Student Leaders’ Narrowing Social Circles

During the four years of college, student cadres’ social circles progressively narrow as only a handful stick to this path for that long. Several hundred freshmen join the university student union every year in large institutions such as the universities I studied. Fewer than a hundred are still part of the organization during their second year, and fewer than twenty remain among third- and fourth-year students. While for first-year students joining the student union can be a way to meet new people and widen one’s social circle on campus, this is less and less true as years go by. Student cadres spend most of their time either together or with university officials. They participate in many coordination meetings, which take up most of their time outside classes. University student union leaders, for example, interact among themselves every day, and meet at least once a week with CYL officials to keep them informed of their activities and discuss access to university resources.276

Most of my interviewees stressed that their commitment to their job as student cadres substantially impacted their friendly and romantic relationships. Between the management of the activities and the recurrent meetings, they have little time for socializing outside their organizations. As a result, some relationships fade away, especially with people who are not student cadres. They tend to pursue romantic relationships among cadres or to remain single during college. The issue is so widespread that it has become a matter of concern for the CYL, which publishes articles on “single student cadres.” A 2015 publication, for instance, put forward how hard it is for student cadres to develop romantic relationships as their task absorbs them. It stressed that student cadres must be fully committed to their position and be ready to cancel plans at the last minute if their superiors require them. This Page 64 →article attempted to reassure student cadres about their personal situation by underlining how common this phenomenon is.277

Susan Shirk has noted that activists in the Mao era were cautious about the people with whom they spent time. They could not afford to be seen as close to politically unreliable people, politically backward students for instance.278 To a certain extent, this is still the case with student cadres in the post-Mao era. It is not uncommon for them to stop spending time with fellow students to preserve their reputation among campus officials.279 Similar phenomena have been described regarding young activists in other contexts. Focusing on contemporary youth political organizations in France, Lucie Bargel has stressed how friendship and romantic relationships take on a political meaning, as socializing within the organization is held as proof of one’s loyalty to it.280 In the Chinese case, this phenomenon is strengthened by the many activities organized for student cadres, in particular training programs or group trips that reinforce the bonds between them, as Lei Lan’s story illustrates.

Cultivating Their Party Spirit

Through a first immersion in the world of officials, student cadres learn the rules of the political game, specific to the Chinese context, and what is expected from them as cadres. They also assimilate how to speak and behave as officials. Most importantly, they come to enjoy the status their position gives them on campus and distinguishes them from other students.

The function played by student cadres on campus, at the center of the student management structure, as well as their constant interactions with university officials, give them special status within the student body. The selection process they go through and the titles they are granted by the university’s administration officially sanction this unique status. This “election effect”297 marks that they have been initiated into the closed circle of cadres. This echoes what Jonathan Unger has described regarding student activists in the Mao era: as they joined the CYL, they were able to wear the badge and Page 68 →learn the secrets of the organization, which provided them with prestige, setting them apart from the rest of the student body.298

By cultivating a specific role on campus, student cadres develop the premises of an identity as party-state officials. Several of my interviews mentioned how this experience gave them the feeling of being “like leaders.”299 An academic I interviewed summarized it: “The student union is like a small government. They learn a lot about how to behave and speak like an official, how to exchange with superiors.”300

Interactions with university officials are crucial in this process. While student cadres are generally passive listeners in important university-level meetings, these meetings are an occasion for the student cadres to learn what is mainstream knowledge among officials, what are the usual topics of discussion, and what are the correct ways to address these issues. Student cadres are also invited to participate in informal gatherings with university officials. They take place in restaurants on campus or outside. In these settings, student cadres mimic their superiors, generally CYL officials. They learn where everybody should be seated depending on rank and what conversation and tone are proper, and they get used to officials’ drinking habits. They learn how to propose a toast, with whom, and in what order, depending on the respective ranks. Not used to drinking such amounts of alcohol in formal settings, students train themselves or find ways to limit the effects of alcohol: Some eat large quantities of yogurt before such dinners or use certain Chinese medicinal herbs to limit inebriation.301 The drinking element is crucial for male cadres, who are expected to take part in these bonding practices, while female cadres tend to have a marginal role in these meetings, which, as we will discuss later, negatively affects their networking opportunities.

