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China’s Communist Party turns 100
ChinaPolitics

Explainer | How China’s Communist Party, founded by young people, continues to engage youths

  • Communist Youth League has a prominent place in party history as a springboard for state leaders
  • Recruiting young party members has been cited by top leaders as being vital to the country’s prosperity

Reading Time:5 minutes
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has spoken of the need to “train a generation of reliable successors”. Photo: Xinhua
Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

This is the sixth in the South China Morning Post’s series of explainers about China’s Communist Party in the lead-up to the party’s centenary in July. In this piece, Zhuang Pinghui explains the importance of young people to the party amid China’s ageing population.

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Soon after he became China’s president in 2013, Xi Jinping addressed youth representatives from the Communist Party.

“If the youth are prosperous, the country is prosperous. If the youth are strong, the country is strong,” he said, adding that the country’s development had always depended on young people.

The Communist Party of China has grown from a small group of about 50 Marxists to the world’s second-largest party organisation, with almost 92 million members – more than the population of Germany. Today, one in 15 people in China is a member.

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SCMP Explains: How does the Chinese Communist Party operate?

SCMP Explains: How does the Chinese Communist Party operate?
Although China faces a greying population, many of the party’s members are relatively young. As of 2019, the party said that more than a third of its members were under 40, while student party members accounted for 2 per cent of the total number.
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In comparison, 13 per cent of Britain’s Conservative Party and 18 per cent of its Labour Party were below 40, according to a study by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Party Members Project, Queen Mary University of London and University of Sussex in 2017.

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China’s Communist Party: everything you need to know
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