The rebellion of educated youth in China - Lee Yu See

1. An Eyewitness Report

A number of processions, rallies and demonstrations occurred in Shanghai in February this year. They were organised by educated youth who had been forcefully sent down to the countryside over the past ten years to work in the fields and who had returned to Shanghai from different parts of China for the Chinese New Year. The youths organised themselves spontaneously and their activities lasted for many consecutive days. They gathered in front of the Municipal Revolutionary Committee Offices and cut off the electricity for the trams; stopped the trains and the traffic; attacked government buildings and party officials.

The following is an eyewitness report of one of the marches, which took place on the 1st of February 1979.

It was a sunny day in Shanghai and the snow on the roofs and the roadside was beginning to melt. As always, the Nanking Road was full of people and many were also at the Peoples' Square reading the Big Character Posters. Still there was an atmosphere of expectation – something more exciting was going to happen. The walls of the buildings by the Peoples' Square were pasted with numerous Big Character Posters - with new ones on top of the old ones. The Big Character Posters were composed of many themes – the longer and more serious ones were discussions on "democracy and the rule of law" "human rights", "the social foundations of bureaucratism" etc. aside from the Big Character Posters, pasted on the walls were pages of several duplicated stencilled magazines like The Voice of the People, The Spring Sparrow. Reading the pages of these magazines required strenuous efforts but most people were reading very patiently page-by-page.

When it was about eleven o'clock in the morning, a few banners can be seen erected by the walls of Tibet Road. Then on the walls were pasted signs from the provinces e.g. Yunan, Fwangtung, Heilungkaing etc. under which different groups were to assemble. People began to gather around in small groups discussing the questions concerning educated youth who had been sent to work in the countryside. Most were youths and about one thousand had gathered. Then a young man could be seen climbing up a small house onto its flat roof, announcing the beginning of the rally. He used a paper folded cone for magnifying his voice. Then he continued to make a speech explaining the purpose of the rally, talking about educated youths being sent to the countryside when they were very young and now they had grown older, wanting to fight for their rights and return to work in the cities and living together with their families. He announced that the educated youths in other provinces had also mobilised to make similar demands. He then read aloud An Open Letter to the Compatriots of Shanghai, asking for support from the people of Shanghai. He then asked the participants to be aware of any interference from bad elements. The number of people in the gathering had by now reached about 2000.

Then the march began. Those organising the rally raised banners and there were some stewards wearing armbands. The people watching were asked to join the march. At the beginning, some were rather hesitant but a few young women took the lead and as the march proceeded almost all gradually joined. The procession crossed the square and reached the other end. Moving along Canton Road, passing by the municipal library, the procession turned into Nanking Road. The demonstration caused the already crowded Nanking Road to become almost totally blocked. The people of Shanghai had experienced much political turmoil and were not exactly shocked. Many stopped by the roadside, watching the passing procession though as many started to follow. From the marchers came continuous shouts of "return our youth; return our human rights; return our rights of residence", "implement the Central Committee policy of rectifying every wrong". The road was full of marchers and the trams were only now and then able to move a short distance. Impatient passengers on the tram were yearning to get out. The march finally arrived at the Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee Building. By now, the demonstration had grown to 5000 people.

The entrance to the Municipal Revolutionary Committee Building became the centre of the gathering crowd. A few organisers were leading through shouting slogans as they also sang aloud The International. The masses included adolescents in their teens as well as people in their forties and fifties, workers or intellectuals. Most though were youths and female participants were as enthusiastic as the men.

The doors of the Municipal Committee were firmly locked and the two Peoples' Liberation Army Guards who were standing alert outside the doors, quickly sunk in a sea of people, like a pair of statues. Behind the windows of the first floor were obviously a number of party cadres silently watching the activities of the masses. Glaring into the windows of the ground floor from the outside, one could see several cadres sitting together reading the newspapers. They seemed to be low-level party cadres waiting for instructions from above.

