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Compte rendu : The Lost Generation

David Buck. Review of Bonnin, Michel, The Lost Generation: The Rustification of Chinese Youth, 1968-1980. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. May, 2014. URL : http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=41028

Chinese Youth in rural exile

Michel Bonnin has produced a thorough and damning study of the rustication of urban youth that followed the Cultural Revolution. He became fascinated with the movement when he was a student in the mid-1970s and met some rusticated youth who fled to Hong Kong from their assignments in neighboring Guangdong province. That encounter became his scholarly interest over the next three decades until the French-language edition of this book was published in 2004. The Chinese University Press of Hong Kong produced a Chinese-language edition in 2009 and Beijing’s Encyclopedia of China Publishing House produced a simplified character version in 2010. Finally this English-language translation appeared in late 2013.

Bonnin’s research and analysis are highly impressive. His book will become the standard reference on the rustication movement. He has interviewed hundreds of former rusticated youth, read their stories, novels, and diaries, scoured Chinese newspapers and magazines for reports relating to rustication, and studied official compilations and studies. In addition to an extensive bibliography the book includes indices of people, places, and topics. The text is tightly organized into five sections—motivations, policies, experiences of rusticated youth, social resistance to rustication, and a concluding assessment.

Rustication of educated urban youth began in China on a small scale in the 1950s as an experiment based on Soviet efforts. The hope was to eradicate what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) labeled “the three great differences,” meaning the differences between agriculture and industry, city and countryside, and physical and mental work (p. 13). Under Mao Zedong’s leadership, efforts became focused on a whole series of utopian goals such as these. 1968, the third year of the Cultural Revolution, left the CCP and China reeling from the chaos produced by the student-age Red Guards. These Maoist-inspired revolutionaries had split into anarchistic factions and frequently engaged in armed struggle with arms acquired from People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and police caches. The leadership decided the PLA’s intervention and a policy of rustication of educated urban youth age fifteen and older might restore order. Orders went out that almost all urban youth above the age of fifteen still in school should be transferred to the countryside to learn from the peasants.

Lire le texte intégral du compte rendu sur H-Net Reviews

  • Ouvrage traduit de : Génération perdue. Le mouvement d’envoi des jeunes instruits à la campagne en Chine, 1968-1980. Paris : Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2004, 491 p. Disponible à la bibliothèque du CECMC : Cote M 8007
  • L’ ouvrage a été traduit par Krystyna Horko. Il est paru début juillet 2013 aux éditions de l’université chinoise de Hong Kong (The Chinese University Press) sous le titre : The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth (1968–1980).
  • Plus d’information sur les versions chinoises  http://cecmc.hypotheses.org/12304

OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Monique Abud (23 mai 2014). Compte rendu : The Lost Generation. Carnets du Centre Chine (CNRS/EHESS). Consulté le 16 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/merq


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