Changed makeup of delegates to Party Congress  
2002-11-07 16:03:15
Formation of two new delegations has brought to 38 the total number of delegations for the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) due to open here on Friday.

The two are the Central Finance Delegation and the Central Enterprise Delegation of the CPC.

"This is unprecedented in the history of the Party. It shows the great attention paid to state-owned enterprises by the CPC Central Committee," says an official with the Working Committee for Centrally administered Enterprises.

The forthcoming 16th National Congress will be attended by 2,114 delegates and 40 others who are specially invited, representing over 66 million Party members.

Of all the delegates to the upcoming Congress, 97.5 percent joined the CPC after the founding of New China.

Another feature of the delegates to the 16th National Congress is that they are better educated and younger. Ten years ago, 70.7 percent of the delegates to the 14th National Congress received at least a college education. Now the proportion reaches 91.6 percent.

What's more, 63.2 percent of the delegates to the current Congress are 55 or younger, as compared with 58.9 percent a decade ago.