ABSTRACT
Politically motivated resettlement programmes existed long before the Cultural Revolution. Tens of millions of young Red Guards were mobilized during the first years of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1968. The Red Guard movement, moreover, had been seriously factionalized almost from the very beginning, and many Red Guards ultimately lost out in the violent power struggles that raged throughout China in 1967 and 1968. Rural resettlement of former Red Guards promised a quick, cheap and permanent solution to all of these problems. The economic situation, the ideologization of society since 1962 and the re-organization of the educational system made urban or academic careers more and more impossible. The majority of female zhiqing counted on going to university or at least on getting a job in town. The zhiqing found that the reality of life in the countryside consisted of monotonous hard labour, the struggle for survival and the endurance of hardship.
