China to send "youth volunteers" into countryside to "spread civilization" - Polidicks

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/12/millions-of-chinese-youth-volunteers-to-be-sent-to-villages-in-echo-of-mao-policy The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology”, according to a Communist party document. “We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,” Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan Province, told the Global Times. Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily. Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of “young intellectuals” into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade. “Has it started again?” wondered one user named WangTingYu. “We did that 40 years ago,” wrote Miruirong. “Sometimes history advances, sometimes it retreats,” noted KalsangWangduTB. Cultural Revolution 2.0 here we goooo

Oh boy... Hopefully we don't have another Four Pests program, because deary me can you imagine how big of a shitshow that'd be.

Take your kid to genocide day.

WINNIE THE POOH ANNOUNCES CULTURAL REVOLUTION 2

It feels like Pooh is actively trying to undo all the achievements that China managed to do after the death of Mao.

We'll see how this pans out Probably better than what we did - send "experts" into the countryside to "help digitalize", but what good is it when the ISPs don't give a shit outside the major cities to the point that there is no internet in strong wind

We cannot let the western imperialists win! We must create our own imperialism.

I think its highly unlikely china is going to accomplish much if anything. the rural areas of china are practically living in another millennia in terms of infrastructure and technology use.

Spreading social media to farmers so they aren't exempt from social credit and government spying But hey at least they might get wifi I guess

Well, I guess there's less potential to screw people over than Glorious Chairman Mao's plans of exterminating all the birds and smelting everything into pig iron.

This. My girlfriend's former roommate married a guy who's parents live somewhere just outside of Maoming. They are farmers who have never had a proper job and never earned any money in their life. Their house isn't even electrified and they refuse it to be, because they have no money to pay the power bills. I've also been to the village of my girlfriend's grandmother. Lots of concrete houses, most of them falling apart from disrepair, some of them dangerously tilted over the roads. Meanwhile, massive pillars are being built right next to the village to support high speed railway. If we ignore the politics, China's an okay place to live in as long as you live in a city. The people in the countryside really do deserve to see some development, but for now, they're literally stuck in the past.

This has been a long standing problem with China, and it only got worse in modern times. We need look no further than the 1900 to see how the rural areas were heavily exploited and took the brunt of the policies that were enacted, while the big cities more or less got off scot free.

This is a problem for Asia in general, lots of big cities and lots of incredibly poor people. Its a lesson that technology won't build itself out, in America we heavily prioritized utilities and pushing technology and science in agriculture long before big AG came around and long before libertarian yobs got it into their heads that things would just work out if we ignored them.

Yeah I've seen the railway construction with my own eyes. The villages look really depressing. It's weird that they're putting resources into the countryside because I heard they'd rather just move everyone into the city.

Btw. Here's a couple photos I took during the Chinese New Year, just so you can see what the countryside looks like. At the same time, please bear in my mind that this is in the very south of China and there definitely are villages that look a lot worse or better. In addition to that, none of those cars belong to the villagers; city folk go to the countryside during the Chinese New Year to visit their grandparents or just to spend some time away from the city. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/ae556efb-d8bd-47eb-8b42-0d762aec4a35/IMG_1969.JPG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/8523f0c2-6eb4-471a-b543-4c643dd71b81/IMG_1971.JPG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/fa0b6571-dd8e-4819-82ba-d5e497debbb0/IMG_1957.JPG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/3369e1e5-2370-40bb-ae8b-a78eadec53af/IMG_1956.JPG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/150b873e-ca7c-45b4-a753-6d156d120265/IMG_1902.JPG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/78659/bddbdae0-fc2a-4ca4-a120-895200aed6b3/IMG_1903.JPG There is definitely lots of room for improvement, as long as the plan isn't just to send the smart people away to help work the fields and such.

the idea of getting educatef people to spread out more is in theory a good one, but when executed under the control and direction of mr. winnie, ive got second and third thoughts

That still looks a helluva a lot better than some of the boonie sticks in Northern New York; you ride up toward Potsdamn and there is one 'town' in particular that is 1880s style wooden homes that look like they're held together with love alone.