Recruitment of young intellectuals such as college students has been an important part of the
Chinese Communist Party’s recruitment strategies for most of its history. Two of the college
students that the Party recruited in the 1940s and 1960s went on to become the Party’s top leaders
in the 1990s and 2000s, and today’s student Party members may well lead Chinese politics at
various levels in future decades. This paper examines Party recruitment of college students in the
reform era and highlights the impact of 1989. Since the 1990s the Party has stepped up its efforts
at recruitment and ideological work on college students. Paradoxically the former is succeeding
while the latter seems barely effective. Today’s college students are striving to join the Party in
large numbers, yet primarily out of a personal pragmatic concern for their future job searches
and career advancement. Even student Party members do not have a strong commitment to the
Party’s sanctioned ideology.