China official websites

[xoxoxoBruce]

having experienced and suffered the Great Leap Forward at the end of the fifties and the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976). The Chinese economy stagnated in those years, and universities and colleges stopped enrolling students for about a decade. The youth were thus deprived of their right to an education and instead sent to rural areas to labor, so as to "qualify as true members of the proletariat."

This is from the Chinese media. The same media that was claiming all through this suffering by the people, that everything was wonderful and the people were happy.