To study and implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and implement the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress and General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important guidelines on the work concerning young people, Baoshan District is accelerating the construction of a youth development-oriented urban area by following the strategy of “building a city of hope for young people” proposed in the report to the 12th Shanghai Municipal Congress of the CPC and is making great efforts to advance the “Northern Transformation”.

Building an online and offline service matrix for young people

In Baoshan District, an increasing number of characteristic youth activity spaces are emerging. The reporter learned from Baoshan Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) that the Committee would construct youth development-oriented parks within innovation and creativity parks such as Wisdom Bay, Sanlinqiao Sports Cultural Park and Zhongcheng Zhigu Creative Park. The Committee will work with the streets or towns where the parks are located, the Baoshan District Federation of Trade Unions and the Baoshan District Women’s Federation to regularly organize large-scale creativity fairs, parties and other themed events participated by young people.

The communities, neighborhoods and youth apartments in Baoshan District will benefit from the construction of the “youth development-oriented urban area”. For example, this year Baoshan will promote the construction of 10 youth development-oriented communities, set up community social organizations for discussing community affairs joined by young people, and create community services for young people. The district will attract more people to visit rural areas through rural experience tours and encourage young people to take root in the countryside to serve rural vitalization. Baoshan will push forward the construction of 12 youth development-oriented blocks, embed the standardized contents of youth innovation and entrepreneurship, youth services and youth block building in the process of establishing “15-minute living circles”, and it will foster the construction of 10 flagship stores of youth apartment in Wisdom Bay. Shanghai Baoshan Housing Security and Building Administration Bureau, Baoshan District Human Resource and Social Security Bureau and Baoshan Committee of CYLC took the lead in offering six services to attract young professionals to take root in the district.

Baoshan Committee of CYLC provides many services for young people. It is reported that the Committee will join hands with higher education institutions and youth social organizations to set up the “Baoshan District Youth Project R&D Centre” in 2023 to effectively raise the quality of services for young people. The Committee will initiate the “Community Small Teacher System 2.0” to improve the supply of community services for young people. It will launch 50 community experience camps for “community small teachers”, 50 community safety training camps for young people, 100 community parent-child sports games and 1,000 community public welfare fairs. The Committee will give full play to the strengths of the departments of people’s organizations and cooperate with relevant streets and towns to host themed activities, including large-scale car boot fairs, youth rural cycling events and parties in popular places and rural vitalization linkage demonstration areas where young people gather. Five “innovation laboratories” will be built in the district, young professionals’ needs in exchanging creative ideas, work and life, consumption and social contact will be satisfied, the “last mile” problem of inclusive and mixed-age education on innovation will be resolved, and study routes featuring sci-tech innovation, cultural creativity and rural cultural creativity will be established.

Wei Ming, Secretary of Baoshan Committee of CYLC, said, “we’re building an online and offline service matrix for young people.” With regard to the online service matrix for young people, the EYOUNG community platform was upgraded, and the service module of “Seeking Help from CYLC” was added to collect young people’s practical problems and needs for employment and entrepreneurship, youth apartments, marriage and dating, student assistance and medical assistance. The problems and needs will be solved or answered by the joint conference mechanism for the work concerning young people in Baoshan and the CYLC organizations in the district. In terms of the offline service matrix for young people, the “Binjiang Young Volunteer Service Hotline” was set up to understand young people’s state of mind and their demands for assistance; a closed-loop system for collecting problems, making contact, offering help to tackle difficulties and providing feedback on results was established to effectively tackle the troubles and key issues of young people. A number of youth communities will be incubated, cultivated and created, the method for evaluating star-rated communities will be devised, the alliance of youth communities will be expanded and strengthened, and the first gathering party for members from exceptional youth communities in Baoshan will be hosted.

The Binjiang Waterfront Area in Baoshan District is now a new popular place for young people to undertake leisure and sports activities.

Conducting campaigns to facilitate the development of young professionals

To attract, cultivate and retain professionals, Baoshan Committee of CYLC is carrying out campaigns to facilitate the development of young professionals and improving the brand “Young Professionals Gather in Binjiang”. According to Wei Ming, the Committee will start four campaigns in 2023. To be specific, the “Campaign of Attracting Young Professionals” endeavors to encourage Shanghai University’s associations to enter communities, launch the program for college students to do internship jobs at the government departments of streets or towns, and found the college students’ association of Baoshan. The “Campaign of Cultivating Young Professionals” aims to build a “reservoir” and enhance the training of young professionals for CYLC for the new era; the “classes that turn college students into young Marxists” will be held to train young political backbones for the CPC; the “resource pool” will be utilized and the guidance on young people’s innovation and entrepreneurship will be intensified. The “Campaign of Retaining Young Professionals” focuses on selecting and motivating young professionals, nurturing the pioneers of young professionals, encouraging more young professionals to join the CPC, enhancing their sense of honor, improving the supply of services, opening up new channels for employing young professionals in colleges and universities, and handling their troubles. The “Partner Campaign” intends to give full play to the power of the “circles of friends”, build a platform for young entrepreneurs and young sci-tech innovation professionals inside and outside Baoshan to exchange ideas, reach cooperation, share resources and achieve common development, and guide young professionals to integrate into society.

