[F]actional fires were fueled by the anger of students frustrated over policies that kept them off the paths of political advancement because the students had the ill fortune to be born to parents who had connections with the Guomindang, the landlords, or the capitalist "exploiters" of the old regime and were therefore classifed as "bad" elements by the [Chinese Communist Party].  There were as well millions of disgrunted urban youths who had been relocated to the countryside during the party campaigns of ealier years, or in line with the plans of Chen Yun and others to save the cost to the state of providing subidized grain suppliers for such city residents. There were those, within the largest cities, who were denied access to the tiny number of elite schools that had become, in effect, "prep schools" for the children of influential party cadres. (With the shortage of colleges in China, and the thickets of complex entrance examinations that still stood in the way of them, only education in this handful of schoools could assure access to higher education.) And finally there were those who felt that party positions were monpolized by the uneducated rural cadres of Mao's forment peasant guerilla days, and that these people should now be eased out to make way for newer and more educated recuits.

Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China.

Somehow, familar.