China’s Communist Youth League gets new leader, aged 52, but role is ‘no longer fast track to the top’
- The body’s importance has been eclipsed in recent years and its new head A Dong is older than some previous incumbents
- However, A and other officials born in the 1970s may still be given a chance to prove themselves ahead of taking on more senior roles
The Communist Youth League, once a cradle of Chinese leaders, has been given a new head.
A Dong, 52, a former deputy governor and director of the publicity department in the northeastern province of Jilin, has been appointed as the first secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League’s Central Committee, becoming the youngest official to hold ministerial-level office in the country.
A replaces He Junke as head of the league, which had 73.5 million members aged between 14 and 28 at the end of last year.
He has been transferred to the semi-official China Association for Science and Technology as party chief.
The appointments, officially announced last week, came ahead of the youth league’s twice-a-decade national congress this summer.
The organisation’s charter describes it as a “reserve force” of the Communist Party and it was once a major power base for some of the country’s most senior figures – including former president Hu Jintao and former premier Li Keqiang.
A key turning point happened in 2016 when Ling Jiuha - a veteran from the league and Hu’s former top aide – was jailed for life for bribery, abuse of power and illegally obtaining state secrets.
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A’s appointment suggests Xi is now prioritising political loyalty, analysts said.
“Though the youth league is no longer the path to paramount political power it once was, the head of the league is still a key position,” Chen Daoyin, an independent political scientist and former Shanghai-based professor said.
“It plays the role of that party’s gatekeeper as young people are more easily influenced by foreign values and ideologies.
“I think Xi prefers candidates with a science and engineering academic background – deemed less prone to Western influence than those majoring in liberal arts. Also, he attaches importance to experience in grass roots positions,” Chen said.
A, a native of Liaoning province and member of the Hui minority, holds a doctorate from Peking University’s College of Urban and Environmental Sciences and spent 19 years working for the State Oceanic Administration.
Before moving to Jilin, he spent four years in Hainan, including two years as deputy party secretary in Sanya and two years as deputy party secretary in Sansha, which administers the territory China claims in the South China Sea.
Qin Feng, senior researcher at the Communication University of China’s Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and world affairs centre, said that role was key to A’s promotion.
“Serving in Sansha is serving China’s core interests. There is no better way to show your loyalty [to the party] than that. Also, he is from an ethnic minority, that is definitely a plus for him,” Qin said.
But Qin noted that at 52 A was older than some previous youth league leaders, suggesting it was no longer a fast track to the top.
“The league is now just a youth organisation under the party, not a powerbase,” she said.
A’s appointment follows that of Li Yunze, another 52-year-old, who was made head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) last month.
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Xie Maosong, a senior fellow of the Taihe Institute and a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said that Xi was keen to prepare leaders born in the 1970s for bigger roles in future – although no one of that generation has yet been given provincial leadership roles.
“Li and A Dong are being tested in the less demanding roles of supervising the financial sector and youth development … They still need to prove themselves, before they can move on to bigger provincial roles, which is a prerequisite for reaching the top,” he said.
