China rolls out ‘Down to the Countryside Movement 2.0’ to address youth unemployment problem · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A poster of “Down to the Countryside Movement” from the Cultural Revolution. Image via Twitter user @Modernmarxist05.
Since 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been working to address the imbalance between urban and rural developments by sending young people to “rejuvenate” the countryside. After three years of suspension due to pandemic restrictions, China rerolled out the campaign with a concrete action plan announced by the provincial government of Guangdong.
However, many doubt the political motive and economic benefit of the new “Down to Countryside Movement.”
According to Guangdong’s action plan, the province will send 300,000 college students to the countryside by 2025. The plan seeks to incubate at least 10,000 rural start-ups and encourage young people to pursue their careers in the countryside.
Under the annual plan, every year, 10,000 college graduates are sent to rural regions as cadres of the Communist Youth League to organize and promote voluntary services involving 1,000 teams of vocational students as well as internships for 30,000 university and college graduates. The graduates will also organize business events to attract investment for entrepreneurs in underdeveloped regions.
The plan is meant to address the youth unemployment problem as the jobless rate for 16–24-year-olds has surged from 13.1 percent in February 2021 to 18.1 percent in February 2023. The figure will be even higher as millions of students will graduate from universities, colleges, and vocational schools this summer.
However, some observers also point out that the campaign is a means to prevent unemployed youth from causing trouble in big cities or stirring up social unrest. Well-educated youth who were frustrated about restrictions on their freedom in the name of pandemic control were the key actors of the anti-zero COVID protests, dubbed the White Paper Protests.
Some pointed to the fact that the campaign was spearheaded in Guangdong, one of the most liberal and prosperous provinces in China. A popular Weibo user, Liang Xiang, gave out some background:
广东前三月规模以上工业的恢复程度不容乐观… 外向型经济被锁住后，城市短期内就业压力顿生，乡村这块超级海绵缓冲带估计又会扮演起他的历史使命了。毕竟城市内出现无法就业的年轻人集聚，本来就是一种风险。
In March, the industrial recovery in March was far from optimistic… export-oriented economy was blocked and resulted in an unemployment problem. The rural regions will have to take up the historical role of a super buffer. Risk will emerge if a large number of jobless youths aggregate in the cities.
The political nature of the current campaign reminded many on Weibo and Twitter of the “down to the countryside movement” during the Great Leap Forward when tens of thousands of university and college students were sent to underdeveloped regions to help establish rural collectives, and during the Cultural Revolution when millions of urban youths were forced to re-educate themselves in rural communities.
Some even called the current campaign “Down to the Countryside 2.0” and expressed their disapproval. For example, one Weibo user said:
当年是2000多万人被“上山下乡”，由此也产生了“知青”这个特殊群体，和“知青”题材的“伤痕文学”。苦难属于他们，返城知青和他们的孩子又经历了什么，只有当事人知道。今天还用这种方式缓解城市就业的压力，实在不敢恭维！
Back then, more than 20 million people were sent to the countryside. These “educated youths” later had written many “Scar Literature” [on trauma and oppression during their rural re-education]. They are the ones who went through suffering. I could not compliment that we still use the same method to address today's urban employment problem.
Another Weibo user criticized:
和几十年前的路数一点都没变。下了乡，饭在哪儿吃，衣在哪儿穿，小孩在哪儿念书，病了在哪儿医治……说不清道不明。现在是什么时代，年轻人动动手指就能获取所有的信息，可不容易忽悠了。
The tactics remain unchanged after so many decades. Down to the countryside, how can they sustain their living? Can their offsprings have a good education? How about medical service? All these remain unclear. But nowadays, young people can get information to make their own decision; they won’t be cheated so easily.
A blogger pointed to the country’s labor composition and questioned the rationality of “rural rejuvenation”:
这边有2.93亿人从农村出来打工，那边安排30万人“下乡返乡兴乡”，是我眼花了，还是有人心瞎了。
On the one hand, we have 293 million rural labours working in the cities; on the other hand, we arrange 300 thousand students and graduates to be sent down to the countryside for “rural rejuvenation.” Am I the only one seeing this figure?
The blogger further argued that for rural rejuvenation to work out, the government has to provide a lot of resources and subsidies, which can be given to the rural-educated population directly rather than urban-educated youth who are mobilized to the countryside.
Many also questioned if the campaign could effectively address the urban unemployment problem. An economic news commentator on Weibo said:
这种思路不可取。计划经济时期，城市化水平低，城市容纳不了那么多年轻人就业，农村庞大，所以上山下乡。现在城乡关系已经发生根本性的变化。如果在广东的大城市，年轻人都找不到工作？指望去乡村和县城去找！岂不是很荒唐。鼓励年轻人去乡村创业，风险更大。创业本身就是高风险的商业行为 […]在乡村和县域更没有创业的土壤。[…]而且年轻人创业的前期资金哪里来？政府给出吗？
This won’t work. During the planned economy, urbanization was low, and cities could not provide enough jobs for the youth. The rural regions were huge, so they could be sent to the countryside. Now the urban and rural structure has changed radically. If big cities like Guangdong could not provide enough jobs for young people, how could we expect them to find jobs in counties and villages? This is absurd. The risk is even bigger if we encourage young people to start their businesses in the countryside, as start-ups are high-risk businesses by nature… there won’t be enough support for startups in rural regions. […] How can young entrepreneurs get their startup funds? Would the governments provide funding for them?
After Guangdong, other cities, such as Jinan in Shangdong province, joined the campaign and planned to send 10,000 students to help improve village-level governance. According to the current scale, it is estimated that millions of youth will join the “down to countryside campaign” all across the country in the coming years.