The Princelings (), also translated as the Party's Crown Princes, are the descendants of prominent and influential senior communist officials in the People's Republic of China. It is an informal, and often derogatory, categorization to signify those benefiting from nepotism and cronyism, by analogy with crown princes in hereditary monarchies. Many of its members hold high-level political and business positions in the upper echelons of power. However, there is no discernible political cohesion within the group, and as such they should not be compared to other informal groupings such as the "Shanghai clique" or the "Tuanpai" ("Youth League clique"), which resemble intra-party factions with some degree of affinity on policy issues.