Finding China's Lost Generation by John Israel - 9781538174258

Finding China's Lost GenerationThe Beijing Fifty-five\nAuthor(s): John Israel\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, United States\nImprint: Rowman & Littlefield\nISBN-13: 9781538174258, 978-1538174258\nSynopsis\nIn December 1968 Mao Zedong proclaimed that Chinas educated urban youth should move to the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower middle peasants. Some seventeen million who responded to his call spent the better part of a decade laboring in remote and impoverished regions. \nReturning to the cities in the late 1970s, undereducated, unemployed, and manifestly unprepared to contribute to Chinas post-Maoist future, the rusticated youth were dubbed the Lost Generation. How then, could China transform itself into an economic and military behemoth without the support of an entire generation of educated men and women?\nA close look at a group of young Beijingers suggests that at least some of the rusticated millions reentered urban life with asse.