The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth (1968–1980)

13. Socioeconomic Assessment

CHAPTER 13 Socioeconomic Assessment Diverting away from the Cities Xiaxiang and Urban Employment If, in 1968, rustication solved the employment problem for several million young city dwellers who suddenly found themselves “waiting for work” because of the Cultural Revolution, the solution was only a short-term one, since the root of the problem was political rather than demographic or economic. True, the cohorts born in the cities from the early 1950s to 1960 were very large and consequently the numbers entering the urban labor market from 1966 to 1976 were high.1 But after a slight drop, corresponding to a fall in the birth rate in 1961, an even larger wave of young people flooded 1 I have taken 16 years as the age of labor market entry since that was the minimum age; see Zhuang Qidong et al. (eds.), Laodong gongzi shouce (Handbook of Labor and Wages) (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1984). That was in fact the age for the majority of the population as shown in the 1982 census data. It was also the age when most zhiqing left in the early years of the movement. However, in the large cities, the age of labor-force entry or rustication was usually 17 in the 1970s when the shortened secondary school cycle had become widespread. THE LOST GENERATION_FA02_17June2013.indd 401 THE LOST GENERATION_FA02_17June2013.indd 401 19/6/13 3:14 PM 19/6/13 3:14 PM 402 | THE LOST GENERATION the urban labor market at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s. The urban birth rate had exploded between 1962 and 1964, with the record in China’s entire history to this very day being 1963 with a total of 4,400,000 births. After that the number of labor market entrants stayed around the two million mark until the end of the 1980s and then fell considerably.2 For xiaxiang to be a long-term solution to the employment of young city dwellers it would have needed to continue for some twenty years and be definitive. Instead, massive rustication lasted for about ten years and the large-scale returns occurred just at the time when the exceptionally large number of young people was reaching employment age. Demographically speaking, 1979 was the year when pressure on urban employment was the strongest in China’s history, and yet that was the year when the greatest number of zhiqing returned, while new departures continued to fall, as they had done since 1978. Figure 4 shows that there was no correlation between the number of labor market entrants and the number of people rusticated. Xiaxiang cannot therefore be considered a rational solution to a demographic problem. Figure 4. Rustication of Zhiqing and New Entrants to Urban Employment (in millions) Sources:Zhongguo laodong gongzi tongji ziliao, 1949–1985, p. 110; Zhongguo renkou tongji nianjian (Yearbook of Demographic Statistics in China) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1990), p. 592; Zhongguo tongji nianjian, 1983, p. 105; Harry 2 See Zhongguo renkou tongji nianjian, 1990, p. 592, Zhongguo tongji nianjian, 1983, p. 105, and Harry Xiaoying Wu, “Rural to Urban Migration in the People’s Republic of China,” China Quarterly 139 (September 1994), pp. 672–73. THE LOST GENERATION_FA02_17June2013.indd 402 THE LOST GENERATION_FA02_17June2013.indd 402 19/6/13 3:14 PM 19/6/13 3:14 PM CHAPTER 13 SOCIOECONOMIC ASSESSMENT | 403 Xiaoying Wu, “Rural to Urban Migration in the People’s Republic of China,” China Quarterly 139 (September 1994), pp. 672–73. Furthermore it seems that most, if not all, the young urban school-leavers from 1966 to 1977 could have found urban jobs if xiaxiang policy had not prevented it, for while 8–9 million young people were lastingly removed from urban employment as a result of rustication, a similar number of peasants were being hired in the cities.3 Xiaxiang had actually made it necessary to employ rural workers in the cities. Zhiqing who had spent at least two years in the countryside formed a part of that labor force, but a larger number of peasants slipped into the breach. As one demographer wrote regarding the return of a number of zhiqing to the cities: “In the hiring process, the young country people pulled all sorts of strings to slip through in large numbers. As a result, for every person leaving the urban population, two returned from the countryside, so ultimately the urban population grew.”4...