China’s Communist Party Gets Older, Grows More Slowly as Youth Disenchantment Spreads
The government of China published its annual Communist Party statistics on Monday, revealing a modest 1.1 percent increase in the number of official members and a decline in the number of members under 35.
While state-run newspaper Global Timescelebrated the data as proof that the Party is “continuing to improve” and “growing stronger,” Hong Kong’s South China Morning Postobserved that, compared to past year, the Party grew more slowly while seeing its number of seniors grow significantly. The Chinese Communist Party’s Organization Department typically publishes these numbers in late June every year in anticipation of the anniversary of the founding of the Party in 1921.
The Party announced that it had tallied over 100,270,000 members by the end of 2024, a 1.1 percent increase year-on-year, or over one million new members. The Global Times described over 2 million members being “developed,” which it did not explain as a separate category from the 100.27 million enjoying full membership, but may be a category of individuals still working through the process of applying for membership who have not been accepted or rejected yet. The Morning Post reported, however, that there was a separate category of 21.42 million people allegedly “waiting in line” to have their applications processed.
“Among them, the CPC recruited 1.784 million new members aged 35 and below, accounting for 83.7 percent of the total. More than 1.159 million Party members, or 54.4 percent, held junior college degrees or above,” the Times claimed.
The bureaucracy expanded accordingly, as the Party opened tens of thousands of new local organizations in the past year.
“Currently, the CPC has about 5.25 million primary-level organizations, up by 74,000 from the end of 2023, or an increase of 1.4 percent,” the Global Times reported. “Among them, there are 306,000 Party committees, 330,000 general Party branches, and 4.614 million Party branches at the primary level in China.”
The South China Morning Postassessed that the new statistics indicated the Communist Party was growing more slowly and aging rapidly. The party documented a 2.4 percent drop in members under age 35 and a four percent increase in the number of members over 61 in the past year alone, “more than double the increase recorded in 2023, when their total number was 27.87 million.”
As for the 1.1 percent total increase in membership, the Morning Post noted that the Party had logged a 1.2 percent increase in 2023 and 14 percent increase the year before.
An anonymous Chinese government source justified the decline by claiming that the Party had become more particular about who it allowed to join.
“This is not a numbers game. It is not the more the merrier,” the Morning Post quoted the official as stating. “[Investigations by] the anti-corruption agency show many corrupt officials had wrong motives when they joined the party. The organization department at all levels has been instructed to weed out those who show early signs of little conviction and could easily fall prey to temptation.”
China has struggled significantly under the rule of genocidal dictator Xi Jinping to curtail corruption. Xi has presided over multiple rounds of massive Communist Party officer purges, on occasion leaving the country with vacancies in some of its most impactful government positions. In 2023, for example, the country sustained a period without a defense minister or foreign minister. The men in those positions, Li Shangfu and Qin Gang, respectively, disappeared and were lately publicly accused of corruption. A third minister, Li’s predecessor Wei Fenghe, also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In June 2024, the Chinese government confirmed that both defense ministers were facing allegations of “serious violations of discipline and laws.”
Qin, accused on social media of an extramarital affair with a British journalist, resurfaced in September 2024 working an obscure job at a government book publisher.
The anonymous official’s claim that the decline in growth of the Communist Party is by design disregards years of evidence that many in China, in particular young Chinese, are increasingly disillusioned and disinterested in the Communist Party. China’s economy has suffered a tremendous decline in the years following the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, leading to skyrocketing youth unemployment rates and cultural trends discouraging career ambition, building families, and life progress. China recorded a record-high rate of youth unemployment in July 2023, at 21.3 percent, then proceeded to stop publishing youth unemployment data. Six months later, the statistics returned, but modified to exclude anyone who could be defined as a student.
As youth unemployment rose, young Chinese began posting to social media about their lack of interest in conventional careers. A popular trend that arose in 2023 was that of “full-time children,” young adults living in their parents’ homes who received allowances for doing household chores, getting groceries, or other errands. Chinese social media sites boast groups dedicated to the lifestyle featuring tens of thousands of members.
Young Chinese also began adopting an attitude known as “lying flat” — doing little to improve the nation and abandoning the pursuit of a good job, a spouse, or any financial improvement. The thinking driving the “lying flat” movement is that doing nothing is the only legal way to protest the repression and injustice of the Chinese Communist Party, ensuring that one’s labor does not benefit Beijing. “Lying flat” has been popular online for half a decade, triggering Chinese regime censorship in an attempt to discourage the trend. Songs about lying flat became popular and the thinking even invaded reality show programs apparently promoted by the government.
Following the crackdown on the “lying flat” trend, in 2024, Chinese youths began posting on social media pretending to work, as finding jobs became increasingly difficult. Social media sites became flooded with images of young people at fake offices, pretending to work on spreadsheets or take phone calls. Some youths rented office settings to take the photos and post online, sharing the images with concerned older relatives to pretend they were gainfully employed.
