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CHINA'S SENT-DOWN GENERATION: Public Administration and the Legacies of Mao's Rustication Program. By Helena K. Rene. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013. xiii, 229 pp. (Figures, boxes, B&W photos.) US$32.95, paper. ISBN978-1-58901-987-4.
China's Sent-Down Generation is a rare and detailed piece of scholarship into die management of a core part of die 1968-1978 Chinese Cultural Revolution, namely, die "Up to die Mountains and Down to die Countryside" rustification program which sent 17 million urban Chinese youtii to rural communes, state and military farms for their "socialist reeducation." These youtiis, referred to as "sent-downs," typically laboured for long hours under harsh conditions. While at diese farms, many also suffered hunger, injury and abuse, though some ended up at better locations, perhaps using their family's connections. They are collectively referred to as China's "lost generation" as their adolescent and young adult lives were thoroughly disrupted and deprived of educational, social and economic opportunities. Some youtii were sent for undefined periods, sometimes until the program ended.
Rene's book is largely based on extensive interviews of 54 sent-downs and others affected by the rustification program. It is an excellent piece of historical research, focusing on program administration. The program is placed in die context of Mao's political struggles against the inevitably rising bureaucracy, Mao's last stand to rid China of elitist tendencies of bureaucracy and technocracy and return to the revolutionary ideal of building a communist society based on peasantry. Here, rustification was to address die bourgeois tendencies of urban youtii and help them reconnect witii revolutionary ideals through physical...