Down to the Countryside Movement

Down to the Countryside Movement
Some of the 200,000 sent-down youth from Shenyang (1968)
Traditional Chinese	上山下鄉運動
Simplified Chinese	上山下乡运动
Literal meaning	The Up to the Mountains & Down to the Villages Movement
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Shàngshān Xiàxiāng Yùndòng Wade–Giles Shang⁴-shan¹ Hsia⁴-hsiang¹ Yün⁴-tung⁴ IPA [ʂâŋʂán ɕjâɕjáŋ ŷntʊ̂ŋ] Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Soeng⁵-saan¹ Haa⁶-hoeng¹ Wan⁶-dung⁶
Resettlement
Traditional Chinese	插隊落戶
Simplified Chinese	插队落户
Literal meaning	join the team, leave the home
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin chāduì luòhù

The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement.

Mao's policy differed from Liu Shaoqi's early 1960s sending-down policy in its political context. Liu Shaoqi instituted the first sending-down policy to redistribute excess urban population following the Great Chinese Famine and the Great Leap Forward. Mao's stated aim for the policy was to ensure that urban students could "develop their talents to the full" through education amongst the rural population.

Many fresh high school graduates, who became known as the so-called sent-down youth (also known in China as "educated youth" and abroad as "rusticated youth"), were forced out of the cities and effectively exiled/deported to remote areas of China. Some commentators consider these people, many of whom lost the opportunity to attend university, China's "lost generation". Famous authors who have written about their experiences during the movement include Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Jiang Rong, and Zhang Chengzhi, all of whom went to Inner Mongolia. Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress has received great praise for its take on life for the young people sent to rural villages of China during the movement (see scar literature).

Resettlement in the countryside (chāduì luòhù) was a more permanent form.