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).