The Communist Party of China (CPC) has seen significant growth in its membership over a century. There were 50 members in 1921 when the Party was founded. 

Today there are more than 90 million. And the number is still growing.

Xi Jinping joined in 1974 when he was 20. But it took 10 applications before Xi received approval from the Party committee.

In 1969, 15-year-old Xi moved to the village of Liangjiahe in Wen'anyi Commune, Yanchuan County, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. 

He spent seven years as one of 17 million urban youths sent down for re-education by poor farmers. 

Xi Jinping returns home in Beijing to visit his relatives in 1972 when he is an educated youth in Liangjiahe. (File Photo: Xinhua)

Even as he tried to adapt to rural life and farm work, Xi applied to join the Chinese Communist Youth League. 

The application was rejected: Xi's father was Xi Zhongxun, a Party and state leader, who suffered political persecution for 16 years beginning in 1962.

Convinced his father wronged and he was good enough to join the league, Xi continued to make submissions. 

In the winter of 1972, Xi was admitted to the youth league, on his eighth application.

Then in August 1973, Liang Yuming, the Liangjiahe branch CPC secretary asked Xi, "Do you want to join the Party?" according to Liangjiahe Village: A story of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a book published by Foreign Languages Press based in Beijing in 2018.

Xi replied that such a task was "a tough challenge!"

But Liang egged on Xi saying, "If you do not initiate the first step of personal progress, how can I get you into the Party?"

And so Liang nominated Xi for CPC membership. Liang's support for Xi's Party application to the commune earned him a severe tongue lashing. 

The reason given for Xi's refusal: Xi was son of "the Dark Cabal."

At that time, the children of alleged landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad influencers and rightists were not allowed join the CPC, recalled Liangjiahe villager Wang Xianming. 

But Xi did not stop applying. He worked hard, studied assiduously and collaborated productively. The application was reconsidered.

The winds changed direction when the CPC Central Committee in Beijing issued policies that children could no longer be judged simply on the basis of their parents' political classification. 

On January 10, 1974, the commune Party committee approved Xi's 10th application and so Xi at 20 officially became a Party member. Soon he was elected Party secretary of the village. 

The Wen'anyi Commune approved three candidates to be CPC members, including Xi Jinping, on January 10, 1974. (File Photo: Xinhua) 

Xi has always emphasized the CPC is for the people and should wholeheartedly seek happiness for them. 

"I will put aside my own well-being for the good of my people," Xi said when asked how he felt about being elected president of a country as large as China.

From an educated youth to top Chinese leader, Xi has remained true to the Party's original aspiration and devoted himself to better and happier lives for the Chinese people.

(Compiled by Huang Jingjing and Li Yingtao)