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Vanessa Cai

Like most political parties, China’s Communist Party consists of many moving parts – some more influential than others.
For decades, the Communist Youth League, whose membership ranges in age from 14 and 28, has been regarded as a nursery for the party’s future political stars, many of whom have ascended to top positions among the country’s political elite.
But in the politics of today’s China, the once powerful youth organisation appears to matter much less than it used to, as its influence and political significance recede.
The decline can be traced to 2014, when a massive corruption scandal connected to a former presidential chief of staff began to unfold, eventually leading to a systemic overhaul of the youth league in 2016.
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Since then, a significantly lower percentage of top officials have had connections to the youth league.
According to official data released on May 3, the organisation’s membership fell from nearly 90 million in 2012 to about 73.5 million last year, after Beijing tightened admission criteria to recruit people from elite circles.
The league’s annual budget is now about 200 million yuan (US$29 million), according to numbers released in February, down from more than 600 million yuan in 2015.
Earlier this year, the league lost its exclusive spot among the 34 sectors in China’s top advisory body. In the reshuffled Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) unveiled this January, the league was merged with another youth group, the All-China Youth Federation.
Why was the youth league once an important political player?
The youth league was founded in 1922 and continues to serve as a “reserve force” for the Communist Party, according to its constitution. It focuses on youth work, with a mission to keep young people close to the party’s doctrines and ideology.
The league is also an important stepping stone in many political careers.
From the 1980s, under reforms led by late Chinese leader Hu Yaobang, who was a former youth league chief, several generations of officials from the group were promoted to prominent government positions.


Political analysts refer to officials with such shared ties as tuanpai, or the “league clique”. Those officials have included President Xi Jinping’s immediate predecessor Hu Jintao, former premier Li Keqiang, and former vice-premier Hu Chunhua, all of whom served as the first secretary of the league.
Other former league chiefs include Lu Hao, who was later appointed governor of Heilongjiang province, and Zhou Qiang, who rose to become the country’s chief justice. Former vice-president Li Yuanchao and former vice-premier Liu Yandong were also among the league veterans.
What was the turning point?
The league’s influence began to wane in 2012, when Xi came to power and began to emphasise the importance of governing experience and loyalty in political appointments. Since then, promotions among officials have tended to go to those with ties to Xi dating back to their early years in Zhejiang and Fujian, while some officials with youth league backgrounds have found themselves caught up in the stepped-up national anti-corruption campaign.
A turning point happened after the downfall of Ling Jihua, Hu Jintao’s former top aide and a league veteran. He was placed under investigation in late 2014 on graft charges, and was jailed for life in 2016 for taking bribes, abuse of power and illegally obtaining state secrets.
The party’s top discipline watchdog has criticised the youth league and its cadres for being too bureaucratic and “self-serving”. Xi himself has accused the league’s leadership of being “aristocratic” and losing touch with the grass roots.
After urging from Xi, an overhaul was introduced in 2016. New rules restricted league membership at middle schools and high schools to elite students only, while curbing opportunities for youth league cadres to advance to leading party and government positions.
Is the youth league still politically relevant?
League officials no longer appear to have swift promotions. Hu Chunhua, once seen as the kind of official to be promoted from the league to the party’s top echelons of power, lost his seat in the now 24-member Politburo in October.
Hu later exited from the vice premiership, a key policy role, and landed on the CPPCC.
The league’s incumbent chief, He Junke, a 54-year-old aerospace technocrat, has been working at the youth organisation since 2005. He was named the league’s head in 2018, but was not promoted further during this year’s major leadership reshuffle.
His predecessor, Qin Yizhi, departed his leadership role at the league in 2017, as was named deputy head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, an appointment largely seen as a demotion.


Jérôme Doyon, a junior professor at the Centre for International Relations at Sciences Po Paris, said that Qin’s appointment to a much lower position than his predecessors showed how the youth league’s path to power had been weakened.
Aside from dwindling membership and funding, the league also lost an undergraduate college programme that it managed.
The undergraduate education sector of the China Youth University for Political Sciences, which was founded in 1985, was dissolved in 2017.
Why has Xi Jinping shut the door on ‘three-door cadres”?
Political analysts have attributed the youth league’s demise to Xi’s view of it as “clique” as he has continued to consolidate power.
Xi, who prefers promoting officials from his own network, has stressed the importance of grass-roots working experience, which youth league cadres have typically lacked.
The party’s central leadership has warned of the danger of “three-door cadres”, a reference to those who land top government jobs directly from school.
The role of young people in China’s Communist Party
However, Doyon said the youth league network had been weakened mostly at the central level, since “at the local levels, especially below the provincial one, the youth league is still a major channel to promote officials, as there are not many alternatives”.
But the youth league is not the only organisation to be affected by changing power dynamics, as long-standing norms such as age limits are no longer followed as closely as before, according to Doyon.
“In general, most institutionalised mechanisms to rapidly promote young cadres have been curtailed – the youth league is just one of them.”


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