The New Generation
The latest appointment new deputy editor-in-chief at the CCP’s flagship daily newspaper The People’s Daily (人民日報) represents a breakthrough in Chinese politics: Du Shangze (杜尚澤) is just 44 years old, a member of the post-1980s generation, and — as many headlines pointed out — a woman. As Caixin reported earlier this month, “‘half the sky’ is stepping up in politics.” (政壇“半邊天”發力)
The People’s Daily is a ministerial-level institution (正部級), under the direct control of the CCP Central Committee, with senior editors also holding administrative ranks within the Party. That makes Du officially the youngest official in China to hold a vice-ministerial rank and the first person born in the 1980s to get there. It’s a seniority level that Du’s colleagues in the state media apparatus, born in the mid-1970s, are only just beginning begun to reach: Huo Xiaoguang (霍小光), for example, vice president of Xinhua News Agency, the party’s newswire, was born in 1975 and assumed his position in 2024, when he was 48 years old.
CCP leadership is famously senior, but a recent analysis shows that vice ministers — whose average age is 57 — average younger than full ministers, whose mean age is 62. Her appointment is also notable for her gender: of the eight officials in People’s Daily’s leadership, Du is one of only two women.
Du’s rise at the newspaper happened gradually. A 20-year veteran of the CCP flagship daily often covering top leadership, her profile rose in 2014, when under the pen name “Du Xiaodu” (杜小杜), she covered the informal exchanges between then-U.S. president Barack Obama and Xi Jinping in Beijing for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Her 2019 report on Xi’s trip to Europe won the 2020 China News Awards (中國新聞獎), a national award for outstanding journalism, with a standout quote from the Chinese leader circulated across government channels, state media, and even the BBC: “I will forget myself for the people” (我將無我，不負人民作). A success in the Party’s book for effective public opinion guidance, if there ever was one.
