Lectrice, 28, grew up eating KFC, has watched US teen TV drama Gossip Girl since high school, loves wearing Nike Air Jordans and supports the #MeToo movement — she is also a staunch Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member.
“People assume party slogans ring hollow because they sound too ‘glorious,’ but if you put aside the rebellious spirit youth usually have, these slogans are actually a good guide for self-cultivation,” Lectrice said by telephone from Shanghai.
The CCP is at the peak of its power under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), analysts have said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Some Chinese privately say that they find the party’s earnest slogans and focus on collectivism anachronistic, but a growing cohort of young members reconcile those contradictions with an increasingly nationalistic pride in China’s success, several party members and political analysts said.
“I joined the party because I want to have a platform to push for social causes with my peers,” said Lectrice, a doctoral student in philosophy, who said she volunteered a few years ago to counsel women recovering from domestic abuse and wrote articles in support of China’s nascent #MeToo movement.
Authorities in China have in the past few years censored or detained women advocating for feminist causes, reflecting Beijing’s general intolerance for social activism, but Lectrice says that those people were “too extreme” and had anti-party agendas that went beyond women’s rights.
Young party members who agreed to be quoted for this story declined to use their full names because they had not been authorized by the party to speak with foreign media.
Party membership last year grew by a record 2.43 million people, and as is typical, about 80 percent of new joiners were 35 or under, according to figures released on Wednesday by its Organization Department.
Growth this year is set be even faster, with 2.31 million joiners in the first six months, bringing membership to 95.15 million.
Joining the party is a selective process that normally takes two to three years.
As room for public dissent has narrowed dramatically under Xi, China has ramped up pro-party education and propaganda, which has fed rising nationalism, especially among 20-somethings, who have known only a thriving and confident China, four Chinese political analysts said.
“They are only exposed to positive propaganda about how great the country is,” said Zhang Ming (張明), a retired professor of politics at Renmin University whose social media posts have often been deleted by censors.
Several young members said privately that they joined so it would be easier to get jobs, especially in cities such as Beijing, where a position in civil service provides job security and makes it easier to get hukou (戶口) residence status.
“Many of my peers join the party because that can give them an advantage when applying for jobs,” said Roy, a 29-year-old Chinese doctoral student in Britain who said he joined the party 10 years ago to serve underprivileged people.
When Vivian, 30, was preparing to join the party in high school, her father told her he expected his only child to be willing to lay down her life if the party required it — a notion that gave her pause.
“Then I thought about how I got more life opportunities than my grandmother, who was illiterate and sold pancakes by the street, and how I need to step up if I want my children to have a better life than me,” she said during an interview at a Beijing Starbucks.
She joined when she graduated from high school and now teaches Marxism at a university in southern China.
“Only the students with the best grades get to join the party, so I see it as a glory and a validation,” she said.
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