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The Politics of Hsia-hsiang Youth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

D. Gordon White
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Extract

This paper sets out to examine various aspects of the contemporary Chinese social system and their political implications by studying the social and political attitudes of a subgroup of Chinese society. The general area of interest is social stratification in China: the bases of social differentiation in the new society and how these are perceived by its citizens; the extent to which changes in the structure of society have been accompanied by changes in social attitudes; the extent to which ideological campaigns to change attitudes have been successful; the limitations placed by the stratified nature of society in its transitional stage of socialism on the effectiveness of ideological and political education.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 59 , September 1974 , pp. 491 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1974

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References

1. This term derives from the name of the movement to send youth “up to the mountains and down to the countryside” (shang-shan hsia-hsiang). In the Chinese press, they are also referred to as “intellectual youth” (chih-shih ch'ing-nien) and “aid agriculture youth” (chih-nung ch'ing-nien).

2. For example, Chen, Pi-chao, “Over-urbanization, rustication of urban educated youths, and the politics of rural transformation: the case of China,” Comparative Politics, 04 1972, pp. 361–86Google Scholar.

3. Cf. Gardner, John, “Educated youth and rural-urban inequities, 1958–1966,” in Lewis, John W. (ed.), The City in Communist China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), pp. 268–76Google Scholar.

4. For representative discussions of this problem see “He ch'ing-nien t'ungchih t'an-t'an tsen-ma yang hsüan-tse chuan-ye” (“A chat with young comrades about how to choose specialties”), Ch'ang-chiang jih-pao (Yangtse Daily), 2 June 1956; Chih, Cheng, “I-ch'ieh ko-ming kung-tso tou shih wei jen-min fu-wu” (“All revolutionary work involves serving the people”), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien (China Youth), Nos. 20–21, 1 11 1972, pp. 8–11Google Scholar.

5. For example see Ye, Pai, “K'o-hsi ne, hai shih k'o-kui?” (“Is it regrettable or valuable?”), China Youth, No. 1, 1 01 1974, p. 27Google Scholar.

6. Tien-shih, Wu, “Ts'an-chia nung-ye lao-tung pu ju sheng-hsueh ch'ien-t'u ta” (“Going to work does not have as much promise as going on to higher education”), Chung kuo ch'ing-nien pao (China Youth Daily), 11 01 1964Google Scholar.

7. Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernisation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965), p. 140Google Scholar.

8. For example, see the speech by the vice-head of the Shanghai Municipal Education Bureau in Ta-kung jih-pao (Impartial Daily), Hong Kong, 18 06 1952Google Scholar; “Tuan-cheng sheng-hsueh t'ai-tu” (“The proper attitude to further education “), a speech by the national education minister in Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily), 11 July 1952.

9. For an example in the press, see Chih, Cheng, “Ho chi-chiang tsou hsiang nung-yeh chan-hsien-ti-ch'ing-nien t'an ch'ien-t'u” (“A chat with youth who are about to go to the agricultural front about their futures”), China Youth, No. 11, 1 06 1962, pp. 6–9Google Scholar.

10. Chi-bing, Tung and Evans, Humphrey, The Thought Revolution (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), p. 32Google Scholaret seq.

11. Hsing-ts'un, Hsiao, “Tsen-yang k'ao-lü sheng-hsüeh chin-yüan” (“How to ponder one's aspiration for future education”), Nan-fang jih-pao (Southern Daily), 25 08 1956Google Scholar.

12. For example, see “PLA man on how to look at different kinds of jobs,” NCNA-English, Kunming, 23 11 1966, in Survey of China Mainland Press (henceforward SCMP), No. 3828, 28 11 1966, p. 19Google Scholar.

13. Fei Hsiao-tung, “Rural livelihood: agriculture and handicraft,” Chap. VI in Hsiao-tung, Fei, China's Gentry: Essays in Rural-Urban Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 108–26Google Scholar. Compare Rhoads Murphey's description of the “dramatic boundary” between Shanghai and its rural hinter-land in Shanghai – Key to Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 12Google Scholar. In contrast to a dichotomous view of rural-urban relations, Skinner has presented a scalar view of rural-urban relations as a continuum (see Skinner, G. W., “Marketing and social structure in rural China,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (11 1964), pp. 3–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vol. 24, No. 2 (February 1965), pp. 195–228 Pt II; VoL 24, No. 3 (May 1965), pp. 363–400 Pt. III). The “antagonistic” view of rural-urban relations in the twentieth century has also been contested by Myers, R. H., The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung 1890–1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholarand Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant: Social and Economic Change in a Hongkong Village (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), Chap. VIIIGoogle Scholar. As we shall see, an ambiguity or conceptual overlap is detectable in hsia-hsiang youth's perceptions of rural-urban differences.

