The Australian reports Xi Jinping's Chinese Communist Party is the most sought-after private members' club globally.
Its perks are life-changing: better jobs, more pay, and higher status.
The demands on members can be a slog – particularly now all cadres must write an essay on every speech made by Xi, the party's "chairman of everything."
But China's college students are still desperate to join.
Three decades after university students almost brought down the party with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, college campuses are now the party's primary hunting ground for new recruits.
It is a crucial plank of what Bruce Dickson, a professor at George Washington University and one of the world's leading experts on the party's recruitment strategy, has called its "strategy for survival."
When the party was preoccupied with class struggle, recruits came from the "three revolutionary classes": peasants, workers, and soldiers.
Now the 95 million-strong party prefers a different profile – younger, better educated, and more urban.
Plus, having more college members gives the Chinese Communist Party more eyes and ears on the country's university campuses - long a hothouse of political unrest and coup d'etat ideas.
The party's leaders are determined never to be rocked by student-led unrest again.
Remember the number one prerogative of the party to stay in power.
Full stop.
