DISAFFECTION AMONG YOUTH IN COMMUNIST CHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A004200070003-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 3
• Content Type: REPORT

OCI No. 0302/63B
Copy No..
DISAFFECTION AMONG YOUTH IN COMMUNIST CHINA
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
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`?r 18 October 1963
GROUP I Excluded` from automatic
downgrading and declassification
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p 794, "
PERSON IS P OHIBI'7
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DISAFFECTION AMONG YOUTH IN COMMUNIST CHINA
There is mounting evidence that disaffection
among youth in Communist China has become a wide-
spread and serious problem. The lack of good
study and job opportunities, the discrepancy be-
tween the ideals expressed by the regime and pres-
ent realities, and the prospect of a bleak fu-
ture have alienated many of the regime's staunch
supporters. Efforts to send young people to the
already crowded countryside or to remote frontier
areas are extremely unpopular and have had only
limited success. Alarmed by youths' flagging
zeal for communist ideals, Peiping is conducting
the most intensive youth indoctrination campaign
noted in years. The campaign, with its stark
demand that youth in particular must prepare for
a long period of struggle and sacrifice, has had
little visible success, however, in rekindling
enthusiasm for the Chinese brand of communism.
25X1
25X1
Causes of Discontent
The lack of educational
and vocational opportunities is
the basic cause for discontent
Premier
Chou En-lai repor e y said that
only a small number of this
year's junior and senior high
school graduates would be able
to continue their studies at the
senior school or university
on y
20 percent of those taking
university qualification tests
this summer were accepted. This
is an unprecedented reversal of
the pre-1961 policy that per-
mitted almost all high school
graduates to continue their
education.
This fall, for the third
consecutive year, fewer new
students were accepted by uni-
versities than were graduated
in June. As a result, total
enrollment has fallen steadily
from a peak of 900,000 in the
1960-1961 academic year to
about 650,000 at present (see
chart).
The cutback in educational
opportunities has increased com-
petition for available jobs.
Unemployment is already high,
and China's stagnant economy
is unable to absorb the large
number of young people thrust
into the labor force annually.
Periodic recruitment drives to
persuade urban youth to go to
rural and frontier areas have
met with only limited success.
Of the 15 to 20 million city
youth between the ages of 16
and 25, few seem to have been
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UNIVERSITY ENROLLMENTS IN COMMUNIST CHINA
convinced by propaganda allega-
tions that there is a great
need for "cultured peasants,"
and it appears that only about
100 000 urban youth were re-
cruited for rural areas, most-
ly for service at state
farms, from mid-1962 to mid-
1963.
After mid-1963 the Chinese
authorities expanded their ef-
forts.
25X1 about 3 ,
recruited in Shanghai alone
during a drive initiated in
July 1.963 to resettle unemployed
youth in agricultural farms in
Sinkiang. The timing of the
new drive strongly suggests
that the regime is removing
idle youth to Sinkiang not only
to reduce a source of social
unrest in cities but also to
increase ethnic Chinese in-
fluence in an area near the
Soviet border where minority
nationalities have been rebell-
ing.
Many urban youth, repelled
by the low pay and hardship of
rural and frontier life, have
found ways to dodge these
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assignments. These unemployed
young people have become a se-
rious social problem in Shanghai
and Canton and probably in
other large cities as well.
The term "social youth" has
been coined since 1961 to
describe urban idlers, many of
whom have turned to thievery
and black-marketeering.
Probably the most disillu-
sioned and disgruntled group
is the current graduating class
of 200,000 university students.
They had been led to believe
they were to play a vital role
in building a strong China, but
few are being assigned to posts
of responsibility or to posts
where they can make full use
of their skills. These gradu-
ates were frankly told last
summer that, because of "re-
adjustments" in the economy,
not enought job openings existed
in the specialties for which
students had been enrolled in
1958-59. Students who could
not be immediately placed in
appropriate jobs--apparently
the 'Large majority--were told
to expect assignments to the
countryside, to frontier areas,
or to "basic levels" where
they would be given apprentice-
type work at low pay.
the heavy doses of political
indoctrination, and dislike the
requirement that a month of the
school year be devoted to manual
labor. To be sure more time
now is spent in class work than
during the "leap forward" era
of 1958-1960, when students
often spent entire semesters do-
ing farm or construction work,
but extracurricular demands are
still heavy. Occasionally the
norms for e
exceeded 25X1
Cartoon in the 10 August Peiping
People's Daily, during a drive to
recruit yout s for Sinkiang and
other frontier areas (Chinese
cartoons tend to be inspirational
rather than humorous):
Discontent is also wide-
spread among undergraduates,
especially those in the upper
grades. Although an improve-
ment in food supplies this
year has reduced one cause of
grumbling, many still see little
prospect that job opportunities
will have improved greatly by
the time they graduate, resent
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kJL~j]t, t~35t~J~i1u~?8$
1st pedicab driver (proudly):
My son is in the army, helping
defend the frontier.
2nd pedicab driver:
My son who has just graduated
from college, is also leaving
to help build up the frontier.