14. For example, see Lun ch'eng-hsiang kuan-hsi (On Rural-Urban Relations), edited and published by the Tientsin City Communist Party Committee's General Study Committee, September 1949. There was great stress at the time on “changing consumer cities into producer cities” through the exchange of industrial products for food and raw materials.

15. During the 1st Five-Year Plan, however, State investment was channelled to a disproportionate degree into urban industry and cities were given precedence over the rural areas ideologically and politically. (For a discussion of rural-urban tensions at this time, see “Propaganda on the workers and peasants alliance must be intensified during the Spring Festival,” People's Daily editorial, NCNA, Peking, 11 January 1954, in SCMP, No. 730, 19 January 1954, pp. 13–16.)

Rural-urban contrasts were exacerbated by the 1956 wage reform which increased the impetus for peasants to move into the cities in search of jobs. The resulting discontent was expressed politically by “rightists” in 1957 complaining that the economic gap was too wide. (For the economic problem, see Schran, Peter, “The structure of income in Communist China,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1961, esp. p. 352et seq.Google Scholar; for a rebuttal of “rightist” criticisms, see Ta, Ting, “Oppose absolute egalitarianism,” Study (Hsüeh-hsi), No. 6, 18 03 1958Google Scholar, in Extracts from China Mainland Magazines (ECMM), No. 131, 9 06 1958, pp. 10–14.)Google Scholar

In 1957 and 1958, during the anti-rightist movement, official spokesmen strove to discredit proponents of such ideas by questioning their political motives (as “rightists “or “absolute egalitarians”) and by arguments that the gap was not in fact as great as it might appear on the surface. (For example, see “Work is a matter of honour for both workers and peasants; the living standard of both workers and peasants has been bettered,” People's Daily editorial, 1 April 1957, in SCMP, No. 1511, 16 April 1957; Lieh, Fang and Hua-chiang, Huang, “A talk on some of the problems of peasants' livelihood,” Nan-fang jih-pao (Southern Daily), Canton, 13 04 1957, in SCMP, No. 1544, 5 June 1957, pp. 8–11.)Google ScholarBut they did take measures, beginning in 1957, to reorient resources towards agriculture and to lower urban wages. For example, the State Council published provisional regulations in February 1958 to readjust the wages of ordinary workers and miscellaneous service-workers in order to lessen the perceived gap. Moreover, the push during the Great Leap Forward to develop rural industry and thus allow the peasants to become part-workers was designed partly to deal with the problem of rural-urban disparity, as was the economic slogan of “Agriculture as the basis “in the 1960s.

16. For example, see Wei Wei, “Tso hsin-hsing-ti chih-shih fen-tzu” (“Make-new-style intellectuals”) in Wei, Wei, Hsing-fu-ti hua wei yung-shih er k'ai(.Happy Flowers Blossom for Heroes) (Peking: China Youth Press, 1956), p. 53Google Scholar.

17. One youth who went down in 1964 had a series of jobs; as work-calculator (chi-kung-yüan); as pao-kuan yüan whose job it was to buy things in the city, keep accounts, receive and pay out money in the team; as Mao Tse-tung Thought propagandist, which required him to go to study sessions at the brigade and commune levels and to lecture to the peasants in periodic meetings; and as political assistant (cheng-chih fu-tao yüan) responsible for a village wall-newspaper. Another youth who went down in 1965 became a school-teacher in 1968 in a people-ran primary school which had been transferred to production brigade control as part of the educational reform during the Cultural Revolution.

18. Some were even able to refine their evaluation to individual communes within counties, such as Ch'ang-an commune in Tung Kuan county which was known in Canton as having an excellent people-land ratio since many of the young males had left for Hong Kong, or Shih P'ai commune in Canton's suburbs. The counties reckoned to be relatively “rich” in Kwangtung Province were Shun Te, Fan Yü and Nan Hai (all in Foshan special district), while Hainan Island, Northern Kwangtung (for example, lien Shan in Shao Kuan special district), Mei county (Mei Hsien special district) and Yang Chiang (Chan Chiang special district) were regarded as relatively underdeveloped.

