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Civil service exams need to be changed
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-03 08:01
China's national civil service exams are the most difficult but their recruitment procedures are relatively sound. But the same cannot be said about the lower-level civil service exams, says an article in Shanghai Business Daily. Excerpts:
Last Sunday, a record 1 million people took the annual national civil service exams across the country for 15,000 posts in government departments and agencies. Some of the single vacant posts even attracted more than 4,000 candidates.
The country's civil service exams have four levels: national, provincial, municipal and county. The national-level exams are the most difficult and competitive, and of the highest quality. No wonder, national-level civil servants were said to be carrying "golden rice bowls", meaning they didn't have to worry about their future after entering office.
Generally speaking, it takes 6-10 years for a national-level civil servant to climb from the post of a junior official to that of a deputy director. But at the municipal level, an official has to spend 12-16 years before he/she could complete that journey. And a county-level official has to work for at least 20 years to achieve that.
Compared with the other three levels, the national civil service exams have a relatively normative recruitment system, too.
But the chances of local authorities' interference are high in the exams at the lower levels. This at times leads to corruption. The reason for that is lower level exams have an opaque recruitment procedure, which involves third party supervision, especially during interviews.
To prevent rules from being twisted in civil service exams and to make the recruitment process fair and transparent, China should change the pattern of the municipal- and county-level exams.
(China Daily 12/03/2009 page9)
