Posted on 12/26/2008 7:44:06 AM PST by BGHater
China is sending tens of thousands of unemployed graduates into the countryside to teach peasants, in a repeat of one of Chairman Mao's most controversial policies.
Forty years after millions of students were sent to the provinces during the Cultural Revolution, the economic downturn has forced students to head for rural areas once again.
A record 5.6 million students will graduate this year, according to government figures, and jobs are scarce. They will have to compete with the 700,000 graduates from 2007 who remain jobless. Major international companies are now receiving tens of thousands of desperate applications for every available post.
In response, the Chinese government has turned the clock back to embrace Chairman Mao's "Shang Shan Xia Xiang", or "Climb the Mountains and Go down to the Villages" policy from 1968.
Almost 17 million teens were sent out of China's cities in the belief that they would be transformed by living among ideologically pure peasants. Many members of China's current leadership spent spells in the countryside, and President Hu Jintao helped build a dam on the Yellow River for a year.
The scheme continued until 1980, but was criticised as a means of expelling "class enemies", or anyone who dared to dissent, from the centres of Chinese power.
Next year, however, the government "will recruit over 30,000 college graduates to go to rural and western regions to teach," said the ministry of Education, adding that it had rapidly expanded the scheme in order to cope with the rising levels of unemployment.
Not only is the jobs market stuttering, but the flow of students is greater than ever before. Between 1999 and 2006, the number of graduates quintupled, flooding the labour market and depressing wages.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Maybe The One has similar ideas for our unemployed youth.
Maybe they can turn some of their abandoned slums, public housing complexes and college campuses into vegetable gardens.
Yes, it is called his Civilian Security Force.
So basically China is bringing back the “Peace Corps.”
This is no more Maoist than little green apples. In fact, it even sounds like a good idea, and they should do more of it.
Each of these students should be given a thick manual of basic technological improvements that would both raise the local standard of living and improve their self-sufficiency. Just a dozen “one step ups” and the villagers would be happier then all get out.
Once the process was underway, China could then make an effort to move some of its vast numbers of migrant and disenfranchised into the more prosperous villages. Get the homeless out of the cities with a reason to return to the countryside.
"Power comes from the barrel of a gun".
So much for capitalism bringing democracy to China.
“China is sending tens of thousands of unemployed graduates into the countryside to teach peasants...”
B.S. They’re getting them out of the cities before they start stirring up trouble.
While a laudable concept, I can imagine the 'invasion' of rural areas which have remained set in their ways (because, despite any inefficiencies, they work) by a horde of wet-behind-the-ears 'city kids' trying to tell the locals how to do things.
Depending on how much authority the 'wielders of the book' are given, the program would be a great source of amusement/resentment for the locals.
No, in the oil patch, where I have seen former mistakes turned into expensive experimental proof (repeatable result) that an idea which did not work 30 years ago still won't.
I also recall older farmers and watermen in my youth laughing at some of the ideas fresh from college kids. Many of the things the did which seemed inefficient were done for a reason or reasons which were not readily apparent to those who saw one set of circumstances in what is a life fraught with multivariate situations.
My problem as a paint room foreman was that the engineers couldn’t grasp the concept that we had a set amount of production to produce within a limited amount of time.
Sometimes the end result of their idea was good but it took twenty minutes to do when I only had 30 seconds to do it in.
The best engineer I ever worked with was a 25 year veteran who had spent the majority of that time working the floor as a shop rat. He had ten years to go before retirement and decided he wanted to be an engineer so went to school to become one. It was great working with him because he understood the productivity needs. Also he knew the jobs so he didn’t need one of my painters to stop doing their job and do something else for him.
So much for capitalism bringing democracy to China.
The liberal Free Traders and the ObamaMao’s are in a race to see who can redistribute American wealth the fastest.
The scary thing is that a number of Free Traders (who lurve Commie China) have the audacity to call themselves “conservative”...
In situations when you just can't wait, we borrow a page from Dick Marcinko pretty often. Leave a message, outline the situation, outline the proposed solution, and then proceed to implement it unless/until other orders are received.
Thankfully, the people we are working for have been there, which makes for a much better working environment.
The peace-corps type gal suddenly found herself considered damaged goods. The rapist, on the other hand, now had himself a wife. After all, what choice did she have? Who's believe her?
And this was before the huge spread between the number of males: females. Now more than ever, gals going into the countryside "to teach peasants" are going to be at risk-- to say the least!
It isn’t easy. That is why you need to use “one step up” reasoning on the locals. This was done to effect next door in India, as an example.
The villagers made pottery with a person hand spinning the wheel, then shaping the clay until the wheel stopped. So the outsider showed them the simple trick of connecting the upper wheel to a lower wheel with a stick, so the potter could turn the lower wheel with his foot and work the clay on the upper wheel at the same time.
It made sense to the villagers as a great idea. Every potter in town made the change himself, without further prompting, and within a week they were able to about quintuple their pottery output.
In turn, empty pots find all sorts of things to do with them. Easy storage is a godsend which we take for granted. It makes it easier to protect food, not have to spend all day going back and forth to the water supply, and all sorts of other home and work organization.
True enough. Where would western Civilization be without shrink wrap and the 'baggie' in all its different forms? (not to mention refrigeration).
I am not so much belittling the idea, as I just have an innate tendency to see it as another, kinder, gentler "We're from the Government and we are here to help you." situation.
It is entirely possible new people could bring good ideas to the rural folk, but they will have to show they work first, in the face of cultural inertia.
Obviously good ideas, such as the potter's wheel, will catch on quickly. Others will be tossed. Such is the way of the dissemination of knowledge, what is apropriate will be adopted as it benefits the adoptee.
But the dark side is that sometimes what appears to be efficiency will detract from sustainability or have unintended consequences.
As I have expected... The Chinese and other countries are going to their past to defend against the slumping economy. Soon Russia will be communist again...
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