“What’s the Point of Having Meetings?”: The Everyday Politics of Communist Youth in Shanghai, 1922–1927

Based on sources that have recently been made available, this article examines how the Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) in 1920s Shanghai faced complexities and tensions that rendered it unable to fulfil its own personnel policy and organizational goals. Previous scholarship has largely overlooked the day-to-day practice of the local grassroots of the CYL during this period, focusing instead on its strategy and program of development at higher levels. This study enriches research on early Chinese communism by providing an internal perspective on the Shanghai Communist Youth League’s (SYL) daily operations throughout the National Revolution (1924–1927), including how it engaged with subordinate organizations, how its personnel issues were managed at different levels, how human resources (students and workers) were disciplined, and how members reacted to those measures. This study also examines the complexities the SYL faced as it tried to develop strong grassroots support in industrial settings and campus contexts, and the tension between its goals of organizational efficiency and perpetuating traditional cultural elements in staff management. Despite its routine practices, such as training, education, and mutual criticism, and disciplinary measures, such as purging the organization, far from reaching the state of institutionalization that it aimed for, the SYL was plagued with unresolved problems at the grassroots. These issues became glaringly evident and formed a sine qua non for the setbacks that the organization experienced in the 1927 Shanghai coup.