Allies of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) are moving against an organization that is the power base of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強), in what analysts say might be a sign of faction-fighting at the top of the ruling party.
The Communist Youth League (CYL) has long been a proving ground for young up-and-comers to demonstrate their political talent, particularly those who — unlike Xi — are not party “princelings” with the advantage of high-ranking parents.
It has produced some of the country’s top leaders, including former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), as well as Li, and its alumni are seen as a leading faction within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Photo: AP
However, as Xi moves to consolidate power, the group has come under sustained attack, including direct reprimands from the president himself.
The party’s internal corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, this week took the group to task for losing sight of its core mission to guide young people’s ideological development.
On its Web site, the commission published an extensive self-criticism by the league’s central committee, acknowledging that it must have a greater “sense of responsibility and mission” to the party leadership and young people.
The declaration came after an investigation into the league found evidence of embezzlement and improper influence, according to the Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling party.
The commission is headed by Wang Qishan (王岐山), who is widely considered to be Xi’s top lieutenant.
Analysts say that the charges, although likely legitimate, might also be a convenient cover for the commission’s real goal: helping Xi jockey for position ahead of next year’s 19th party congress, which is to decide the new line-up for the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, the top organ of political power in China.
“To investigate the CYL is a highly political endeavor,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University. “This operation will certainly contribute to consolidating Xi’s position.”
Five of the seven committee members are expected to retire at the congress and many experts say that Xi and Li are locked in a struggle to fill the vacancies with their own supporters, not to mention protect their own positions.
“All indications are that Xi Jinping is trying to reduce the influence of the Youth League” ahead of the event, China expert Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told reporters.
The head of state sees the group “as a political threat,” Lam said, adding that in the future the league “will be concerned with promoting ideology and political correctness among young people and no longer serve a function as a talent bank.”
The league was formed in 1920 to promote communist ideology to people between the ages of 14 and 28 and has historically generally been more reformist than conservative. It had more than 88 million members in 2013, according to the CCP’s official mouthpiece the People’s Daily, making it about the same size as the party itself.
Chinese elite politics are notoriously opaque, with experts and analysts picking over the smallest details of the leadership’s activities — from minute variations in public language to seating arrangements at official ceremonies — for hints to the future.
The league’s tea leaves, by contrast, have been unusually clear, with the group suffering a seemingly constant stream of attacks in recent months.
Xi himself criticized it in July last year, blasting its leaders for being too “aristocratic,” despite his own descent from so-called “red nobility” — his father, Xi Zhongcun (習仲勳), was a CCP military leader and later senior official.
In February, the commission, according to the official Xinhua news agency, slammed the league for falling out of step with the party leadership, saying it had “not studied the spirit of the CPC’s (CCP) conference on improving mass organizations.”
In the league’s statement on Monday, its leaders pledged to “deeply study and grasp the spirit of Party Secretary Xi Jinping’s major speeches,” adding that the group could only hope to achieve reform by improving its understanding of the president’s teachings.
Even so there is no sign of a let-up in the assault. The Global Times on Thursday reported that following the commission’s report, the league plans to issue a “detailed plan” for its own reform.
Xi’s position is clear, Peking University professor of law He Weifang (賀衛方) said.
“His view on what function the CYL should play is definitely not the same as previous leaders,” He told reporters. “There is a conflict.”
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened