to return to their homes in the city. In 1978, urban teenagers use their blood to write petition letters, strike, and went on hunger strike to show their wish to return. A survey by the communist party found that, in every village they went to, people kneed down to apply to go back.
Some distorted reward systems: If some urban teenagers wanted to return to their home cities, they must claim on the surface that they were willing to devote themselves to the villages for their whole life. In this way, they show their loyalty to socialism, so that they could have a chance to be one of the few to return. Blindly asserting socialism filtering systems resulted in more hypocriticism, and distortion of morality to exchange for survival needs.
(3) Result: The own 1950s generation was very scary -- later becoming either disappointed with life or opportunistic. That own generation lost themselves under the governmental propaganda and control of thoughts. This loss took place together with deprivation of education during their golden years, and later, their impossibility of good career paths. Even when you look at the “porcelain bumpers” in news articles, where fraudsters throw themselves in front of a vehicle and demand that the driver pay for their self-inflicted (or nonexistent) injuries, -- many of these people were the old, un-educated generation who were lost in the rustification movement.
January 8, 2025
An eye-opening book on the Culture Revolution.
February 16, 2021
失落的一代
作者主要分析上山下乡(大致1960s-1980s)这个运动。据作者自己透露，他最初是从一批从大陆偷渡到香港的青年口中了解到一些当时的情况以及青年对此运动的看法，由此产生兴趣，希望通过记录这样一场运动，能让更多人多一些理性思考，对政治，对社会。
作者主要观点
下乡运动是错综复杂的，关系人口，经济，社会，但毫无疑问，也是一个政治现象。
领导者发起这场运动的动机:1)政治原因，恢复强化领导魅力--极左派; 2)意识形态，改造青年思想以及消除社会分工--作者提及中共在历史上发起众多政治运动几乎有双重目标，对客观(经济，制度，自然)，主观世界的改造(思想，态度);3)经济原因，积极的(发展农村和边疆地区)，消极的(限制城市人口增长和其带来的就业压力)。
篇幅不长，简单帮助了解下历史，思想。
作者主要分析上山下乡(大致1960s-1980s)这个运动。据作者自己透露，他最初是从一批从大陆偷渡到香港的青年口中了解到一些当时的情况以及青年对此运动的看法，由此产生兴趣，希望通过记录这样一场运动，能让更多人多一些理性思考，对政治，对社会。
作者主要观点
下乡运动是错综复杂的，关系人口，经济，社会，但毫无疑问，也是一个政治现象。
领导者发起这场运动的动机:1)政治原因，恢复强化领导魅力--极左派; 2)意识形态，改造青年思想以及消除社会分工--作者提及中共在历史上发起众多政治运动几乎有双重目标，对客观(经济，制度，自然)，主观世界的改造(思想，态度);3)经济原因，积极的(发展农村和边疆地区)，消极的(限制城市人口增长和其带来的就业压力)。
篇幅不长，简单帮助了解下历史，思想。
December 31, 2022
作者利用公开资料，详细分析了毛泽东发动上山下乡运动的动机、中共为实施这一政策所使用的手段、知青的下乡生活及心理状况。问题在于，仅靠方志、报刊和对知青的采访，是否能精准把握毛泽东的个人心理和中共政策演变的逻辑。个人认为，若想对这一问题有更清晰准确的呈现，中共官方档案的利用仍然不可或缺。
January 29, 2024
too dissertation
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews