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
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.
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.
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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.