Youth and the Making of Modern China

The beginning of the twentieth century marked in China the emergence of “youth” (qingnian) as a distinct analytical category associated with national modernity. As the term qingnian assumed unprecedented significance, a new generation of educated youth aware of its role as agent of social change also came into being. In fact, the May Fourth movement turned Chinese youth into a social force that could be organized and mobilized for effective action by nascent ideologically committed political parties. The historical analysis of the Socialist/Communist Youth League, the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated youth organization, is rather biased, as official historiography tends to overemphasize its role as well as the symbiotic nature of its relationship with the Party. Moreover, so far Western scholars have carried out little work on the topic. This paper makes use of largely unexploited documentary material to reconstruct the history of the Youth League from its inception to its disbandment on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, and to show how the League interacted with the party’s development in the early stage of the Communist movement. It argues that, in a political context of contestation over power, it was mainly conceived as a tool for Communist propaganda and mobilization of mass support. Yet, the League’s relationship with the party was not always one of symbiosis and subordination.