Between l962 and 1980, around 17.9 million zhiqing – educated or “sent down” youth – were dispatched to the countryside and border regions. During much of this period, urban youth were expected to transform themselves into peasants and spend the rest of their lives in rural China. In fact, many had already returned before Mao's death but from 1977 on, returns turned into a flood. By the end of 1980 only around a million still remained in the countryside. Bonnin estimates that the average term of service in the countryside was six years.

This book was first published in French in 2004 but appeared in English only in 2013. The long period that elapsed between the end of the programme, around 1980, and 2004 enabled the author to utilize the extensive sources that became available during the reform period. These include memoirs and fiction written by former zhiqing, numerous documentary collections and academic literature that has appeared in China. He also used the sources available while the movement was in progress, including interviews of zhiqing who had fled to Hong Kong. He found that their accounts “overwhelmingly” did not differ from the findings of his later mainland interviews and research sources (p. xxv). The author also drew in full on the secondary literature. The result is a rich, comprehensive book, full of excellent analysis and telling anecdotes. Bonnin's account is likely to be regarded as the definitive work on the subject for years to come.

The author devotes much attention to policy making and policy conflicts. The regime pursued four goals. First, in the urban sector, many school graduates could not continue their education, especially at the tertiary level, while jobs often could not be found for them. Second, and closely connected with the first goal was maintenance and reestablishment of order in the cities, the latter referring to the millions of demobilized Red Guards exiled in l968 and 1969. Third, policy makers hoped that educated youths would contribute to rural modernization. The fourth goal, the most important in Bonnin's view, was the re-socialization of the zhiqing, i.e. cleansing them of the elitist aspirations nurtured by years of “revisionist” education. This reflected Mao's quest to overcome the three great differences between mental and physical labour, town and country, worker and peasant.

The author demonstrates that the goal of reducing urban unemployment was undermined to an enormous degree during the “ten years of chaos,” 1966–76, by the massive addition of peasant workers to the urban work force. The number of peasants who found work in the cities was larger than the number of urban youths sent to rural China. Fourteen million people were hired in the cities in those ten years, six million of them zhiqing and eight million peasants. Most remarkably, “most of the peasants managed to settle there permanently.” They were given personal urban hukou which excluded their families. Chinese scholars blame the “Gang of Four” for exploiting the discontent of temporary peasant workers by granting them permanent status (see his analysis, pp. 37–46).

It is worth adding that within the premises of the time, the unemployment goal, articulated before the Cultural Revolution, made some sense. But when viewed against the reform period, it did not. Urban unemployment arose in part because state socialist systems such as China's typically undervalued and neglected “unproductive” services, whereas with the revival of markets in the 1980s large numbers of urban jobs in this sector opened up. In the late 1970s, officials had worried that large-scale return of the zhiqing would create a mass of jobless people but this fear in the end proved unfounded. This point, which reflects the enormous changes of the reform era, is one that the author could have emphasized more.

With regard to order, before the Cultural Revolution, unemployed “social youths” and young people with bad class backgrounds became targets of rustication for fear that they might turn into juvenile delinquents. In 1968–69, Red Guards, many of whom had gained extensive experience acting out the Chairman's dictum that “to rebel is justified,” were now sent to the countryside in the largest part of the programme. From the regime's perspective, this aspect of the programme can be seen as a success.

The third goal, that zhiqing should use their education to contribute to rural modernization, did not for the most part pan out. The author estimates that only 10–15 per cent of the urban youths rose to positions that elevated them above that of ordinary agricultural labourers, such as primary school teacher, barefoot doctor or technician. At the same time, by reclaiming land, zhiqing on state or army farms in Xinjiang, Yunnan and Heilongjiang did contribute to development but again, mostly by dint of their physical labour. Lack of meaningful work was one of the major sources of the low morale and of continued longing to return home among zhiqing. Furthermore, the educational levels of the zhiqing were higher than that of villagers and as urbanites they were wont to look down on ignorant and unsophisticated rustics.

The fourth goal, turning zhiqing into socialist peasants, failed altogether. In l968, Mao's radical ideology was fortified by anger at the failure of the Red Guards to live up to his expectations. Hence his call that urban youth submit to “reeducation by the poor and lower-middle peasants.” During this period, ideological and coercive pressures merged seamlessly, leaving urban youth no choice except to comply. As Bonnin shows in vivid detail, the “reeducation” requirement had the effect of further lowering the status of the zhiqing in the eyes of their rural hosts, who, to begin with, often did not welcome extra consumers, all the more since they lacked farming skills. They were dependent on village cadres and peasants, who controlled work assignments and had power to block visits home or entry into universities after they started in 1972 to admit students on recommendation of their work units. “Reeducation” exposed zhiqing to harassment and the arbitrary and unaccountable power of cadres. If an educated youth “contested an order, peasants would often crudely retort … ‘Chairman Mao sent you here to be re-educated by us, so if we tell you to eat shit, you eat shit’” (p. 295). Re-education was repudiated in the late 1970s in favour of strengthened material incentives.

Ideological appeals stood in sharp contrast to the inequalities which arose from the programme. Bad-class youths resented their discriminatory status, as did the many who watched as others from privileged backgrounds were able to join the military, obtain urban factory jobs or secure preferred destinations, for instance in suburban villages. The book sheds light on the corruption that accompanied major phases of the programme. For many, the whole movement was suffused with deep injustices, about which many stories were written in later years.

In the 1970s, after a 1973 Mao initiative but mainly towards the end of the decade, substantial efforts were made to improve the conditions of the zhiqing. These efforts did not restrain the urge to return home because, as Bonnin suggests, the vast majority did not support the programme, including those who had at first been enthusiastic. Instead, many took to various forms of evasive, passive resistance. On army and state farms, in contrast, substantial collective actions erupted as the political climate began slowly to change from l977. There were strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins and petitions to the authorities in Beijing. Some took part in the l978–79 democracy movement. The author traces these developments in fine detail.

Policy makers were divided on how to handle the discontent of the sent-down youth. While ideology was no longer much of an issue, the fear of urban instability if masses of the zhiqing returned but could not find jobs prompted continued support for the programme but in rationalized form and without the morale-destroying “for life” stipulation. After considerable uncertainty, by 1978, “most leaders” understood that the programme would have to be abandoned: it consumed too many state resources, it was inefficient, it was productive of social unrest and, perhaps most important, it was a major waste of talent. In the eyes of this “lost” generation, Mao's reputation took a nosedive.

There is some terminological confusion in the text. On page 39, for instance, reference is made to “4 million secondary school graduates… in addition to 400,000 high school graduates.” Elsewhere, state and army farms are simply called “farms.” But these are minor defects. They do not detract from the value of this important book.