A generation of gifted, and hard working graduates emerged out of the bitter ashes of the cultural revolution. Their delayed entry to tertiary education and the

A generation of gifted, and hard working graduates emerged out of the bitter ashes of the cultural revolution. Their delayed entry to tertiary education and the circumstances behind it gave added impetus to their desire to study and gain knowledge. I've met several across different disciplines and two (at least) in computer science and networking. When the barriers for travel came down, many studied and worked abroad, I met some in Edinburgh at the end of the 70s who worked in advanced language areas (think the foundations of ML) formal methods, CSP, you-name-it. People like these in networking (I subsequently know and worked with in governance contexts) built and led the chinese academic internet. These people are now senior academics in the Chinese academy of science. They're serious, smart people. There was also a late 1970s VLSI boom in China. It's why they were so successful in the 80s and 90s outsourcing chip commercialization space. So to my own knowledge if not "in" the cultural revolution certainly very rapidly afterwards assuming you take its run up into the 70s.