In the early 1990s, Michel Bonnin became the director of the French Center for Contemporary China Studies, funded by the French government, and founded the French and English editions of Looking Forward to China magazine. He is the author of The Lost Generation-Rural Movement in China (1968~ 1980) (China Encyclopedia Publishing House, 20 10, 1 45.00).

Michel Bonnin, as a famous sinologist who mainly studies the contemporary history of China, has made a careful study of educated youth, so some people affectionately call him "the third generation of France". For a "French senior", it is undoubtedly the most difficult to write a serious academic book about educated youth. For this reason, the author has done a lot of interviews and evidence collection by using sociological investigation methods and original materials. Since 1970s, we have been collecting information about educated youth in rural areas of China. Through an interview with the educated youth in Hong Kong, he "decided to give up the original research on the re-evaluation of contemporary Confucianism and list the movement to the countryside as my thesis topic. Non-stop, I began to arrange various possible interviews and read a lot of written materials, from domestic newspapers and magazines to educated youth literature, from official decree documents to reports and comments from western scholars. " After 10 years' research, this book, The Lost Generation-Rural Movement in China (1968~ 1980), is informative and makes a comprehensive study of rural movement in China.

Researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Modern History of China Academy of Social Sciences said: "Pan is the first western scholar who published China's paper on educated youth in Chinese, the first western scholar who went deep into educated youth and engaged in educated youth research, and the only western scholar who studied educated youth for decades." Xu Youyu, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, commented: "This book makes a comprehensive study of China's rural movement, pointing out that its motivation is not only economic and demographic, but also political. Extensive discussion and in-depth analysis constitute an important chapter in the study of contemporary China history. "

Michel Bonnin said: "I don't like propaganda myself, and I don't like counter-propaganda. I can only say objectively, but objectively, I need a lot of information, and you have to put these materials together to get closer to the truth. ''