China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [54]
Second, the directive urged that special efforts be made to recruit outstanding undergraduates and graduate students for filling administrative and political positions at the universities where they study after graduation. The students were to be mentored to become full-time party and administrative officials and awarded full academic ranks. Their housing allocation, pay, subsidies, and other benefits were to be kept in line with their academic peers. This call was repeated in 1995.161 Official reports from the Beijing Higher Education Bureau provided evidence that this campaign was fully implemented. For example, in 1994, Beijing’s colleges and universities recruited six hundred “red and expert” young “reserve cadres” who would be groomed for positions of responsibility. This was accompanied by a simultaneous drive to recruit new CCP members from college students. In 1994, the CCP admitted 6,665 new members on Beijing’s college campuses, about 87 percent of them college students.162
The drive to expand the CCP’s support among the intelligentsia was not restricted to college campuses. The CCP’s innovative scheme of identifying “reserve cadres” (houbei ganbu) boosted the hopes of career advancement for tens of thousands of aspiring young professionals and well-educated individuals. It tied their prospects with their support for the party—even though what the party did was merely to designate them as the most promising candidates for future promotions. The campaign to recruit more reserve cadres intensified in the mid-1990s. In 1995, the CCP Central Committee issued a special circular, “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu zhuajin peiyang xuanba youxiu nianging ganbu de tongzhi” (CCP Central Committee Announcement on Intensifying the Training and Selection of Outstanding Young Cadres), to expand the program. As a result, a large number of individuals were designated as reserve cadres. In Sichuan, fifty individuals were picked as reserve cadres for provincial-level positions and an additional five hundred were selected for the various provincial departments.163 In Hubei, the number of reserve cadres was set at twice the number of available official positions. For those selected as reserve cadres for provincial-level positions, the age limit was fifty. Those groomed for prefect-level positions had to be younger than forty-five. And the age-limit for county-level positions was forty. Without actually expanding the size of the bureaucracy, the CCP managed to double the coverage of its patronage with this scheme.164
Although it is impossible to assess the durability of the party’s success in enticing the intelligensia’s younger generation into its ranks, the drive apparently delivered some short-term success. According to a magazine survey of 1,532 college students in Beijing in May 2003, 62 percent said that they wished to join the CCP. But the same survey also showed that about 60 percent said that they would work for a private or foreign firm after graduation, and only 20 percent would work for a government agency or SOE. This mixed evidence suggests that what motivates younger professionals and aspiring college graduates to join the party is not ideological devotion, but promises of good careers and material benefits.165 Judged by official figures, nevertheless, it is hard to deny that the party’s efforts to recruit highly educated members appeared to have had a significant impact on the composition of the party. By 1999, nearly 20 percent of the CCP members claimed to have received college or college-equivalent education, almost six times the national average.166
Another successful instrument of co-optation was the granting of professional honors, recognitions, and perks by the government to a select group of senior scholars and professionals. The party controlled the selection