Recruiting in China

BEIJING--A growing number of Chinese college students are joining the Communist Party of China, attracted by the preferential treatment given to party members in finding employment and gaining promotions.

“Young people are joining the party because they are having difficulties finding jobs,” said a 23-year-old female worker in Beijing. “Many students want to work at stable state-owned companies.”

The woman said she joined the party while she was a university student. She said she had an advantage because of her membership when she worked at a state-owned enterprise.

A 24-year-old female worker at a private company in Shanghai also joined the party during her college days.

She was concerned that party membership may work against her acquiring visas, but she eventually joined the party because she thought that membership would be proof of her abilities.

Some government offices and public institutions require job applicants to be party members.

According to a survey by a staffing agency, many companies also give priority to party members when recruiting.

China is said to be in an “ice age for employment,” where 1.5 million college students annually fail to find jobs after graduation. In such a harsh hiring climate, the preferential treatment associated with party membership has attracted an increasing number of students applying to become members.

According to Xinhua News Agency and other sources, the Communist Party accepted only 14 percent of applicants for membership in 2010. But members age 35 and under are increasing by more than 1 million each year, and they now account for a quarter of all memberships.

At the end of 2011, 82.6 million people were party members.

Bai Zhili, associate professor of personnel management at Peking University, conducted a survey with other researchers from 2008-2009 to investigate why people joined the Communist Party. The researchers received replies from 823 people.

The results showed that 51 percent of respondents age 50 and older cited that they support “the idea of communism” as a reason, compared with 21 percent of those in their 20s.

Respondents who replied that they joined for “self-realization” or achieving successful careers, accounted for 18 percent of people in their 20s, compared with only 5 percent of those age 50 and over.

“Young people are joining the Communist Party as if to get admission tickets to enter a competition for jobs,” said another faculty member at Peking University.