The masses swelled in all directions and the crowds must have reached seven to eight thousand. As people were trying to move to the centre, for a little while people were pushing one against another until the organisers asked the participants to sit down allowing almost one thousand to listen to the plea. As slogans were shouted and songs were sung, people began to demand that Peng Chung, a leading cadre of the Municipal Committee, received the masses. Waiting for Peng Chung became the immediate aim of the masses. Once someone appeared at the balcony of the first floor and the whole crowd became thrilled and excited, thinking that Peng had appeared. Nevertheless, it turned out to be just an ordinary cadre who disappeared quickly and the people were greatly disappointed. By about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, news spread that Peng had sneaked out from the side door and into a small car by the side of the building. Almost immediately, people swarmed around the little car. Only after much explanation and persuasion by the driver would the people allow the car to proceed. But still a small group of people maintained a vigil outside the side door.

At about 3.30 pm, at one side of the Nanking Road appeared a procession of four to five hundred people, raising banners and shouting slogans and marching to the Municipal Revolutionary Committee Building. The procession was made up of the graduates of 1968 –9 from the middle special training schools. Nominally, there were some workers from Shanghai factories but they also had been graduates who had been sent to the countryside and had yet to be transferred back to their original units. Their demands were also very similar to the larger group and so on arriving at the municipal building, the group simply merged with the rest who were already there.

At about 4pm, again the Nanking Road was blocked. A group of six or seven hundred rehabilitated uniformed soldiers marched in unison towards the Municipal Building. On the way they raised their demands for proper work arrangements by the authorities. They attracted a lot of attention and on arriving at the Municipal Building they joined the sit-in.

The winter sun set early at 6 pm and as the streetlights began to light up; the sit-in came to an end but only after much sloganeering and singing. Then the people marched away back through the way they'd come. Throughout the whole day, no one from the Municipal Revolutionary Committee had received or talked to any representatives of the demonstrators.

2. Another Report

In the state-owned farms in Yunan, many educated youths from Shanghai, numbering fifty thousand, protested through strikes setting up their own institutions in confrontation with the party cadres in December 1978. They demanded labour insurance and improvements in their living conditions, and the sacking of certain officials and the release of those persecuted among other things.

3. The Origins of the Problems of Educated Youth

Mao Tse-tung initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. It was a power struggle between the two factions in existence within the ruling bureaucratic capitalist class and also an attempt to mould the Chinese people and their thoughts in accordance with the cast of Mao. Mao sought to use the masses to help him regain control of power. The masses responded to the call for rebellion enthusiastically. The young people formed themselves into bands of Red Guards and attacked the party structure and government bureaucracy controlled by Mao's opponents. Nevertheless the masses and Red Guards had risen to take hold of their destiny. By 1968, Mao had by and large succeeded in regaining control and he had to suppress the revolutionary masses and the Red Guard movement. With the aid of the military, Mao crushed any form of militant resistance and he sent workers' propaganda teams supported by the military to take control of all the universities and high schools in the country. Mao then announced the famous directive, "that it is necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside so that they would be re-educated by the poor and middle peasants." The propaganda machine propagated endlessly that such a policy was to send the young educated to the countryside to help the development of agriculture and at the same time the peasants would educate them. By transforming their worldview they would then be trained to become the successors of the revolution. In reality, Mao found this to be the best way to scatter the young revolutionaries and the more revolutionary they were, the further he sent them away from the cities and the capital. Moreover through this move – which has been happening for the past ten years at least – China was also able to discard any surplus labour that arose as a result of high school students graduating and seeing they couldn't be absorbed into the urban work force they were dumped in the countryside.

And so as a result of one of Mao Tse-tung's directive, within a few months, thousands of educated youth were sent to the countryside. Subsequently, until last year, all high school graduates would be unable to enter university directly on graduation. All would have to go to the countryside. Over the ten year period upto 1978, it has been estimated conservatively that at least seventeen million young people have been forcibly sent to the countryside, condemning them and their families as well as the peasants in the country to long periods of agony, pain, and extreme dissatisfaction.

4. The Agonies of Youth, their Families and the Peasants

Life in the countryside for several million peasants in China is with the exception of a few richer regions, exceedingly harsh. (For a discussion of the life of the Chinese peasants and agriculture in China, see a forthcoming article by the present writer.) Most peasants work 15 to 16 hours a day, living on insufficient food, clothing and daily necessities. Under such general conditions in the Chinese countryside, those educated youth sent to state farms (however this only represents a minority) are considered relatively better off as they are state employees and paid a fixed wage of about 30 yuans a month, which can purchase little more than about 100 packets of middle quality cigarettes in China. Nevertheless, life in these state farms is often militarised with a hierarchical organisation modelled after the army. Members on the farm have to carry out studies of Mao Tse-tung thought everyday and are very much isolated from the rest of society ... one is allowed to visit one's family for half a month every two years. Food is not always adequate – working for 11 hours a day with two meals of rice mixed sometime only with salt.