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only two months were spent on
genuine class work in the
past year, the remaining time
having been spent in political
meetings or in rural clinics.
A fortunate few have been
able to escape the harsh condi-
tions in China by leaving for
Hong Kong. Nearly 15,000 stu-
dents, most of whom had rel.a-
Lives in Hong Kong, left the
mainland in 1962 for visits
and almost none went back.
The exodus has continued in
1963, although on a somewhat
smaller scale because of
stricter controls in granting
exit permits.
Although little evidence
is available on rural attitudes,
disgruntled young peasants have
beem fleeing to Macao and Hong
;Kong in fairly substantial num-
lbers in the past two years.
Since 1961, regime policies
have kept peasants firmly
tied to their collective farm,,
eliminating outlets open to
those who wanted to improve
their lot. Through 1960,
some were conscripted into the
army every year, some were able
to continue their education by
entering high schools in near.-
by towns, and many, during pe-
riods of rapid industrializa-
tion, migrated to the cities
where they found jobs.
All this has changed. The
army has shifted conscription
activities to the cities, where
a more literate class of re-
cruits is available. High
:schools, which have been
reducing enrollments and raising
standards, now accept few farm
students. And not only are
jobs in the city scarce, but
strict population controls
have also been instituted to
prevent aimless migration of
country boys in search of a
better livelihood.
Ideological Concern
The aging Chinese Commu-
nist leadership has seemed in-
creasingly worried in the past
year that its fundamentalist
brand of communism will not
survive in the next generation.
This concern was reflected in
the 1 July issue of China Youth:
"The enemy at home and
abroad always wants to
exploit the weakness of
young people. On his
death bed, Dulles, the
notorious former Secre-
tary of State of the US,
still emphasized the need
of corroding 'the third
generation' of, the
socialist countries with
'the Western civilization
and way of life' so as to
bring about their degenera-
tion. In real life, there
do not lack instances
where young people, cor-
roded by bourgeois thought,
have indeed degenerated."
What Peiping sees as back-
sliding :in the USSR is regarded
as proof that even an old estab-
lished communist society can
be corrupted. Determined not
to let this happen in China,
Peiping last spring ordered
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When he went out on duty he always
lent a hand to the old and the young.
LEI FENG MOVEMENT
Lei Feng (left) putting a stitch in his friend's qui t.
To Lei Feng helping others was always a pleasure.
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the most intensive indoctrina--
ttion campaign noted in years,
to try to stem ideological
backsliding and to instill in
young people a more zealous
determination to be good "heirs
to communism."
Peiping is convinced that
one reason today's youth fails
to appreciate socialism more
fully is that it does not
know how bad conditions used to
be. Therefore, older people
all over China have been urged
to recall how the "reactionary
ruling class" had once "brutally
oppressed" them, and to repeat
these atrocity stories to their
children.
The regime has been employ-
ing all possible forms of com-,
munication--newspapers, movies,
songfests, plays, and "study
sessions"--to get its ideologi-
cal message across. Major re-,
sponsibility for seeing that
indoctrination is effective
and thorough has been given to
the Young Communist League, a
mass organization that has
been unusually active in 1963.
Nearly every province has held
a. League Congress this year
and preparations are under way
for a nationwide League Con-
gress, which would provide
another forum for publicizing
the themes of the youth cam-
paign.
Using highly repetitious
and jargonized propaganda, the
campaign has stressed the need
for youth to learn about the
miseries of precommunist
society, love Mao Tse-tung and
study his writings, carry out a
"class struggle;" resist "bour-
geois" and "revisionist" in-
fluences, prepare for a long
period of hardship, strive to be
"red" as well as "expert," and
emulate a folk-hero named Lei
Feng.
One of the most prominent
elements in the campaign has
been this glorification of the
"ordinary soldier Lei Feng."
All youths are told to learn from
and emulate him, although pre-
cisely how they should go about
emulating him is unclear. Lei
Feng, who died in an accident
on 15 August 1962, does not
resemble Aleksei Stakhanov, the
Soviet coal miner of the 1930s
who was eulogized for overful-
filling production targets. The
Chinese propaganda emphasizes
that Lei Feng did not create or
produce anything important, but
that he is honored solely for his
abstract ideological virtues.
This sanctimonious figure spent
his evenings studying Mao's
writings and his days off self-
lessly performing services for
others, such as washing the
clothes of the men in his unit
and scrubbing the floor of a
railroad car before settling
down for a journey. "Some peo-
ple call me an idiot," Lei Feng
wrote in his highly publicized
diary, because "I want to do
good deeds for the state and
people.... The revolution needs
idiots like me.'"
Peiping admits that Lei
Feng was aided in achieving
his state of purity by a sterling
family background that not every
6
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youth could match. His father
was buried alive by the Japanese.
His mother was raped by a land-
lord and later committed sui-
cide. He himself was stabbed
by a landlord at the age of
seven. His brother died fight-
ing in the People*s Liberation
Army.
