Ambitious Young Chinese Flock to Communist Party

From China’s elite universities to villages of mud-brick houses, young people are struggling to join the Communist Party.

It’s not for socialist ideology. China is fast embracing capitalism, and its youth are at the forefront.

Some say they’re joining out of patriotism.

But to many Chinese, party membership is simply the road to getting rich. Although some private businessmen in big cities prosper without party ties, businessmen elsewhere in the country can profit hugely from a party connection.

Business people join the party “to get easier access to loans, licenses and other essential resources or to gain a little influence in local policy implementation,” said Bruce Dickson, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies the party’s recruitment.

Communist Party officials may simply want to help an upstanding businessmen, aiding him with permits and licenses in places where the party and the government are almost synonymous.

In other cases, party leaders may simply be looking for a partner in crime. Corruption is rampant among members, even by the party’s own reckoning. Members wine and dine on the public tab in smoky karaoke rooms. In some cases, according to accounts in state-controlled newspapers, millions of dollars have been embezzled.

In July, Zhu Shengwen, the vice mayor of Harbin, a city of 9 million people in northeastern China, was expelled from the party on charges of taking bribes. He claimed the charges were fabricated.

Many young people insist they join the party out of pure motives.

Six students at prestigious Nankai University in Tianjin, near Beijing, who recently were interviewed in a group about their reasons for joining the party, denied that corruption is a problem or that some join for personal gain. The party’s code of conduct calls for exemplary living, serving others and fighting for communism--not capitalism.

The Communist Party in its revolutionary years pulled China out of the grip of Western powers and severe poverty and “has led our country to prosperity,” said Wang Qingpeng, a philosophy student.

Zeng Canxia, who is in environmental studies at Nankai and who joined the party in high school, said the party provides the “staunch leadership core” needed to build China into a modern, developed country.

“If a person wants to do something for the country, it’s hard to accomplish anything of value relying only on oneself,” she said. “One must throw oneself into a big and powerful group.”

Students like these increasingly are being recruited and passing the party’s strict review process. Newspapers reported that groups of hundreds of students throughout China took the oath of membership on July 1, the anniversary of the party’s founding in 1921.

At Beijing University, the country’s top school, only 4% of undergraduates were party members in 1990, just after the crackdown on democracy demonstrations that were led by the school’s students. Now 13% are members.

Dickson, the George Washington University professor, said that the number of people who join the party for nationalistic reasons seems to be shrinking and that most join for material motives.

In some jobs, party membership is necessary for career advancement.

A newspaper editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was told that higher jobs were out of the question unless he signed up.

Entrepreneurs often join to improve their connections with local officials or are recruited because they have skills the party wants.

The 58-million-member party also co-opts leaders in the villages. About 70% to 80% of all candidates in village elections are party members, and many nonmembers who win are quickly recruited, according to officials of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Under party rules, members have a right to debate and make suggestions on policies within party channels. But these debates are kept concealed from the public.

“I think the reason young people want to join the Chinese Communist Party is the same reason that their elders did. So far, it is the main means for asserting one’s political views,” said Merle Goldman, a professor of Chinese history at Boston University.

Outsiders risk being treated as subversives if they make political opinions public, she said.

Chinese Communists speak carefully about their party. When they join, they vow to carry out its decisions, observe its discipline, guard its secrets.

The students at Nankai University insisted the only personal gain they expected was character development and the opportunity to play a part in something bigger.

Xiong Zhanbo, a mathematics major, said as a party member he would help the village where he grew up become prosperous and “realize the value of my own life, and give all my energy to the building of the country.”