Monday 25 January 2010
Youth league pours millions into recruiting
The Communist Youth League poured 110 million yuan (HK$125 million) into bolstering its grass-roots branches across the mainland in an attempt to attract more young people to join a party that has lost much of its ideological appeal, state media reported yesterday.
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Youth league pours millions into recruiting
Verna Yu
08 December 2009
The Communist Youth League poured 110 million yuan (HK$125 million) into bolstering its grass-roots branches across the mainland in an attempt to attract more young people to join a party that has lost much of its ideological appeal, state media reported yesterday.
It has developed tens of thousands of job-training bases to help more than 200,000 youngsters gain short-term experience, according to the People’s Daily website. And together with several state banks and agricultural co-operatives, it has also launched a loan scheme for young people who want to start their own businesses.
More than two million young people had taken part in vocational training courses organised by the youth league, the report said. “These projects have matched the needs of young people and have become the platform for local youth leagues to attract, bring together and provide services for young people.”
The report also detailed schemes to mobilise university graduates to work as village officials.
The Communist Youth League - the power base of President Hu Jintao - is the training ground for grooming capable young people to be future leaders in the Communist Party. Analysts say ordinary mainlanders have long lost their belief in communism and the party has, to a large extent, turned into an elite club for people who seek social and career advancement.
Professor Chan Kin-man, a sociologist at Hong Kong’s Chinese University, said the party did not have problems attracting a lot of bright young people, although they did not necessarily join for the right reason. Many young people now wanted to join the party because it was a ticket to a good job in the civil service, he said. On the mainland, the civil service is still seen as a guarantee for a life-long job, stable income and lucrative fringe benefits. Party membership remains an important criterion for getting into the government.
“Very few join because of socialist or communist ideologies now,” Chan said. “They join because of more pragmatic reasons, and many just want to be civil servants.”
He pointed out that the youth league also ran a voluntary service branch to draw public-spirited young people who wanted to contribute to society. “But ... the Communist Party doesn’t use communism to attract people anymore.”
While young people were previously keen on working in the private sector, the state’s monopoly over many lucrative sectors nowadays meant government-sector positions were highly sought after, said Zhou Xiaozheng , sociology professor at Beijing-based Renmin University. “Official power is central [to Chinese society] - once you have power you have everything - so young people are all keen on getting into the civil service.
“As the Communist Youth League is the place where successors for the Communist Party are groomed, people get in so they can become officials - they want to have good jobs.”
In a mainland internet chat room, someone who was in the process of filling in a youth league application form posted a message to solicit help: “What is the purpose of joining the youth league? I don’t even know. What am I going to write? Could someone please help me?”
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