Student cadres understand over the years how to present themselves within the frame of their role. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this can become useful when looking for a job. This is clear when student cadres introduce themselves before an election. For instance, in a social media post listing the candidates for the Nanjing University Graduate Student Page 69 →Union Presidium, the various contenders presented their accomplishments following formatted tables, in order to advertise their qualities and convince students to vote for them.302 The selected categories were specific and were revealing of what is expected from student leaders: being experienced managers, good students, and efficient fund raisers. One of these tables is reproduced in figure 4.

The candidate’s formatted resume includes eight categories, starting from the top-left cell:

• First, the number of positions she held at the various levels in the CYL and student union: she held six positions.
• Second, the number of activities she organized personally at the faculty or university levels: she organized four.
• Third, the number of appearances in media or social media platforms, within and outside campus: 600 appearances.
• Fourth, the number of cultural or academic exchanges she participated in, in other parts of the country or abroad: she did one.
• Fifth, the number of competitions won at the university level or above (provincial or central levels for instance): she won five.
• Sixth, the number of prizes and awards, such as the “excellent student cadre award,” that she received at the university level and above: she won twenty.
• Seventh, the amount of money she raised from outside donors for student union activities: 1,320,000 RMB.
• Finally, the number of research projects or papers she completed: 22.

In this post, the candidates pictured themselves as overachieving students who have acquired much experience in the student union and the CYL and who ultimately can deliver. They stressed their ability to gather large amounts of money, as well as to organize events. Overall, they presented themselves more as efficient and well-trained cadres than actual student representatives. One could imagine that representatives would put forward the concessions they obtained from the administration or more broadly what they did in favor of students rather than highlighting their own achievements.

Student cadres are also physically transformed by their experience in Page 70 →youth organizations. Being part of an elite group implies a specific bodily hexis, certain behaviors and tastes that display one’s affiliation.303 In the case of student cadres, those who remain on this path after several years and attain top positions start physically mimicking officials. It is, for instance, visible in the way student union election candidates present themselves in electoral handouts, such as the one reproduced in figure 5.

Figure 5 depicts a master’s student running for the chairpersonship of a faculty-level graduate student union at Peking University. On the front page of the handout, he appears before Weiming Lake and its adjacent pagoda, symbols of Peking University. It is striking how he already looks like a party-state official, in contrast to most students who dress casually. He wears a white short-sleeved shirt with dark pants and belt, like almost every official Page 71 →does in the summer. This parallel is apparent when looking at figure 6, a picture of Xi Jinping visiting Peking University in 2012, a few months before he became the leader of the CCP.

Coming back to figure 5, the text on the handout also reveals the way the student wants to advertise himself. Using four figurative expressions, he describes himself as the “product of his education” (chunfenghuayu, 春风化雨),Page 72 → “embellishing things discreetly” (runwuwusheng, 润物无声), “handling things delicately” (chushiyixi, 处事以细), and “treating people with honesty” (dairenyicheng, 待人以诚). In the remaining text, he briefly presents himself as the current student union office director and further develops his qualities and how he will positively influence the organization’s future. Among others, he highlights that he is “responsible at heart” (zerenzaixin, 责任在心) as well as “diligent and tireless” (zizibujuan, 孜孜不倦). Overall, he depicts himself as an efficient, moral, and humble servant of the organization, just like a party-state official ought to be.

The Chinese party-state has a certain tolerance for acting. During the Mao era, officials tended to believe that by performing acts and values deemed positive by the party, activists would eventually interiorize them.304 The cultivation of specific patterns of behavior was therefore emphasized as a way to show one’s “party spirit” (dangxing, 党性). This notion emerged in the years Page 73 →leading to the Yan’an rectification movement (1942–44) and was popularized through Liu Shaoqi’s famous lectures on “how to be a good communist.”305 In the context of its struggle against the Kuomintang, the CCP had to expand and ensure its members’ loyalty.306 For Liu Shaoqi, their “party spirit” is firm when party members only have the party’s interests at heart.307 Performance of this devotion to the organization is central, since from a party rectification perspective, correct language and behavior are the main proxies for loyalty.308

