CCP’s Youth League Clique Declines in Political Influence

Members of the Chinese Communist Youth league stand at the Monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on June 4, 2007, the 18th anniversary of the massacre of the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement in Beijing. Guang Niu/Getty Images

Beijing appointed the 52-year-old A Dong, a Hui ethnic cadre, as the first ethnic minority to head the Communist Youth League of China (CYL). The CYL Central Committee, also known as the “CYL Clique,” was once viewed as a cradle for senior and politically influential cadres in the Party.

Since Xi Jinping, a princeling, succeeded his third term as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the CYL faction quickly lost its seat in the Standing Committee of CCP’s Political Bureau (Politburo).

For instance, former General Secretary Hu Jintao was escorted out of the CCP’s 20th national meeting during its closing ceremony in October last year.

Premier Li Keqiang was also quickly removed from the political arena this year.

Both Hu and Li were once the first secretary of the CYL, respectively.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) looks on as former President Hu Jintao is helped to leave early from the closing session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, at The Great Hall of People in Beijing, on Oct. 22, 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Diminishing Influence

High-ranking officials of the CYL rising to the Politburo started in the 1980s, when Hu Yaobang ascended to the Politburo as party general secretary.

Leading figures of the CYL Clique entering the Politburo included Hu Qili, standing committee member of the 13th Politburo; Li Ruihuan, standing committee member of the 14th and 15th Politburo; Hu Jintao, general secretary of the 16th and 17th Central Committee; Li Keqiang, standing committee member of the 17th, 18th and 19th Politburo, and so on.

For 40 years, the CYL central committee has been viewed as the reserve of Party leaders.

However, this view took a sharp turn in July 2015 when Xi criticized the CYL central committee as “paralyzed.”

In October of that year, the CYL Central Secretariat publicized Xi’s request to “actively” reform the League.

Following Xi’s comment, Beijing’s anti-graft organization conducted a special two-month investigation of the CYL between Oct. 30 and Dec. 29, 2015.

In February 2016, the investigation concluded the CYL Central Committee “indulged in the aristocracy” of the Party.

The following April, the CYL Central Committee again pledged it would reform the organization.

In August, CYL took a 50 percent budget cut, along with reform and a merger of the once powerful organization, a shrinkage of its leadership size, and marginalization or demotion of former Central Committee members.

In particular, the position of first secretary of the CYL central committee was kept vacant for more than 9 months until June 29, 2018, when A Dong’s predecessor, He Junke, took the post.

Collapsed Ideology

Feng Chongyi, associate professor of China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, observed the marginalization of the CYL Central Committee both in the Party and the society.

The CYL recruits college students—indoctrinating them with communism and making them believe they are successors of the Party. They then become Party loyalists, with their interests tied to the Party and the regime.

“Their jobs were upholding the socialist ideology,“ Feng said. ”The fact that they are not part of any economic entity or business in the society has made them firm defenders of the regime. They become affiliates of the regime. The survival of the regime dictates the CYL members’ personal livelihood.”

Feng said that the CYL Central Committee represented a group of political elites who ascended in the hierarchy through bureaucracy in the Party.

Xi, both a princeling and a leader who started his political career from the grassroots (Xi was never a CYL leader, and he worked as local governor of Fujian), has clearly tightened his control over the CYL. “Xi once warned the CYL Central Committee, ‘Don’t just daydream about being promoted, and don’t fantasize about being a [leadership] successor,’” Feng said.

After Xi succeeded in gaining a third term as chairman, he removed the two remaining members of the CYL clique—Li Keqiang, and Wang Yang—from his Politburo Standing Committee.

When the CYL touted its members as “successors of Communism” on Sept. 21, 2015, Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang commented on Chinese social media platform Weibo, “I have been deceived by this slogan for more than 10 years.”

Ren, who has been openly critical of the Party and Xi’s leadership, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2020 with a corruption charge.

Haizhong Ning contributed to this report.