The Lei Feng movement of-
fers an easy target for Soviet
propagandists trying to ridicule
the Chinese road to communism.
Komsomolskaya Pravda on 15 Sep-
tember sneered at Lei Feng for
declaring that the height of
happiness is to be a "rust-
free cog of Chairman Mao Tse-
tung." "How alien and dis-
gusting this philosophy is,"
said the Soviet paper. It went
on to repeat some of the more
absurd stories told of Lei Feng,
such as an incident in which
he found an old toothbrush in
a heap of refuse, trimmed it,
and "it became like new in his
hands."
Peiping has made no effort
to hide from youth the fact
that the future is bleak. In-
deed, a major propaganda ob-
jective has been to persuade
young people to reconcile
themselves to a Lei Feng - like
existence in which they will
do routine, uninteresting work
and practice an extreme form
of frugality. The propaganda
repeatedly warns that building
communism will entail great
hardships for many decades.
Those who hope for a peaceful
and settled life are told they
must "overcome this unsound
state of mind."
All indications are that
the intensive indoctrination
efforts of recent months have
failed to have much impact on the
125 million Chinese between the
ages of 16 and 25. By and large,
young people seem to have become
immune to ideological appeals
unaccompanied by material signs
of progress. The few successes
of the past year--the victory
over the Indians on the Tibetan
border and the slight improve-
ment in food supplies--apparently
have done little to overcome the
apathy, disillusionment, and
pessimism which have characterized
Chinese youth since the collapse
of the "leap forward" in 1960.
Cartoon in 6 July Peiping Kuang-ming Jih-pao
Intellectual to sanitary worker carrying a nightsoil 25X1
container:
"Can't you stand the stench either.? "
Nightsoil carrier: "What I can't stand is your
ideological stench !"
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Peiping itself increasingly
recognizes that many youths
have little enthusiasm for com-
munism. in the past year the
party has repeatedly railed
against young intellectuals,
workers, and peasants who have
either been corrupted by "bour-
geois" thinking or who showed,
during a period of relaxation
in 1962, a willingness to "take
the capitalist road" at every
opportunity. The propaganda
has also complained that some
youths see little point in
talking about the misery of
the past or about "class strug-
gle" now that everything has
been socialized and that others
say they have already learned
enough from Lei Feng and are
tired of studying his example.
The Lei Feng movement in
particular actually appears to
have been counterproductive
25X1
ent to the
Shanghai Gasworks to stage a
play about the life of Lei Feng.
Workers were assembled, the
lights went down, and the play
began. When the lights went
on again, the hall was empty,
the audience in sheer boredom
having crept out and gone home.
ou e t at Lei Feng
ua y existed. He believed
that most intellectuals, also
skeptical of Lei Feng's exist-
ence, were therefore unmoved
by exhortations to emulate Lei
Feng's spirit of obedience to
the party.
The degree of youth disaf-
fection varies among groups.
There is still a small minority
that believes it is doing some-
thing important and is there-
fore fairly well motivated.
This includes the 2 million
conscripts in the army, who are
generally treated as an elite
group; the 100,000-odd new
students accepted by universities
this fall after careful political
screening; the relatively few
young workers who have been able
to obtain promising industrial
jobs; and activists in the Young
Communist League who believe
they have a future in the party
a aratus.
young teenagers also seem to be
quite receptive to propaganda,
but they lose their enthusiasm
when they leave school and are
unable to get good jobs.
nationalistic themes have far
more appeal than ideological
themes to young people. It is
possible for the regime to whip
up considerable support for its
challenge to the USSR and its
actions on the Indian-Tibetan
border. On domestic ideological
matters, however, the regime is
no longer able to elicit blindly
enthusiastic support.
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On the other hand, apathy
and resignation among the young,
while affecting the amount of
support being given to regime
programs, have not yet reached
a point where they constitute
a serious security threat.
Nevertheless, isolated examples
of dissidence are often reported
Young idlers
have begun to grumble open y
and to hope for a new war to
overthrow the regime. There are
occasional reports of students
I Iwh o
were caught trying to write
anti-Communist slogans on walls
or blackboards. This summer.
a group o
s from PekingiJniversity
who had decided to side with the
USSR in the Sino-Soviet dispute
were captured trying to escape
to Outer Mongolia.
The Outlook
So long as it is unwilling
to compromise its harsh commu-
nist ideals, the regime has few
alternative approaches to youth
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problems. It is convinced by
the problems created during
the last period of relaxation
in 1961 and early 1962 that
young people will take advantage
of freedom to turn to a more
individualistic, if not capital-
istic, way of life.
The indoctrination campaigns
therefore probably will be con-
tinued in spite of their evident
ineffectiveness. They may be
modified to offer more appeal
to groups, like scientific
students, whose support is
essential to Peiping, but the
regime is probably prepared to
keep the rest in line by rein-
forcing its exhortations with
increasingly coercive measures.
There is as yet little
reason to doubt the regime's
ability to control young people.
There is also little doubt that
disaffection will decline only
when young people come to feel
that they are again playing an
important role in making China
a country
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