Communist Party of China Targets Youth with Communist Apps

The Communist Party of China (CPC) has created an assemblage of phone apps geared towards young people.

With the party’s 19th National Congress currently taking place, the apps are being used to target younger party members.

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In the past, a main principle of the party, “party construction," involved inspiring fervor among the Communist Youth League. However, that priority has sidelined in recent years.

It is now hoped that the hundreds of apps, which are available from the country’s Apple and Android app stores, will instead inspire.

Zeng Ying, project director at Fujian-based online education company Hua Yu, told Quartz that his company developed one of the first apps for the party, back in 2015.

Now he estimates there are around 300 to 400 of them on the market.

One such app is Smart Red Cloud, which uses artificial intelligence to educate party members. It allows users to receive party-related activity notifications, tutorials, and to be able to participate in group chats, according to Liang Lihua, marketing director of Yunshu Weilai, a startup that developed the app.

Created in 2012, it has since gathered 2 million party members.

Another such app is “Dang Yuan Le E Xue” which loosely translates to “party members learning happily online.” In the rural area of Laizhou, nearly 70 percent of Party members use the app, which has proved to be useful in organizing the dispersed community.

As the party’s congress opened Tuesday, the apps have seen higher demand.

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“The party will definitely continue to emphasize party construction on a long-term basis; as long as the big environment stays, there will be business for us,” Ying told Quartz.

The CPC’s Congress opened Tuesday with Chinese President, and the CPC’s General-Secretary Xi Jinping, unveiling the party’s new program which will focus on “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The event will culminate with the selection of a new Politburo Standing Committee that will guide the party for the next five years.