CPC elects younger,grassroot delegates to congress

BEIJING - An Olympic gold medalist, migrant workers and rural doctors are with top Chinese leaders to represent 82 million members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the upcoming national congress.

The CPC has elected younger and more grassroots-level delegates to attend its upcoming 18th national congress, said Wang Jingqing, deputy head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, at a press conference Tuesday.

About 30.5 percent of the elected delegates are from the grassroots level, up 2.1 percentage points from the previous congress in 2007, Wang said.

Party members who joined the CPC after the reform and opening-up in the late 1970s constitute the majority of delegates, Wang said.

A total of 1,640 delegates joined the Party after November 1976, accounting for 72.2 percent of the total, 20.5 percentage points higher than that of the congress in 2007, he said.

The average age of the delegates is 52, and 64.8 percent of the delegates are under age 55, Wang said.

There are 114 delegates under 35, accounting for 5 percent of the total, 1.9 percentage points higher than the previous congress.

The youngest delegate is Jiao Liuyang, the London Olympics swimming champion in the women's 200m butterfly event. She was born in March 1990 and joined the Party in 2008.

The oldest is former mayor of Beijing Jiao Ruoyu, who was born in December 1915 and joined the CPC in 1936. The two are not related.

"The wide age span shows that the CPC's cause has been passed from the older generation to the younger generation and maintained its dynamics," Wang said.

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