Since the Cultural Revolution, 12 million urban youths, for the most part graduates of secondary schools, have been resettled in the countryside under the programme of “up to the mountains and down to the villages” (shang-shan hsia-hsiang). Urban youths have been sent to the countryside for three reasons. First, the transfer seeks to alleviate difficulties in finding employment for them in the urban sector, as well as to contribute to China's goal of limiting urban growth. The second reason is ideological: because urban opportunities are limited, the values and expectations of young urbanites have to be changed and it is hoped that the experience of the transfer will lead to attitudinal change. More broadly, the programme is seen as contributing to such ideological goals as the restriction of “bourgeois rights” and as the elimination of the “three great differences” (between town and country, worker and peasant, and manual and mental labour). The third goal of the transfer is that it should contribute to the development of the rural areas, including particularly those of frontier provinces such as Heilungkiang.
