In the 1950s, in order to provide options for many students who could not go to school, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee called on them to go to the countryside to engage in agricultural production. This became the source of the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside" movement. During the Cultural Revolution, tens of millions of students participated in the Movement; it became a mass social wave.

Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, there had been unrest all over the country; schools stopped enrolling students, making it impossible for graduates to move on to their next stage of education. This generated a large amount of surplus labor. From 1966 to 1968, such middle school graduates reached more than 10 million in number; these graduates later came to be called the "elder three cohorts". From 1966 to 1967, some students in Beijing began to advocate that entrance examinations be abolished and students be allowed to go to the countryside to hone their skills. Some students, full of enthusiasm, spontaneously formed teams to go to the countryside to contribute their labor; these students received full support from the government to do so. This was the initial spark that set off the larger movement of graduates going "up to the mountains and down to the countryside".

On April 4, 1968, the CCP Central Committee forwarded the Heilongjiang Provincial Revolutionary Committee's "Report on the Distribution of Graduates from Institutions of Higher Education". As Central Committee policy, this "Report" required that all government departments and schools "look toward the countryside, look toward the frontier, look toward the industry and mines, and look toward the grassroots". The Central Committee required that appropriate arrangements be made for the graduates; provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions began to mobilize graduates to go to the countryside in an organized manner. On December 22, 1968, an article in the "People's Daily" quoted Mao Zedong's instructions: "There is a great need for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle class farmers." Immediately, there was an upsurge of going up to the mountains and down to the countryside; no one in the elder three cohorts who was still stranded in the cities could avoid being swept up in the movement to go to rural and remote villages.

Some students were full of idealism about going to the countryside. However, in fact, most rural areas were still struggling with effects of the great famine and the Cultural Revolution; food was quite scarce. Some students who went to the countryside even had to live in caves, ruined temples, or pigsties. Even worse, some students were beaten to death by production team soldiers, and women students were sexually assaulted. Frank Dikötter's book "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976" points to an investigation report for Hubei province as an example; between 1969 and 1973, at least 8,000 such women were victimized in that province alone.

A large number of students went out to the countryside, which directly led to the decline of the Red Guards. However, by the 1970s, the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement was gradually declining due to ongoing problems such as funding losses and the hardship of young people's lives. Many considered going to the countryside a daunting path and were reluctant to go. In 1973, the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement was revived due to a Central Committee policy change; but at the end of the Cultural Revolution, the movement once again entered a stage of rapid decline.

After the Cultural Revolution, as national policies were adjusted, the number of people going to the countryside dropped sharply, but a large number of young people remained in the countryside. Many worried about their futures, and issues such as marriage and employment. They held large-scale protests such as petitions, work strikes, and lying on railroad tracks, forcefully demanding that they be allowed to return to the cities. This caused a wave of "educated youth returning to the city". In 1980, the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement officially came to an end.

References: Liu Xiaomeng, "A History of China's Educated Youth: The Great Wave (1966–1980)"; Bu Weihua, "History of the People's Republic of China: Smashing the Old World — Turmoil and Catastrophe in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1968)"; Frank Dikötter, "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976"