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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, July 19, 2003

Communist Youth League Congress Getting Online

The national congress of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), the country's largest youth organization, has roused great attention in the Chinese cyberworld.


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The national congress of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), the country's largest youth organization, has roused great attention in the Chinese cyberworld.

About 500 websites are due to cover the 15th CYLC National Congress, which is held every five years and scheduled to open on July 22 this year.

A host of popular commercial websites, such as Sina and Sohu, plan to set up columns on the congress or provide links to the CYLC website, while several leading news websites will make live reports.

The 80-year-old youth organization, which now comprises nearly 70 million young people aged from 14 to 28, is trying its utmost to adapt itself to a new generation in China who grew up with the Internet.

"I will turn first to the Internet if I want to know what is going on at the congress," said Chen Hui, a 26-year-old office worker in Beijing municipality, while she clicked on to the special reports on the CYLC congress at Xinhuanet.com, a leading news website.

Chen, a veteran CYLC member since the age of 15, is an Internet-loving Chinese youth who loves to read books, listen to music, watch movies, buy clothes and seek news online since she opened her first email account five years ago. She even ordered medicine online when SARS hit the city.

The new Chinese generation, mostly born in the late 1970s and later, is embracing the Internet in all aspects of life, not only work and entertainment, but also seeking love.

A 22-year-old girl, who calls herself "Pisces" online and declined to give her real name, is in love with a boy she met on aBulletin Board System (BBS).

The two chat for one or two hours every day using MSN Messengervoice chat software, after they met online when the boy was sent overseas for training for three months.

Pisces told Xinhua that one of her best friends had married theman she first dated online.

However, there are also earnest and serious young people who like to talk about political issues and some social problems at various BBS and on-line communities.

A bunch of young people, some of who are students, often meet to exchange ideas about the most heated domestic and internationalevents daily on the Cycnet.com BBS, the largest youth and teenager-oriented website.

They enjoy the flexible and open atmosphere at the website worrying little about "political incorrectness" that so concerns their parents.

The website, founded by the CYLC in 1999, registers more than 3.5 million daily hits on average.

"We see what happens in Chinese society and try to do somethingas responsible citizens," said Pan Xihui, a postgraduate student at the prestigious China University of Geosciences.

Since June this year they have been talking about a volunteer project to urge college graduates to work in less-developed western China regions initiated by the CYLC. Approximately 170,000young people downloaded application forms for the project from thewebsite.

Now the current topic is the CYLC national congress.

"We are much interested in it because those who will meet in Beijing are representing us," said a CYLC member with the online pseudonym of Raowei, on an Internet website forum.

The CYLC set up a website on July 8 especially for the nationalcongress and the total number of hits had reached 35,000 by July 16.

Visitors are expected to increase in number when the congress convenes and CYLC members and other young people who cannot attendthe gathering will get updated information at the website, said LiWenge, the CYLC official running the websites.


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