Always young at heart
Japanese scholar and longtime China hand, Kazuteru Saionji, says the success of the Communist Party of China and the development of the nation rest on the shoulders of its youth, Wang Xu reports in Tokyo.
The ability to follow the tides of change and modernization, as well as ensuring that new generations take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further, are the main characteristics and appeal of the Communist Party of China’s leadership, according to Japanese scholar and longtime China hand Kazuteru Saionji.
“If one takes a closer look at the CPC’s history, it is not hard to find out that one of the attractions of the Chinese Communist Party is that the successors of the revolution will appear one after another and carry out their missions from time to time,” says Saionji, a visiting professor of Higashi Nippon International University who spent his youth in China before the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic relations.
Born into the inner circle of the Japanese emperor’s court, Saionji — then 16 years old — moved to Beijing in 1958 with his father Kinkazu Saionji, a former Japanese lawmaker who promoted friendly relations between China and Japan as a “private ambassador” and was on friendly terms with then-premier Zhou Enlai. He is also the greatgrandson of Kinmochi Saionji, one of the most influential political figures in modern Japan.
Kazuteru Saionji lived in Beijing until 1967, when he graduated from Peking University and returned to Japan.
Conduit to understanding
In the 1950s, when direct government ties between China and Japan was a distant prospect, Zhou already had an important place for Japan in his strategic vision. At that time, Zhou started cultivating ties with Japanese people from all walks of life, both inside and outside politics, which later became known as the “promoting government relations via people-to-people exchange policy”.
In 1958, Zhou established the groundwork for his Japan policy by cultivating “pipes”, a direct personal connection between two people of importance from both the Chinese and Japanese sides. The practice later proved to be highly effective, both before and after the 1972 rapprochement of the two countries. One of those “pipes” from the Japanese side was Kazuteru Saionji’s father Kinkazu Saionji, and on the other end, the Chinese side, was Liao Chengzhi (1908-83), who had grown up in Japan and was fluent in Japanese.
It was his aristocratic background that gave Kazuteru Saionji an opportunity to have close contact with the first generation of leaders of the CPC, such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Zhongxun. His years in Beijing also made Kazuteru Saionji a perfect witness to China’s development and the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties.
“When I lived in Beijing during my teenage years, I was lucky to have the opportunity to meet with the first generation of CPC leaders and their simple way of life impressed me a lot,” says Kazuteru Saionji.
“To my understanding, it could be said that the lives of all of them were, in so many ways, exceptional but surprisingly, they all chose to lead a life as simple as that of much of the general public.”
According to Kazuteru Saionji, the perfect example of this was the “model” couple of Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao (1904-92), with whom he was very familiar and two people for which he has great admiration.
“At that time, I referred to Deng as ‘Deng Mama’,” says Kazuteru Saionji, adding that he was inspired by their spirit of “working for the nation and the people”.
“They had no personal interest at all and they were very friendly in the way they treated people. Before the ‘cultural revolution’ (1966-76), I had many opportunities to visit their house. They both wore old cotton clothes and left you with a sense of intimacy,” Kazuteru Saionji adds.
He remembers vividly that Zhou told him to make many good friends in China.
“‘You’re going to live in, and enter a school in, Beijing,’ Zhou told me, adding that ‘you should make many good friends and they will not only be your great property in the future, but also will be a valuable property for China and Japan’.”
Kazuteru Saionji says through his interactions with Zhou, he was surprised to learn that Zhou knew a lot about Japan and he also got the first clue how the CPC could transform China from an isolated agricultural society into the world’s second-largest open economy.
In fact, many of the early members of the CPC studied in Japan. Zhou went to study in Japan in 1917 at the age of 19, when the country was a gateway to new ideas from the West and a place where various social trends were forming.
In her book, The Origins of Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations, Mayumi Itoh claims that Zhou received his enlightenment in Marxism in Japan, and his time in the country gave him a profound understanding of Japanese people and society.
By presenting a comprehensive examination of primary sources, including diaries and letters of Zhou, Itoh writes, “The formative experiences of Zhou in Japan became the foundation for post-war Chinese foreign policy toward Japan and the origins of contemporary Sino-Japanese relations.”
Itoh’s conclusion could be partly proved by a restored monument dedicated to Zhou in Kyoto’s AraPark.
A poem, Arashiyama in the Rain
by Zhou is engraved in the stone monument, in which he wrote:
A ray of light peeked through the clouds
The more I looked upon this beauty —
The realities of the human world The more I want, the more confused I become —
In the confusion I suddenly chanced upon this point of light The more I truly sensed its beauty.