The notion of party spirit was brought back after the Cultural Revolution, encapsulating the devotion that party members and officials must show to the organization and its leadership, with its ideological message and revolutionary mission becoming secondary.309 It can hence be understood as the active display of one’s recognition of the CCP’s “organizational charisma,” which according to Kenneth Jowitt is a key feature of Leninist parties and makes them worthy of loyalty and sacrifice from their members’ perspective.310 In fact, ideological devotion was not a topic of discussion for my interviewees. They never distinguished between “phony” and “genuine” cadres or activists, as was sometimes done in the Mao era,311 nor between cynical student cadres and idealist ones. Most of my interviewees, being student cadres or university staff members, highlighted the career incentives linked to this experience without condemning it as an amoral goal. Rather than their motivations, what matters is the way they behave and display their commitment Page 74 →to their role as student cadres and their organization. For people outside the cadres’ circles, this performance can, however, be perceived negatively, and student cadres often appear to their classmates as overplaying their role as officials-to-be.

The “Bureaucratization” of Student Cadres

Commitment is not costless. An article by Qi Fujuan stressed the time and energy deployed by student cadres. They confessed to being tired and overwhelmed with the abundance of what they saw as useless tasks. They reported having meetings every day of the week, lasting from one hour to much more. During the weekend, they had to prepare the activities for the coming week and advertise them. This is all seen by students as a waste of time that could potentially impact their studies.312 Most respondents (65 percent) in an opinion survey of student cadres in the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, believed that their work as student cadres had a substantial impact on their academic studies.313 The difficulty of managing both academic pressure and their workload as cadres is, therefore, a significant reason for student cadres to withdraw from their positions. Numerous student cadres renounce after a year or two, just before they would have to get more seriously involved in the student union.314

According to my interviews, this is chiefly an issue for student leaders—the student union chairpersons and deputy chairpersons at the university level—but less so for most student cadres.315 While they do not necessarily have major academic problems, student leaders rarely have the best grades Page 75 →among a cohort. They spend a lot of time on the job and therefore study less. As stressed by an interviewee, “every student has to choose between being part of the academic or the political circles” on campus.316 Rising in the university-level student union is particularly stressful. Pressure can quickly increase if one falls under the supervision of ambitious department directors who want to be candidates for the chairpersonship and push their subordinates to their limits to show their efficiency. For these reasons, numerous student cadres limit their ambition, as we have seen with Chen Feng’s story in the previous chapter. Instead of trying to become university-level student leaders at any cost, they aim for Student Union chairperson or deputy chairperson in their faculty, a less stressful and time-consuming position.317

Student cadres can also incur a reputational cost. In a survey conducted in three universities, most students (53.9 percent) held negative opinions about student cadres.318 This is particularly true of student leaders, depicted as bureaucratic and corrupt by fellow students. They consider themselves as different from lay students and are disliked for it. They behave as a separate group, having their own social activities and not mixing with other students. Besides, most students envy their privileged access to grants or graduate programs and consider it unfair.319 As an academic I interviewed summarized, “The student union is a bureaucracy that cares about its own and is not at the service of students. It is mainly at the service of officials.”320

According to a survey implemented in Qinhuangdao city, their bureaucratic behavior is the main reason why ordinary students dislike student cadres.321 Like in other party-related organizations, hierarchy is firm within the student union. Students can rarely access the university student union Page 76 →chairpersons directly; they are expected to contact them through their subordinates and to show their respect when interacting with them. The chairpersons also easily give orders, without discussion, to other student cadres, sometimes unrelated to the organization, for instance asking subalterns to pick up and pay for their food or charge their phones.322 The union’s strong hierarchy can also affect relationships with people outside the campus, as this anecdote illustrates: “There is a rigorous hierarchy within the student union. Once, the father of a freshman, a quite high-level official, invited for dinner my friend, who was 21 years old and a department director in the university’s student union. The official was very humble with him, as if he were his superior, because he wanted him to take care of his son.”323

