Michel Bonnin. The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China's Educated Youth (1968–1980).

Abstract

The English translation of Michel Bonnin's comprehensive study of China's “sent-down youth” (zhiqing) movement has been eagerly awaited since the French edition, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, appeared in 2004; the Chinese-language edition appeared in 2009, from the same publisher as the volume under review. Bonnin's work is important for a number of reasons. First, his arguments have played an important role in the debate over this movement within China ever since an early article of his appeared in a Chinese-language magazine in Hong Kong in 1989; indeed, Chinese scholars cited his influence when restrictions began to be removed and they could pursue their own research on the subject in the early 1990s. Second, unlike the very few Western scholars who have written comprehensive works on the subject, but who wrote before the official end of the movement and too early to take advantage of the abundance of primary sources that subsequently became available, Bonnin wrote later that in addition to the extensive documentation that he could access, Chinese participants and scholars had already begun to reflect on the meaning of this massive social, economic, political, and ideological experiment for an understanding of Chinese history and politics. Thus, by using an eclectic mix of his own interview data, memoirs, and literary accounts from the zhiqing, comprehensive histories by Chinese scholars, a close reading of the Chinese media over time, an examination of statistical compendia, and virtually all the important Western accounts in English, French, and German, Bonnin has given us what is very likely to be the definitive study of the movement.