During the Cultural Revolution, basic education was emphasized and rapidly expanded. While the years of schooling were reduced and education standard fell, the proportion of Chinese children who had completed primary education increased from less than half before the Cultural Revolution to almost all after the Cultural Revolution, and those who completed junior middle school rose from 15% to over two-third. The educational opportunities for rural children expanded considerably, while those of the children of the urban elite became restricted by the anti-elitist policies.[109]
The impact of the Cultural Revolution on popular education varied among regions, and formal measurements of literacy did not resume until the 1980s.[110]Some counties in Zhanjiang had illiteracy rates as high as 41% some 20 years after the revolution. The leaders of China at the time denied that there were any illiteracy problems from the start. This effect was amplified by the elimination of qualified teachers—many districts were forced to rely on selected students to educate the next generation.[110]
In 1968, the Communist Party instituted the Down to the Countryside Movement, in which "Educated Youths" (zhishi qingnian or simply zhiqing) in urban areas were sent to live and work in agrarian areas to be re-educated by the peasantry and to better understand the role of manual agrarian labor in Chinese society. In the initial stages, most of the youth who took part volunteered, although later on the government resorted to forcing many of them to move. Between 1968 and 1979, 17 millions of China's urban youths left for the countryside, and being in the rural areas also deprived them the opportunity of higher education.[101] In the post-Mao period, many of those forcibly moved attacked the policy as a violation of their human rights."[111]
