Grass-roots members to assume more power
The Communist Party of China (CPC) has started the largest reform in decades to its reserve force, the Communist Youth League (CYL), after the league was recently criticized for being too bureaucratic and aristocratic.
The reform will downsize the league's central committee and increase the number of members recruited from local branches or "front lines" in order to make it more representative of the grass roots of youth.
"The Communist Youth League is the bridge and bond linking the Party and government with the youth," says the document released by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee on Tuesday. "Pushing the reform ahead is part of the drive to strictly run the Party, as well as an important measure to revitalize the league." The document also states the league's central committee will send more officials to the grass roots to serve the nation's youth.
Elitist and inefficient
Recently, the league's central committee had come under fire after receiving criticism for being too elitist and inefficient.
The Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) reported in February that an inspection team it sent to the committee found problems of "bureaucratization, administerization, elitism and excessive entertainment."
Analysts believe that this kind of criticism directed at the CYL committee comes directly from the Party leadership, which shows that the Party is determined to fix these problems.
Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, said on his WeChat public account that these problems will negatively impact relations between the Party and the grass roots, which is an error of too much bureaucracy.
Su Wei, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Chongqing Committee, told the Global Times that the CYL central committee is not a government department or ministry, and its role is supporting the CPC to help and train the young, so the Party can be reinvigorated. Some CYL organizations have lost their purpose as a bridge linking the Party and the public, Su noted.
According to CYL data, the 91-year-old league currently has over 87.4 million members nationwide and more than 3.87 million grass-roots organizations in China as of 2015.
The CYL central committee provides one of the main paths for training Party officials. Many of the country's senior officials got their start there, including former president Hu Jintao and current premier Li Keqiang.
More voices, opinions
An official from the league's central committee, who asked for anonymity, told the Global Times that the reform will be effective in tackling the problem of elitism. "In future, the CYL will increase the seats for members from the grass roots at the CYL National Congress. A minimum of 70 percent of the seats at the national congress should come from the grass roots, so it will bring more voices and opinions from grass-root league organizations," the official said.
In the past, many young elites treated the CYL committee as a "short cut" to promotion within the Party, Su said.
"The league's central committee is a provincial and ministerial-level agency, but this doesn't mean these officials are all prepared and have enough experience," he said.
The CYL official said that according to the reform, the committee should be made up of three kinds of people. Some will be professional officials just as before; some will be recruited from public service organizations and thirdly, some will be officials from other ministries and local governments. In general, the officials serving on the CYL committee will become more diversified and experienced, he said.
He stressed that while the foreign media might report that the reform is going to weaken the CYL central committee's position, this interpretation is wrong.
"The CYL central committee will not be weakened, but it will add more power to grass-root issues and cut bureaucracy and elitism problems from the top," he said.
