The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result of what he perceived to be anti-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement.