Membership of China's Communist Party swells to more than 90 million

The membership of China's 98-year-old powerful ruling Communist Party has exceeded 90 million, the party announced here on Sunday.

The Communist Party of China (CPC), which remained the sole governing party of the country since it came to power in 1949, had 90.59 million members with 4.61 million primary-level party organisations as of last year, the Organisation Department of the CPC.

The party is headed by President Xi Jinping, 66, who is regarded as the most powerful leader after the party founder Mao Zedong.

Xi is expected to remain in power as the head of the party, the military and the presidency for life after China's parliament -- the National People's Congress -- last year ratified a constitutional amendment, removing the two-term limit for the president.

Besides adhering to ideology of Marxism, the CPC members are banned from following any religion. All offices, factories and business outfits are mandatorily required to have CPC branches.

In 2018, the CPC recruited nearly 2.06 million new members, 72,000 more than 2017.

Among the new members, 44.9 per cent held junior college degrees or above.

In less than 100 years, the CPC has seen its membership grow from more than 50 when it was founded in 1921, 4.49 million in 1949 when China was founded, to more than 90 million, the Xinhua report said.

Statistics show that more than 80 per cent of the existing party members joined the CPC in 1978.

The CPC also saw steady growth in the proportion of female members and those from ethnic minority groups.

As of the end of 2018, the party had nearly 24.67 million female members, accounting for 27.2 per cent of the total membership, compared with merely 11.9 per cent in 1949.

The proportion of members from ethnic minority groups has grown from 2.5 per cent to 7.3 per cent.