BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) had 89.56 million members with 4.57 million primary-level Party organizations at the end of 2017, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee announced Saturday.
CPC membership and Party organizations increased by 117,000 and 53,000 from 2016 respectively. The Party's vigor and vitality have been strengthened, the department said ahead of the 97th anniversary of the CPC's founding on July 1.
The growth rate of CPC membership has remained under 1.5 percent since 2013, when the Party implemented a recruitment rule that stresses the quality of members.
In 2017, the CPC recruited 1.98 million new members, 71,000 more than 2016, including 1 million members working in frontline production roles, accounting for 50.8 percent of all new members.
Among those new members, 860,000 held junior college degrees or above, accounting for 43.4 percent, and 1.61 million were aged 35 or younger, accounting for 81.4 percent.
At the end 2017, the Party had nearly 43.29 million members holding junior college degrees or above, accounting for 48.3 percent of the total membership. It had nearly 23.89 million female members, accounting for 26.7 percent. More than 6.51 million members were from ethnic minority groups, making up 7.3 percent of total membership.
Among secretaries of the Party's village committees, 545,000 held junior college degrees or above, accounting for 17.4 percent.
The coverage of Party organizations in Party and government bodies reached 99.7 percent, 95.2 percent in public institutions and 92.8 percent in state-owned enterprises.
Nearly 1.88 million non-public enterprises have set up Party organizations, according to the department.