19. One respondent who went down to a commune in Tung Kuan county in September 1964 described the process of grading incomes in his production team. The marking system (chi fen) was as follows:

On skilled or arduous jobs such as broadcasting seeds or carrying things on a pole, he said, the peasants could do better and thus earn more money. He said he earned 40–50c a day while the peasants earned on average about 70–80c a day. Another youth who had worked in the relatively affluent Nan Hai county said he received about 70–90 yuan a year, getting 20–30 in the June distribution and about 50–60 in the December distribution, not counting the rice rations. He considered this income inadequate, so he supplemented it during 1967 and 1970 by small-scale “smuggling,” mostly in oil and chicken, with other hsia-hsiang youth from his commune. The prices of these commodities varied locally in the countryside, he said, so he bought in one area and sold in another. He did two or three “runs “a year and each time earned 30–40 yuan. He bought sheng-yü, a fish renowned for its health value, from rural fish ponds, took it to Canton by bicycle and sold it there. In Nan Hai county, sheng-yü cost 1.20–1.50yüan per catty, but he could sell it in Canton for 1.80–2.50 yüan per catty. He sold chicken in Canton while he bought oil in Nan Hai and transported it to other counties such as Chung-Shan, Shih-Ch'i and Shun-Te where oil was relatively scarce and more expensive. He usually bought ground rice-husks (kang), in Ch'ing Yuan county and Hua county, selling it in Nan Hai, the price differential being 4–9c.

20. Ling, Yen, “To overcome difficulties is the greatest happiness,” China Youth, No. 8, 16 04 1956, in ECMM, No. 42, 9 July 1956, p. 14Google Scholar.

21. “What should be talked about by youths returning to the countryside?” China Youth, No. 7, 1 04 1965Google Scholar, in Selections from China Mainland Magazines, No. 471, 26 May 1965, p. 15.

22. For example, “I-ko huo-yüe-ti chü-le-pu” (“A lively club”), China Youth, No. 2, 16 01 1964, p. 16et seq.Google Scholar; “Kuo-pu-kuan nung-ts'un shenghuo tsen-ma pan?” (“If one can't get along with rural life, what's to be done?”), China Youth, No. 6, 16 03 1964, p. 20Google ScholarPubMed. T'ien-hsiang, Huang, “Chi-chi k'aichan nung-ts'un ch'ing-nien-ti yeh-yü chiao-yü” (“Actively develop rural youth's spare-time education”), China Youth, No. 4, 16 01 1964, pp. 16–17Google Scholar. The Young Communist League was encouraged to open rural “clubs” operating like their urban counterparts, the worker, cadre or expert clubs; spare-time education facilities were expanded to satisfy the demands of “intellectual youth” for continued opportunities to “progress.” In early 1963, the provincial newspapers of five provinces in the Central South region including Kwangtung published special rural editions of their papers (Chu, Tao, “Run the ‘rural edition’ of provincial papers well,” Nan-fang jih-pao (Canton), 31 01 1963, in SCMP, No. 2941, p. 4)Google Scholar. And, in 1965, China Youth, organ of the Young Communist League, mounted a subscription drive for rural readers to co-ordinate with the expansion of Young Communist League activities in the countryside. (“Pa ‘Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien’ fa-hsing tao mei-ko nung-ts'un t'uan-chih-pu ch'ü!” (“Distribute China Youth to every rural League branch!”), China Youth, No. 13, 1 07 1965, p. 25.)Google Scholar

23. For the practice of “joining a production team collectively,” see China Youth Daily short commentary, “It is good to join a production team collectively,” China Youth Daily (Peking), 21 05 1964, in SCMP, No. 3239, 16 June 1964, p. 8Google ScholarPubMed.

24. Wei, Wei, Hsing-fu-ti hua wei yung-shih er k'ai, p. 50Google Scholar.

25. “Mu-ch'ien chih-ch'ing yün-tung shin chü ho jen-wu” (“The present situation and tasks of the intellectual youth movement”), Aid Agriculture Red Flag (Canton), No. 6, 6 01 1968, p. 2Google Scholar.

26. Ibid. (Canton) No. 7, January 1968, in SCMP, No. 4125, 26 February 1968, p. 10.

27. Aid Agriculture Red Flag, No. 2, 7 10 1967, in SCMP, No. 4067, p. 13Google Scholar.

28. For a typical list of complaints, see “Hsüeh ho lei ti k'ung-su” (“ An accusation of blood and tears“), ibid. No. 3, 1 November 1967, p. 4.

29. “An attack on those saying our rebellion is unjustified,” Aid Agriculture Red Flag, No. 7, 01 1968, pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. For example, see Wesolowski, W., “The notions of strata and class in socialist society,” in Beteille, A. (ed.), Social Inequality (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 131Google Scholar.