Across the Great Divide
The Sent-down Youth Movement in Mao's China, 1968–1980

This history of China's sent-down youth movement uses archival research to revise popular notions about power dynamics during the Cultural Revolution.

Emily Honig (Author), Xiaojian Zhao (Author)

9781108498739, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 September 2019

224 pages, 11 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.4 cm, 0.47 kg

'Across the Great Divide will be of interest to not only scholars of modern China but also to a wider audience interested in understanding the dynamics characterizing one of the greatest social experiments of the twentieth century. Individual chapters will serve well as assigned readings for undergraduate courses, offering local perspectives on what the sent-down youth movement actually meant in practice.' Justin Wu, Pacific Affairs

The sent-down youth movement, a Maoist project that relocated urban youth to remote rural areas for 're-education', is often viewed as a defining feature of China's Cultural Revolution and emblematic of the intense suffering and hardship of the period. Drawing on rich archival research focused on Shanghai's youth in village settlements in remote regions, this history of the movement pays particular attention to how it was informed by and affected the critical issue of urban-rural relations in the People's Republic of China. It highlights divisions, as well as connections, created by the movement, particularly the conflicts and collaborations between urban and rural officials. Instead of chronicling a story of victims of a monolithic state, Honig and Zhao show how participants in the movement - the sent-down youth, their parents, and local government officials - disregarded, circumvented, and manipulated state policy, ultimately undermining a decade-long Maoist project.

Introduction
1. Farewell to the Huangpu River
2. Not all quiet on the rural front
3. The unplanned economy
4. Inappropriate intimacies
5. Urban outposts in rural China
6. Things fall apart
7. Epilogue.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]