Society

China's communist Party members near 78M

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-06-28 11:03

BEIJING - A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said Monday that the number of CPC members has increased to almost 78 million over the past six decades.

By the end of last year, the CPC had a total of 77.99 million members, about 116 times of the figure in 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, Wang Qinfeng, deputy head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, said at a press conference.

Last year, more than 20 million people applied to join the CPC and the Party recruited about 2 million new members, Wang said.

Of the total 78 million CPC members, about 18.5 million were under 35 years old, and close to 28 million held a college degree or above, he said.

Wang said more than 640,000 of the country's 2.77 million enterprises, including 438,000 non-public enterprises, had set up their own grassroots CPC party organs.

He said CPC members had taken the lead in helping China host the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in 2008, celebrate the 60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China last year, and in the relief work of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Yushu earthquake in April this year.

CPC members in Qinghai alone had donated more than 27 million yuan ($3.97 million) in "special membership fees" to help with Yushu quake relief, he said.