Beijing: The ruling Communist Party of China added 688,000 members last year, bolstering its membership to a whopping 89.447 million, the party announced on Friday.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) had a total of 89.447 million members at the end of 2016, according to the Organisation Department of the CPC Central Committee.
CPC membership increased by 688,000 from 2015, up 0.8 per cent. Grassroots Party units increased by 105,000 to 4.518 million, up 2.4 per cent, the department said in a communique published ahead of the 96th anniversary of CPC's founding on July 1.
Statistics showed the Party's vigor and vitality have been strengthened, the communique said.
The growth rate of CPC membership has dropped while the structure of its members has improved since 2013 when the Party implemented a recruitment rule which stresses the quality of members while limiting the quantity, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
In 2016, the CPC recruited 1.911 million new members, 54,000 less than 2015, including 953,000 members working in frontline production roles, accounting for 49.9 per cent of all new members.
A total of 1.571 million new members were under the age of 35, accounting for 82.2 per cent of all new members in 2016, up 0.4 percentage points from 2015.
Among those new members, 785,000 hold junior college degrees or above, accounting for 41.1 per cent, up 1.5 percentage points from 2015, the communique said.
The Party had 22.982 million female members at the end 2016, accounting for 25.7 per cent of the total membership, while 6.3 million members are from ethnic minority groups, making up 7 percent of total membership.
When the CPC was founded in 1921, it had only about 50 members. Since 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, the Party membership has increased 20 times to a level that is more than the population of Germany, a report had said last year.
Since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, the CPC has been ruling the country as it has monopolised political power.
