Access Asia wrote in a recent newsletter:
A new survey from Peking University has been conducted on just why so many Chinese students still join the Communist Party. Apparently 75% of students want to join and (unsurprisingly) 56% of those looking to get a Party card claim that membership would "boost their chances of finding a good job."
OK, so plenty of pragmatism there - the private sector is a little tougher these days, and maybe a Party card will help them find a rice bowl somewhere as an apparatchik, with the associated benefits of several hours a day snooze time, not to forget the chance to shout at people who don't bring exactly the right paperwork to the office.
Then the brown-nosing really starts. 29% said that they were looking to join for "personal honour", and presumably were also the type who laugh at teacher's bad jokes and bring them an apple (and don't wash it in the toilet bowl first - or was that just us?). But we applaud the wonderful 15% who claimed they wanted to join the Party as they were "motivated by faith in communism." Yea right - 15% of students are out there in Beijing striving for class struggle and building the dictatorship of the proletariat and seeking to implement the values of Marx and Engels to society!! And presumably spending all day in lectures watching pigs fly past the window, and up all night feeding their pet unicorns.
The survey also noted that many young people were joining the Marxism Youth Study Group because "it is good for career networking."
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