According to Reuters: They were among tens of millions of China's "sent-down" youths and banished cadres of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution -- yet now they form the so-called fourth generation of elites, set to take power at a party congress that opens Friday.
...Uncertainty was also the scariest part of a Maoist re-education. Sent-down youths met grim rural realities, a violent ideological climate and bitter disillusionment.
"This event was a catastrophe for the nation but could be an asset for an individual's growth," Cheng Li of Hamilton College in New York wrote in a study of the rising generation.