Young Chinese to be sent back to villages in Mao-style move

China is planning to send millions of youth "volunteers" back to the villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.

The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to "rural zones" by 2022 in order to "increase their skills, spread civilization and promote science and technology," according to a Communist Party document.

The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the official Global Times daily Thursday.

"We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models," Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan Province, told the state-run Global Times.

Students will be called upon to live in the countryside during their summer holidays, although the CYL did not say how young people would be ...