The “bureaucratization” of student cadres324 is also linked to their use of bureaucratic jargon. Language is a strong sign of one’s status on campus, and low-level student cadres often mention how their superiors tend to overperform their role as officials by using a specific tone or expressions such as “service to the people” and “affection for the masses.”325 Chen Wei, a professor at Renmin University who writes on the student union, describes one of his students who was “original and naïve” at first and who started to have “the mouth full of bureaucratic jargon” once he became Student Union chairman.326

The student cadres’ social image is similar to what has been described regarding the relationship between activists and non-activists in Mao-era schools. Anita Chan has noted that already in primary school, activists behaved in a patronizing manner toward other students, and were vilified for being arrogant and acting as the teachers’ pets.327 In high schools, activists Page 77 →were kept “at arm’s length” by other students, as Susan Shirk put it. Situated in between their professors and classmates, they generally took the professors’ side, whose opinion could have direct impact on their future as activists, and were strongly disliked for it.328 Jonathan Unger has also highlighted that while some student activists were perceived as more loyal to their classmates, their overall image was negative. Consequently, some students chose not to become activists because they did not want to be ostracized from their peers.329

Like back then, being a student cadre today comes with a bundle of social costs. In addition to being portrayed as bureaucratic and university staff’s pets, student leaders are also perceived as corrupt by lower-level student cadres and the broader student body. At Peking University, for instance, student union leaders are often described by other students as “gangsters.” Such a low image is due to the corrupt practices sometimes associated with their positions. It is rumored that some student leaders accept different forms of petty corruption, such as getting invited for dinner, in order to speak in favor of a student to university officials. They can also be parochial, favoring students from their region over others.330 Besides, rumors of vote buying surround the Peking University Student Union elections.331 As a result, the student union has established rules to prevent voters from being bought with money or favors. During the campaign, candidates are not supposed to meet with representatives outside of the meetings set by the union, and the campaign budget has to be submitted to the union’s leadership. Nevertheless, the system is far from foolproof, and submitted budgets are rumored to be doctored.332 Similar practices appear to also exist in other universities, but often on a lesser scale:333 As developed in the next chapter, student union elections at Peking University are particularly competitive, creating more incentive for vote buying.

Page 78 →Student leaders are stigmatized for being arrogant, bureaucratic, and corrupt; other students see them as deviant. In his famous study of groups deemed as deviant, Howard Becker has shown how they learn to live with the stigma. At first, leisure activities and social interactions are essential to attract recruits. With time, the deviants’ social practices become increasingly different from those of other groups, and they learn to accept and value their difference. Their deviance becomes self-reinforcing.334

In contrast to the groups studied by Becker, such as drug users, student cadres are not social outsiders and are in constant interaction with mainstream groups. They cannot isolate themselves from the students they are supposed to represent, and they regularly interact with them, even superficially, while organizing extracurricular activities and taking part in campus life. These interactions can paradoxically strengthen the negative image of student cadres as they signal their difference from the wider group, which results in closer bonds among student leaders and with officials. Comparable to what Andrew Walder has described regarding activist workers, they are a “lightning rod for dissatisfaction” and have become the focus of all the students’ resentment toward officials.335 Walder has highlighted how, in Chinese factories in the Mao era, a minority of workers were given specific status as activists and derived benefits and privileges from their clientelist relationship with management. Their unique status was regularly marked in public, in meetings and documents, which progressively drew the antagonism of other workers. Like with Walder’s workers, the split between student cadres and other students is a direct consequence of the vertical links they develop with university officials, which provide them with unique perks and ultimately change their status and behavior. While making it socially costlier, the increased isolation of student cadres strengthens the importance they give to their specific role and status. In turn, the more they value their standing and publicly proclaim it, the more isolated they become.

The transformation of the student social circles and roles is crucial in explaining their investment in the student cadre path and a future political career. Through this process, student cadres start to identify with the party-statePage 79 → establishment by opposition to the student body. The narrow social ties they develop reinforce the recruits’ dedication, since choosing a different path would mean losing most of their friends and contacts. These are only the early steps in a long process of cadre cultivation.336 Still, it highlights how they learn early to embody the party’s organizational charisma, to perform their party spirit, and how it feeds their undogmatic commitment to the regime.