As more Chinese graduates explore rural jobs, comparisons with Mao Zedong’s campaign fail to pass muster
- As youth unemployment hits fresh high, a record number of graduates are set to enter the job market this year
- In the 1960s and 70s, millions of young people in urban areas were ordered to live and work in remote rural villages
In recent graduation seasons, Wendy Li has promoted government-backed programmes designed to encourage Chinese university graduates to work in the country’s vast and underdeveloped countryside.
Such campaigns, under different names, are nothing new, but Li, an undergraduate who works for the student union at a university in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, said the number of applicants had more than tripled this year.
“They seem to have become more attractive this year,” she said. “About 40 students from my school, which has 400 students, have signed up. In the past couple of years, about a dozen would do so.”
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Reminiscent of the “Down to the Countryside” movement in the Mao Zedong era, modern-day initiatives include a Guangdong plan to send 300,000 university graduates to rural areas by the end of 2025.
According to an action plan issued in February, the graduates will work as grass-roots cadres, entrepreneurs or volunteers to contribute to the “return of talent, resources and projects” to the countryside.