For a 90-year-old, China’s Communist Party is hanging with a young crowd.

The organization that has ruled China since Mao Zedong’s forces won a civil war in 1949 added 1.24 million university students as members last year, an 8.2 percent increase from 2009. Founded 90 years ago today to build a socialist Utopia for the laboring classes, the party has become a ticket to elite jobs in government and state-owned businesses that offer security, power and a path to wealth.

“I joined because it’ll help when looking for jobs,” said Ling, a 24-year-old student at Beijing’s Renmin University who declined to be identified by her full name because of concern that she faces retribution from the government. “Getting a government job is so hard, but if I got an offer I’d definitely jump for it. My second choice would be state-owned companies.”...

It wasn’t for about four decades after the party’s founding that Mao’s famous book of quotations, known as The Little Red Book, was published. Among his sayings: “The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man’s will.”

In a bid to appeal to younger people, Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau are among actors starring in “Beginning of the Great Revival,” which charts the party’s foundation in 1921.

At the Shanghai IFC Palace Cinema, demand for “Great Revival” has eclipsed that for the four other films showing, including DreamWorks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda 2.”...