Those not sent to the state farms would be sent in groups of three, five or ten to twenty to settle with the rural commune's production teams. During the first year, for each rusticated youth, the state gives 200 yuans for the purpose of constructing his dwelling, the purchase of farming tools and the rest (about 90 yuans) covering the person's living expenses for the whole year. After the first year, the youth would be allocated a return in accordance with the work points that he has earned as a member of the production team. In the Chinese countryside where little mechanisation has developed, the law of diminishing returns is operative and the peasants find that the rusticated youth are "sharing their food, their land and their fields" in such a way that they have become worse off.

On the one hand, the inexperienced youth know little about farming, and are generally awarded fewer work points than the ordinary peasants who on the other hand, partly because of their hostility towards the intruders, and partly believing that the rusticated youth are single and able to obtain support from family members in the cities, also insist that the rusticated youth be awarded less work points. As a result, the rusticated youth obtains a reward just slightly more than half of that of a peasant. The same applies for food. Therefore despite a whole year's hard work, many a rusticated youth is unable to earn his own means of subsidence and he / she is dependent on the parents in the cities to send a monthly remittance for his / her support. And in this way, many families, involving many millions of people are affected: finding their rusticated children a real financial burden.

Furthermore, not used to the living conditions in the countryside, and owing to the lack of medical facilities, many suffer from ill health and diseases. They seldom are allowed to voice opinions about affairs of the production teams. They are not allowed to join the medical co-operatives nor the militia. They are sometimes demanded to work without pay on holidays. The female youth are sometimes taken advantage of sexually or raped by the party cadres who are the bosses in the countryside. Sometimes the rusticated youth resent their discrimination overtly and this generates further hostilities between the peasants and them. Fights occur between the two groups and the rusticated youths are often beaten up.

5. The Consequences

In order to prevent their children from being sent to the countryside, parents try to send their children for special training in music, playing the violin, piano or painting. Nevertheless, only parents of certain importance in the party or government can afford to do so.

The sons and daughters of the party and government officials, particularly those belonging to the higher echelons, are able to avoid being sent to the countryside. Some are assured good jobs in the cities. Some are put into the army and some just move around in the countryside a little and then get into the universities.

Many parents simply spend a lot of their time "going through the back door" – seeking help from powerful relatives or bribing the party cadres or government officials one way or the other so that their sons and daughters would not have to go to the countryside.

Parents would pay for the expenses of the party cadres, which means in the case of daughters that they would not be maltreated. Even some minor officials are able to make the lives of their sons and daughters in the countryside better by allotting extra resources where there are shortages in the communes, for agricultural machinery or electrical appliances etc.

In the case where the youth refuse to be sent to the countryside and the family is extremely reluctant, the office responsible for the rustification of youth would seek to enforce it by running "Study Mao Tse-tung thought sessions" meaning the particular youth or family members would have to attend regularly for thought education. Also, the wages of the parents might be stopped until the youth agrees to go. At the beginning, every high school graduate had to go to the countryside but subsequently, a slightly more lenient policy was implemented – one child in the family is allowed to stay with the parents to take care of them if they are old and if it is necessary. But then too, the fate of many is sealed even if they are very small children or may still be in primary school because if a child's brother or sister is staying in the cities, then he / she must go to the countryside. Many a student felt that it was useless to study showing no interest in any form of learning at school.

Also many parents are prepared to spend money on the various levels of party cadres in the countryside (the production teams, production brigades, the commune and the county) and those in the cities (the police / security office, the street office, the regional security office etc) or those in charge of medical services, allocation of jobs etc. in order to secure the necessary permits for their children to return to the cities. In order to get back to the cities, very often several hundred or more than a thousand yuans had to be spent. For the average worker who is paid only 30 to 60 yuans a month, the figure is a colossal one. Nevertheless the prevalence of such practises amounts to whole nation of corrupt officialdom.

In the end, even those - the youth and the family who cannot pay - would return to the cities illegally. Without permission to stay or work, these returned educated youth simply idle around. Still many parents find this less costly and cumbersome than sending money or foodstuffs or daily essentials to the villages regularly. It has been estimated that in 1972, there existed seven hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, and more than four hundred thousand rusticated youth throughout various cities in China.

