Editor's Introduction

Abstract

The materials translated in this issue focus on the results of the Chinese Communist Party's youth work from 1979 to the present. It was early in 1979, after the decisions of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee (December 18-22, 1978), that the party decisively shifted its emphasis and the attention of the whole country away from class struggle and toward "socialist modernization," which required both "great growth in the productive forces [and] changes in all methods of management, action, and thinking that stand in the way of such growth."' It has been political work cadres, particularly those assigned to mold the values of youth, who have faced perhaps the most difficult adjustments: much of what they had been preaching was now considered harmful, "sham Marxism" reflecting the views of the discredited "Gang of Four." The earliest piece in this collection (selection 22, September 1979) reveals the demoralization of political work cadres as they sought a new, relevant role for themselves in the era of the four modernizations. As many of these readings make clear, however, the contradictions that have made it difficult for the party to fashion a comprehensive youth policy still remain.