Second Youth League Faction
Hu Jintao became party leader in 2002. Hu Jintao also has a background in the Communist Youth League (though he is of a younger generation than Hu Yaobang's Youth League colleagues). Hu's rise to power roused interest in members of the party leadership who, like him, had a background in the Youth League. Hu Jintao is himself sometimes counted as a member of the first Youth League faction, as he was promoted during Hu Yaobang's leadership. However, the younger Hu's subsequent rise to power owed more to the patronage of Deng Xiaoping and other party elders than that of the elder Hu. As a result, there is no direct political lineage between the two Youth League factions.
Political analyst Cheng Li of Brookings Institution divides the contemporary Communist Party power structure into two distinct "coalitions" - one of "Populists" and the other of "Elitists". Elitists are classified as those who originate mostly in China's rich coastal provinces, notably Shanghai, or those who have a family background of high-ranking Communist Party officials (i.e. the Princelings). The Youth League faction, on the other hand, belongs to the "Populist" faction, consisting of officials who have relatively humble backgrounds and who have climbed through the power structure from the grassroots. While the Elitists are more concerned with economic growth and market functionality, the Populists are more focused on societal harmony and decreasing inequality. Cheng places the Youth League faction at the core of the Populist coalition. The Youth League faction's members usually have higher education qualifications, normally they all have university degrees or higher.
Read more about this topic: Tuanpai, Characteristics
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