Obviously the numbers have grown tremendously over the years. With so many people idle, deprived of the means of making a living and officially stigmatised as a non-person with no rights whatsoever (including the right of residence) it is not surprising that in many cities, the problem of crime has become increasingly serious. Prostitution is found in growing cases (practised by the 'returned' female rusticated youth) in Canton, Nanking Shanghai and other big cities. Suicide too has occurred in large numbers – often collective suicides in two, threes or more.

6. Fleeing to Hong Kong. A Special Case

While more one hundred thousand rusticated youth had returned to Canton in 1972, many were still in the countryside and many had returned to the smaller cities in the Kwangtung Province. Kwangtung is the Chinese province neighbouring Hong Kong and Macau, the former being a British colony and the latter a Portuguese one. Born within the homelessness among the educated youth in the Kwangtung Province is the practise of their mass exodus to Hong Kong and Macau. A massive number was involved affecting practically every part and every family within the province. And this mass exodus has continued up to the present day.

The escapees left through the coastal counties of the province. Those in the other counties use the coastal counties as stepping-stones. By 1973, it was estimated that 80% of the educated youth in the counties of Pao An, Tung Koon and Wei Yang had attempted to flee to Hong Kong or Macau. In a good number of the communes in these counties, virtually every educated youth had left. In the end, not just the rusticated youth were leaving. The young workers, students and teachers in Canton, as well as a sizable number of peasants also joined the exodus.

According to the statistics of the Hong Kong government, from 1968 to November 1974, the Hong Kong police arrested more then 28,000 illegal immigrants from China. And the Hong Kong government estimated that out of four illegal immigrants from China, only one was arrested, then the total number of illegal immigrants from China during that period amounted to 112,000. A Chinese prison official estimated in Tung Koon County that only one out of 50 caught by the Chinese authorities succeeded in making the escape.

The mass exodus has not stopped

According to the figures released by the Hong Kong government in January this year, the number of illegal immigrants from China caught was 1800, in February it was 2500, and in March, it increased to 6400. In April, the figure reached an all time high – 8300. Again assuming the Hong Kong government estimate that one in four is caught, then within the first four months of 1979, about 80,000 people had illegally entered Hong Kong from China.

In the summer months, one would expect more arrivals in Hong Kong.

Why have they left? Most of them are young people brought up after 1949 and should not have any illusions about the old capitalist system in Hong Kong. Yet, under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party which they have experienced so thoroughly, and finally rejecting it totally, they are prepared to risk getting shot, bitten by chasing hounds and devoured by sharks in search for an alternative.

7. Educated Youth and Revolutionary Action

For many of the educated youth from Kwangtung Province, Hong Kong represents a new start. In search of an alternative, on arrival in Hong Kong, they go off in different directions. Some have been totally integrated in the capitalist way of life – setting moneymaking and pleasure seeking as their main goals. Most try to do it legally against great odds. Some have tried to do it illegally – with a militaristic upbringing and much experience in 'military' actions during the Cultural Revolution, a few gangs have pulled off sensational robberies and are threatening local gangs in the control of the drug, prostitution and other protection rackets in Hong Kong. Some turn over to support the Kuomintang. Some seek to go to the United States with their refugee status. Many are still of course concerned with the fate and development of China. A notable group is Huang He; this group together with other individuals like Wu Man and Yu Shuet have written much and contributed much to the understanding of the realities of China. They have also helped the libertarian movement in Hong Kong to articulate a libertarian analysis and they desire and work for changes in China – some are reformist and some are revolutionary. Many are being exposed to new things and new ideas that they had not met or come across during their years in China. These people are still developing so confronting them with revolutionary and libertarian ideas is important and essential.

The same may be said about the millions of discontented educated youths in China. They must be recognised as an important source of opposition to the present regime. Collectively they represent a powder keg, the explosion of which could turn China upside down. Perhaps, we are already witnessing the igniting of the fuse? While it can be hoped that through their own struggles, the educated youths shall arrive at libertarian solutions to their own problems and those of Chinese society, it is nevertheless essential for revolutionaries overseas to understand what is going on and to intervene whenever and wherever it is appropriate and possible.

July 1979