Abstract
Chinese officials are confronted with a problem in keeping urban youth on what they regard as the correct socialist road while also pursuing their modernization goals. The low credibility of the CCP and the wide gap between youth aspirations and opportunities, which are products of both political and demographic factors, have created a substantial level of disaffection with the CCP and by extension with the socialist system itself, as well as deviations from socialist values and behaviour. The authorities' efforts to solve the youth problem, largely by resorting to old ideological exhortations, have so far had little appeal to a politically cynical youth generation, not least because this cynicism is directed against the very people who are conducting the ideological campaigns