The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, often known simply as the Down to the Countryside Movement, was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China between mid-1950s and 1978. As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement. Usually only the oldest child had to go, but younger siblings could volunteer to go instead.

Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-party rule in China. He was arrested numerous times, and was described as China's most prominent dissident and the country's most famous political prisoner. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer; he died a few weeks later on 13 July 2017.