About one in four, or 24.8 percent, of Chinese youth were members of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) at the end of 2007, up 2.9 percent from the previous year, the CYLC Central Committee announced on Sunday.

Youth league members are aged below 28.

The number of CYLC members reached 75.439 million at the end of 2007, up 2.64 percent from 2006, according to the Central Committee

Students accounted for 51.3 percent of the members, while people in the agricultural, industrial and service sectors accounted for 26.9 percent, 7.3 percent and 14.4 percent, respectively.

The CYLC has about 2.9 million league organization at the grass-roots level. So far, 107,000 non-public enterprises or institutions have set up youth league organizations.

The number of league cadres stands at 191,000.

Founded in 1922, the CYLC is a mass youth organization under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and plays a supporting role to the CPC.

After awarding the "May 4th Medal" to outstanding Chinese youth on Sunday, Wang Zhaoguo, the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, urged the youth to channel their patriotic passion into concrete action: studying hard and making innovations and contributions.

(Xinhua News Agency May 5, 2008)