‘Lost generation'

Press, 14 May 1981, Page 17

‘Lost generation'

By

JONATHAN MIRSKY,

, ‘Observer’

A documentary called ‘•Don’t Waste Your Youth” is China’s latest weapon in the drive to tighten ideological discipline among young intellectuals. Since the opening of the Gang of Four trial in November 1980, China’s leaders have expressed their fears that an entire “lost generation,” addicted either to bad politics or degenerate West-ern-inspired habits, has infected the universities and the lower reaches of the bureacracy. The new film opens with the words: “This is a generation which has been wounded, that has awakened, and has been thinking seriously.” Throughout its 60 minutes, the documentary concentrates on Shanghai’s young people who triumphed over the adversities of the Cultural Revolution, such as a

pianist prevented from practising during the “ten terrible years,” now studying in a conservatory, and a machinist whose persecution for eight years did not prevent his ultimate design for a solar furnace. The film includes, too, shots of “young , gamblers, wandering smokers, and pursuers of Western life styles,” accompanied by the comment: “How my heart aches for you, my young friends. Wake up!” . Shanghai, the film’s setting, is traditionally China’s centre of corruption and the birthplace of any passing fashion. It was also the

Gang’s stronghold. In more austere Peking, the presidents of the capital’s university student unions have just pledged their love for the Party, socialism, the people, hard work, and the law. They swore not to drink or smoke, and called on all Peking university students to follow their lead. In another northern city, Tianjin, an undergraduate at Nankai University, pasted up a poster critical of national policies. After a discussion with the authorities, the student removed his poster, declaring that the Party’s attention made him "wake up

as if from a dream.”

According to the report, other Nankai students, similarly suffering from inadequate Marxist knowledge and poor grounding in history, had also failed to distinguish right from wrong, but are back on the right track. The university Party committee had convened teachers and students “to analyse extreme ideas among them.” Now history lecturers are underlining that without the Party there- would be no New China, while their colleagues in politics “deal with the superiority of the socialist system.”

For several years after

Mao’s and the fall of the Gang iq late 1976, such serious political study was downgraded on the grounds that most higjh-powered intellectuals were already good socialists; “ned” as well as "expert.” Even Deng Xiaoping maintained that more than an occasional hour or two spent on politics by such specialists was a waste of time.

Now, according to “Red Flag,” studying political courses well, jn order to have a correct* ideology, is needed in order to s’tudy specialised courses well,'” and adds the “little known fact” that scientific advances tend to “accorq with the basic laws of dialectical materialism.” "v Students without a basirp Marxist grounding, the paper maintains, tend to shut themselves up in their studies, and are socially ageless.