What was the purpose of sending urban youths to live in the countryside?

During the Cultural Revolution, the policy of sending urban youths to the countryside—often referred to as "rustication"—served several political and social purposes:

• Restoring Order: By 1968, the Red Guard movement had caused widespread anarchy, factional violence, and the disruption of urban industrial production. The government and military forced millions of these youths to move to rural areas to scatter their forces and bring stability back to the cities.12
• Reducing Social Differences: The program was part of a broader initiative to reduce the "three major differences" in Chinese society: those separating intellectual from manual labor, worker from peasant, and urban from rural.3
• Ideological Education: While in the hinterlands, these young people were instructed to "learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants." This was intended to provide them with experience in manual labor and to instill revolutionary values, countering what were perceived as elitist or "bourgeois" tendencies.31

Ultimately, this program reflected Mao Zedong’s disillusionment with the Red Guards' inability to overcome their internal factionalism and his desire to rebuild the Communist Party under tighter control.1