After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), in order to solve the employment problem in cities, urban youth were organized to transfer to rural areas, especially remote rural areas, from the mid-1950s. As early as 1953, People's Daily published an editorial "Organizing High School Graduates to Participate in Agricultural Productive Labor". In 1955, Mao Zedong put forward that "the countryside is a vast world, where you can make great achievements." It became the slogan of educated youth going to the countryside later. From this year on, the Youth League began to organize farms to encourage and organize young people to take part in the reclamation movement. 1962 proposed to organize a nationwide movement to go to the countryside. 1964 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has set up a leading group for this purpose. 1966, under the influence of the cultural revolution, the college entrance examination stopped. By 1968, many middle school graduates could not enter universities or be arranged for jobs. In addition, the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in 1966-68 made China's leading bodies realize that they needed to find ways to resettle these young people so as not to get out of control. 19681968 On February 22nd, he instructed People's Daily to publish the article "We also have two hands, so don't loaf about in the city", which quoted Mao's instruction that "educated young people should go to the countryside and receive re-education from poor and middle peasants ...", so many young people 1969 went to the countryside. The whole country has also begun to organize middle school graduates to be assigned to rural areas. From 197 1, many problems of rural educated youth began to be exposed, and at the same time, China began to assign some jobs to the educated youth who were decentralized from the city. Most of the educated youth who return to the city in this way get the opportunity to return to the city through relationships. By 1976, even Mao Zedong felt the seriousness of the problem of educated youth and decided to reconsider. But today, millions of young intellectuals are still assigned to the countryside every year. Mao Zedong's death temporarily shelved the problem of educated youth.

1977 resumed the college entrance examination, and most rural educated youths tried their best to return to their hometowns. /kloc-in the winter of 0/978, the intellectual youth in Yunnan expressed their demands in the form of petitions and strikes, which once again made the people feel the urgency of the problem. 1on may 8th, 980, Hu Yaobang, then general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, proposed not to go to the countryside. 65438+ 10 1 China * * * basically decided that the educated youth who went to the countryside in the past could go back to their hometown cities.

From 1950s to the end of 1970s, the total number of educated youth going to the countryside was estimated to be between 1200 and180,000.