Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T12:33:08.334Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Things Fall Apart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2019

Emily Honig
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Xiaojian Zhao
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access

Summary

By the mid-1970s the sent-down youth movement was beset with insurmountable problems. As Chapter Six demonstrates, an increasing number of urban youth did not want to stay in the countryside, while urban cadres became equally unwilling to join the weiwentuan teams dispatched to provide relief. Relations between rural governments and the weiwentuan from Shanghai became conflictual, paralleled by mutual antagonism between urban youth and rural leaders. At the same time, weiwentuan reports on conditions of sent-down youth became desperately pessimistic about the prospects of long-term settlement of urban youth in the countryside. The flow of youth back to Shanghai increased, primarily without official sanction. What stand out in archival reports are the ways in which the Shanghai government, weiwentuan, and rural officials, all charged to support the sent-down youth movement, began a collaboration to enable youth to return to the city and re-establish their official urban residency. By the time dramatic protests by youth on the Yunnan state farms took place in 1978–1979—commonly cited as bringing the movement to a halt—almost all the Shanghai youth assigned to production brigades had already left or were in the process of leaving.

Type
Chapter
Information
Across the Great Divide
The Sent-down Youth Movement in Mao's China, 1968–1980
, pp. 137 - 169
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Things Fall Apart
  • Emily Honig, University of California, Santa Cruz, Xiaojian Zhao, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Across the Great Divide
  • Online publication: 30 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595728.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Things Fall Apart
  • Emily Honig, University of California, Santa Cruz, Xiaojian Zhao, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Across the Great Divide
  • Online publication: 30 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595728.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Things Fall Apart
  • Emily Honig, University of California, Santa Cruz, Xiaojian Zhao, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book: Across the Great Divide
  • Online publication: 30 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595728.007
Available formats
×