China to Send Many Recent College Graduates to Low-Level Rural Jobs

As part of a crackdown aimed at enforcing ideological discipline on China’s restive youth, recent university graduates holding positions with the central government are to be transferred to low-level provincial or rural jobs for up to two years, according to Chinese sources.

The transfer order, reminiscent of the massive exile to the countryside of intellectuals and some factions of the youthful Red Guards in the late 1960s, is said to be intended to increase awareness of China’s economic and social realities among the nation’s future elite.

But the new regulations--which are to apply to all people working in government or Communist Party jobs at the national level who graduated in or after 1985--also provide a method of demanding ideological orthodoxy from members of a generation that generally favors rapid relaxation of political controls.

It is also possible that the order may be selectively enforced, with the harshest consequences falling on those perceived as critical of the hard-line leaders now in control of China’s government.

Many Backed Demonstrations

Many young employees of central government ministries supported the pro-democracy student demonstrations that took place in Beijing this spring. The protests were suppressed with hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths the weekend of June 3-4 when the Chinese army was ordered to clear demonstrators from Tian An Men Square.

One Chinese official, quoted this week by the Hongkong Standard in an article about the new policy, said that job prospects “after working at the grass-roots level for two or three years” will depend “on their work and, most importantly, their political stand.”

Young people will be judged for promotion at the end of this period largely on whether they have displayed support for the principles of socialism and Communist Party rule, the official said.

The order, which has been passed to government and party institutions over the last several weeks, has provoked intense anxiety among many of those likely to be affected by it. Some of the people ordered to grass-roots-level jobs are expected to be required to transfer their residence registration from Beijing to provincial towns. It can be extremely difficult to regain official permission to live in the capital, or in other major cities, having once lost urban registration.

Some Still in Countryside

While most of the Red Guards sent to the countryside in the late 1960s have now returned to their cities of birth, a significant minority have never been able to get approval to move back.

Under the new order, it appears that most of those sent to new jobs will work in lower-level government or enterprise offices, or in factories.

It is not clear whether any of the recent college graduates will be ordered to work alongside peasants in villages, but some of those who are aware of the order fear that this could happen.

One young employee made half-joking reference to these fears when the new order was announced to a group of workers in a central government office.

“Don’t worry, we’ll protect you--we’ll say you’re a 1984 graduate,” the employee’s older colleagues said.

Could Be Raising Pigs at 60

“It’s all right,” the more recent graduate said, in an attempt to be lighthearted. “I can see myself when I’m 60 years old, raising pigs and being the village party leader.”

But after drinking beer at a party later that evening, this same person broke into tears and said: “What’s the point in living? I can’t go on anymore. If I’m sent to a village, I can’t go on living.”

It has long been part of Chinese Communist ideology that intellectuals should increase their sense of unity with the masses by performing manual labor. This principle was carried to an extreme during the chaotic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when not only student Red Guards but educated people of all professions and many Communist Party officials were required to perform manual labor in factories or work in the countryside planting rice and raising pigs.

For the past decade, China’s leaders have held that educated people must be allowed to concentrate on developing technical skills to contribute to the nation’s modernization. But there have also been periodic attempts at promoting the idea that technical competence must be combined with political reliability.

In the mid-1980s, education officials made plans to require all college graduates to spend a year at grass-roots-level jobs before joining central government agencies, but the rule was never enforced.

Preparations to enforce the new order appear to be moving forward. This week’s edition of Culture News, published by the Ministry of Culture, said that college graduates assigned to work in the ministry must first join in special study sessions and then spend one to two years working in state-run enterprises under the ministry’s control.

The ministry newspaper said that the residence registration of the recent graduates will be transfered from Beijing to their new places of employment and that those who do not perform well will not be able to return to ministry jobs in the capital.

In a similar order announced earlier this month applying to another category of young people, the State Education Commission ruled that most of this year’s college graduates who intend to pursue post-graduate study must spend one or two years working before resuming their studies.

Nick Driver, The Times’ research assistant in Beijing, contributed to this story.