CPC sees membership surpass 98 mln

BEIJING -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) saw the number of its members grow to 98.041 million at the end of 2022, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee announced Friday.

The number of CPC members increased by 1.4 percent from 2021, according to figures released by the department ahead of the 102nd founding anniversary of the CPC, the world's largest Marxist governing party, on July 1.

The CPC had 5.065 million primary-level organizations at the end of 2022, up 129,000 from the previous year.

The Party has tempered itself through revolution and grown stronger with even greater vitality over the course of a century of endeavors, particularly in the past decade of the new era, the department said.

The Party's organizational system has been strengthened, and the foundations of the Party's governance have been constantly reinforced, the department added.

Nearly 2.45 million people joined the CPC in 2022, official data shows. The Party convened its 20th national congress last year.

The composition of Party membership has changed, with members having higher levels of education and steady growth recorded in the proportions of female members and those from ethnic minority groups.

More than 53.65 million Party members, or 54.7 percent of the overall membership, hold junior college degrees or above, 1.5 percentage points higher than at the end of 2021.

By the end of 2022, the CPC had over 29.3 million female members, accounting for 29.9 percent of its total membership, up 0.5 percentage points from the previous year. The proportion of members from ethnic minority groups grew by 0.1 percentage points to 7.6 percent.

Data shows that workers and farmers continue to make up the majority of CPC members, accounting for 33.3 percent of all members.

The role of primary-level Party organizations in both rural and urban areas has been strengthened. At the end of 2022, there were 490,000 secretaries of Party organizations in villages, 42.5 percent of whom held junior college degrees or above.

The practice of assigning first secretaries to CPC village committees has continued. There were a total of 211,000 first secretaries working in villages at the end of 2022.