The poem was written by Zhou before leaving Kyoto in 1919 to return to China, and it is widely believed that the “point of light” was a metaphor of the idea of socialism and Marxism, with which the young man had just come into contact.
“It is the faith of pursuing the ‘light’ to save China from total destruction by imperial powers, and the faith to seek fulfillment for the Chinese people and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that made Zhou and many other CPC members devote their lives to the revolution,” Kazuteru Saionji says.
“Their faith was tested again and again to produce a Party with unbreakable perseverance and it is people like Zhou, as much as everyone in the CPC’s history, that brought China a little bit closer to today’s prosperity,” he adds.
Youthful ideals
Ever since its founding on July 23, 1921, the CPC has had no special interests of its own. It was the proshiyama motion of Communist ideologies to save China from chaos that attracted many Chinese, especially young people, to join the Party and fight for independence.
“The founding of the CPC was the choice of that era,” Kazuteru Saionji says. “The Kuomintang could not win independence and make China a modern nation and, thus, it was the CPC’s historic mission to free the Chinese people from oppression by colonial powers. The Party made it by always standing on the side of the people and through fearless sacrifices and struggles”.
Kazuteru Saionji says the Party, which was founded by a group of young people, has always emphasized the importance of appealing to, and continuing to engage with, the country’s youth.
This emphasis on young people and students can be traced back to the anti-imperial political movement in the 1910s.
When the First National Congress of the CPC was convened by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in 1921, the average age of representatives in attendance was 28, meaning the founders of the CPC were in their 20s and 30s. This included Mao Zedong, who was 28 years old at the time.
Both Chen and Li studied Marxism in Japan. They, as well as many of the Party’s early members, were among Chinese intellectuals who were influential in the 1919 student protests known as the May Fourth Movement.
The Party has since grown from about 50 Marxists to become the second-largest in the world — after India’s Bharatiya Janata Party — with some 95.1 million members, more than the population of Germany.
According to the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, more than one-third of the current 95.1 million CPC members are under the age of 40, and over 80 percent of new Party members admitted from 2020 to 2021 are 35 years old or below.
Party rallying with young talent has been cited by top leaders as being vital to the country’s prosperity, as demonstrated when President Xi Jinping addressed young representatives from all walks of life soon after he became China’s president in 2013.
“If the youth are prosperous, the country is prosperous. If the youth are strong, the country is strong,” Xi once said, adding that the country’s development had always depended on its young people.
Kazuteru Saionji says Xi’s remarks had reminded him of his father Xi Zhongxun, who also put a special focus on young people in the country’s well-being.
“I met Xi Zhongxun in 1982 when attending a youth exchange program to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the normalization of Japan-China diplomatic relationship,” Kazuteru Saionji says.
“As the Chinese leader to meet with us young people, Xi Zhongxun quoted Mao in saying, ‘Young people are in the bloom of life, like the sun at 8 or 9 in the morning. Our hope is placed on you and the future belongs to you.’
“When I told him that we visited Urumqi, Turpan and Xi’an during the trip, Xi Zhongxun smiled and listened happily and told me, ‘You should make good friends at each place.’
“His words echoed exactly with those of Zhou Enlai’s and for a moment, I had this strong sensation of deja vu which took me back to the old days in Beijing,” he recalls.
Kazuteru Saionji says behind the Party’s consistent emphasis on youth is the leaders’ belief that, in all of the people, especially the young, there exists the capacity for great courage — that there is a longing to make a contribution to their motherland, a willingness to help other people and the hope of building China into “a great, modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful”.
Just like what President Xi said in 2018: “The people are the creators of history, the fundamental force of determining the future of the Party and the country. Our Party comes from the people, has its roots in the people, and serves the people … We must always rely on the people to create history.” The Party always sticks to its people-centric philosophy to develop, evolve and advance.
As a result, one in every 15 people in China is now a Communist Party member and there are almost 4 million local-level Party organizations, pervading every aspect of Chinese society, from villages, schools and neighborhoods to private companies and institutes.
The formation of the CPC, which used to represent mainly the three revolutionary classes — workers, farmers and soldiers — also evolved to attract more intellectuals, professionals and entrepreneurs.
According to the organization department, between 2007 and 2019, the share of blue-collar and rural workers in the Party fell from 41.5 percent to 34.8 percent, while the proportion of managers and professionals increased from 22.4 percent to 26.7 percent.
Meanwhile, a survey conducted by China’s Education Ministry showed that 80 percent of 250,000 students polled at some 140 universities across 15 provinces wanted to join the Party.
A Pew survey in 2019 found that China topped the global rankings in terms of satisfaction with government performance, with over 86 percent of Chinese surveyed expressing satisfaction, far above the global average of 47 percent.