Rusticating the Rebels

Two years ago this week, in the waning days of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the first of hundreds of bloated and badly mutilated bodies floated down the Pearl River into Hong Kong waters. The victims had been killed in factional fighting among the Red Guards, the vicious, young, ideological vigilantes of the Cultural Revolution. Mao had approved the organizing of the Red Guards in 1966; but realizing that they had got out of hand, he decreed that large numbers of them be shipped, along with other city youths, to rural areas. In the two years since then, Mao's rustication program has turned into one of history's great mass movements, with as many as 20 million young Chinese being forced out of the cities.

Besides restoring order and contributing to increased agricultural production, the campaign was supposed to give the younger generation some sense of the austere life endured by Chinese Communism's founders in the caves of Yenan in the 1930s and '40s. What Mao failed to consider, however, was the validity of that distinctly non-Confucian maxim about keeping 'em down on the farm after they've seen Peking.

Black Persons. The rusticated youths were paid as little as $3.50 per month, compared with the $20 they might have earned as urban factory hands. Many ex-Red Guards regarded the forced exile as the authorities' way of punishing them for refusing to resubmit to discipline after they had been ordered to end their rebellion. Clashes were common between the youths and the peasants to whom they were indentured.

One young man worked hard and was awarded the title of "Labor Youth Hero," but fled to Hong Kong because, he explained, "no matter how hard we worked or how our fingers bled, the party officials were never satisfied." The New China News Agency, admitting the discontent, recently reported the case of a flute-playing youth who was so depressed by "the drudgery of agricultural toil" that his flute fell silent. The news agency recommended a massive dose of Maoist thought as a cure, but there are widespread signs that the flutist's melancholy is shared by millions. Few have any hope of returning to school; 90% of China's universities have been closed since 1966.

According to reports reaching Hong Kong, as many as 1,000,000 rusticated youths have gone AWOL, creating a serious urban crime problem. Once back in the cities, the deserters become hei jen (black persons) who have no registered abode. Many turn to theft and murder, often running in large gangs. The army has retaliated against this wave of lawlessness with show trials and mass executions. A teenage girl who returned to Hong Kong recently told of one such public ceremony: "We saw soldiers pull a man along a track. He tried to stand up, but they kept kicking him down. The soldiers forced him to kneel down beside two other bodies and shot him through the head from behind." The question is whether such corrective action will produce the "criticism-transformation"--Peking's jargon for brainwashing dissent--that Mao has called for.

Little Soldiers. Despite such disappointing results, Peking is pressing ahead with its efforts to remold China's children. The Communist Youth League, disbanded by the Red Guards and now being revived, is aimed at the 14-to-25 age group. For those in the seven-to-14 category, Peking has created the Little Red Soldiers organization, a successor to the now-defunct Young Pioneers. The Little Red Soldiers already have their own pantheon of heroes. Most notable are the five children who are said to have perished while fighting a forest fire. Radio Peking solemnly insists they leaped into the flames snouting "Long live Chairman Mao!" and clutching their little red books of the Chairman's thoughts.

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