Tuanpai

The Tuanpai (simplified Chinese: 团派; traditional Chinese: 團派; pinyin: Tuánpài; literally: "League Faction"), or Youth League Faction, is a term used by political observers to describe an informal political faction in the Communist Party of China, which includes cadres and government officials who originated from the Communist Youth League. There have been two "Youth League factions" in recent memory, without direct political lineage between each other. The first, in the 1980s, comprised cadres of Youth League background who supported party general secretary Hu Yaobang: the term "Tuanpai" was originally used to criticise Hu Yaobang for over-reliance of cadres of Youth League background. The second, from the 2000s, comprised party general secretary Hu Jintao and his group of populist associates and other political allies.

Members of the original Youth League faction were reformist members of the Communist Party leadership who had risen into positions of power with the rise of Hu Yaobang at the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. Like Hu, many of them had been part of the Communist Youth League leadership in the 1950s and 1960s, and had in their youths either participated directly in the Communist Party's armed forces, or in the anti-Kuomintang student movement, during the Chinese Civil War. In contrast to the more conservative "elders" who still had influence behind the scenes, the Youth League faction were younger, more liberal in political outlook, and enthusiastic in devising and implementing political and economic reform. Many of them played key roles in Hu Yaobang's programme of reform in the 1980s.

The Youth League faction was greatly weakened when Hu Yaobang was sidelined in an internal power struggle instigated by the conservative faction. Some members continued to serve under Zhao Ziyang, Hu's replacement as party leader and also a reformist, while others were moved into less important positions. When Zhao was also deposed in 1989, many remaining members of the Youth League faction were purged from the Party leadership, and the faction ceased to exist as such.

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