In addition, this year Baoshan Committee of CYLC will select and set up young role models of sci-tech innovation, identify and recommend key young professionals specialized in technology and R&D, and create an evaluation, selection and training mechanism favorable to the emergence of those young professionals. The Committee will select and set up young role models of rural vitalization; it will gather and nurture young professionals who possess outstanding entrepreneurial spirit and innovation ability in agriculture, the countryside and farmers and related fields and win high recognition from the local people. The Committee will select, set up and guide dedicated young role models, who have a strong awareness of political responsibility and are eager to offer volunteer services, to empower community governance. Moreover, the Committee will cherry-pick some young role models to join Shanghai Baoshan District Youth Federation, Shanghai Baoshan Young Entrepreneurs Association and Shanghai Baoshan Young Volunteers Association, and recommend them to apply for honors of Shanghai and Baoshan District. It will inspire young people in the district to continue to work hard with the power of role models, and pool the strengths of young people for Baoshan to build itself into the main platform to support Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Centre, the main urban area of a modern, innovative and eco-friendly international metropolis and the model area of the city’s green and low-carbon transformation.

In addition to supporting young professionals, Baoshan Committee of CYLC cultivated and expanded a number of youth development organizations. According to Wei Ming, the Committee has deepened the reform of Shanghai Baoshan District Youth Federation and strengthened the building of one federation, two associations and three alliances in recent years; it will establish close cooperation mechanisms with Shanghai Alumni Association of Peking University, Shanghai Alumni Association of Tsinghua University and Shanghai Alumni Association of University of Science and Technology of China. The Committee utilized the resources of higher education institutions and research institutes, organized young entrepreneurs to visit research institutes, held forums for young entrepreneurs to study overseas markets, and constructed three new homes for young entrepreneurs in Baoshan. The Committee cooperated with Shanghai Anhui Chamber of Commerce (Young Entrepreneurs Branch) and young entrepreneurs' organizations in Shenzhen and Zhongshan in the Greater Bay Area to bolster exchanges, resource linkage and common development. The Committee completed the mid-term adjustment of Shanghai Baoshan Young Volunteers Association, continued to boost physical operations, and attracted more young people, including those from the CYLC branches of non-public enterprises and the CYLC branches of social organizations, young parents of “community small teachers” and volunteers from the organization “One River and One Creek”, to join the association. The Committee consolidated and expanded the community young volunteer service teams composed of 13,500 members and implemented the filing system for community youth social organizations set up for discussing community affairs, offering volunteer services and staging parent-child events. It will form a federation at the street and town levels within 2023.

Introducing social policies for youth development

District gives full play to the role of the joint conference for the work concerning young people in Baoshan and guides member units to identify young people’s needs and their pressing concerns in housing, employment and entrepreneurship, marriage and social contact, children’s education and feeling of belonging and identity. The district effectively implements the List of Practical Things of the Pilot Program of Baoshan District to Build Itself into a Youth Development-oriented Urban Area in Shanghai and creates a complementary, extensive, accurate and efficacious policy system for youth development. Relevant authorities collaborated with innovation entities such as enterprises and social organizations to conduct surveys on young people’s life, habits, consumption and other behaviors in Baoshan to provide decision-making references for the CPC and government departments to formulate targeted policies and measures with the support of information technology and big data analysis. Those authorities will accumulate more resources for young people to make innovations, start-up businesses and develop creative products. They will create a development ecosystem that is in line with young people’s traits and full of creativity.

Improving a set of mechanisms for conducting work concerning young people and running projects

Baoshan Committee of CYLC will stick to the principle that the CPC exercises leadership over young people, improve the joint conference mechanism for the work concerning young people in Baoshan, sharpen the sense of responsibility of member units, and push ahead with the high-quality construction of the youth development-oriented urban area. The Committee will execute the “space-for-service” mechanism of youth centers, collaborate with youth social organizations to provide them with free venues, and offer special low-cost courses for young people in the district to use the proceeds to finance the services of youth centers. The Committee will improve the ecosystem of CYLC organizations, better the cooperation mechanism of regional CYLC organizations, and stimulate them to “increase their strengths, promote brands and share resources and positions”. The Committee will enhance the alliances among multiple CYLC organizations and the CYLC organizations affiliated to different superior units in Baoshan, form a joint force for developing CYLC organizations, and set up a platform for young people to improve themselves and exchange ideas.