Educated youth-the educated youth mentioned here is not a general term for educated and knowledgeable young people. It refers to a special group produced in a specific historical background. Including those young people who received education at school and then continued to go to the countryside or engage in agricultural production under the special policy of "going to the countryside" organized by the government. Schools here refer to primary and secondary schools, because according to the regulations at that time, graduates of universities and secondary specialized schools were uniformly distributed by the state, even if they were assigned to the frontier and rural areas, they appeared as cadres and received state wages. Ordinary primary and secondary school graduates do not enjoy such treatment. Theoretically, they are regarded as farmers. This is the most fundamental difference between educated youth and other people working in rural areas and frontier areas.

After 1962, middle school graduates from large and medium-sized cities went to the countryside to be uniformly distributed by the state. Among them, the "old three" who graduated during the Cultural Revolution and the urban youth who graduated from middle schools one after another became the main body of "educated youth"