"The Lost Generation is a vital component to understanding Maoism. The book provides a comprehensive account of the critical movement during which seventeen million young "educated" city-dwellers were supposed to transform themselves into peasants, potentially for life. Bonnin closely examines the Chinese leadership's motivations and the methods that they used over time to implement their objectives, as well as the day-to-day lives of those young people in the countryside, their difficulties, their doubts, their resistance and, ultimately, their revolt. The author draws on a rich and diverse array of sources, concluding with a comprehensive assessment of the movement that shaped an entire generation, including a majority of today's cultural, economic, and political elite."--Dust jacket.

Part 1. Motivations. Ideological motives -- Political motivations -- Socioeconomic motives -- Part 2. The life and death of the Xiaxiang movement : policy changes. The managers and the ideologue : the prelude and interlude of the Cultural Revolution (1955-1966) -- The mass movement (1968-1976) -- Irresistible agony (1977-1980) -- The shadow of Xiaxiang in the 1980s -- Part 3. Firsthand experience. The conditions of departure : "voluntary" deportation -- Material difficulties and low morale -- Part 4. Social resistance. The social control system -- Passive resistance and its effects -- Open resistance -- Part 5. Assessment of the Xiaxiang "movement" in history. Socioeconomic assessment -- Political and ideological assessment -- Conclusion.