When officials in the city of Nanjing invited applications for a clerking post in the municipal government’s court system last month, they expected plenty of interest in the much coveted civil-service positions. But even they were suspicious when their in-boxes filled up with applications from Hollywood starlet Zhang Ziyi, pinup Fan Bingbing and table-tennis champion Liu Guoliang. An internal investigation quickly revealed that one enterprising young candidate for the position, a Mr. Wang, was so desperate to get the job that he had filed more than 100 fake applications — 50% of the total number received. Wang apparently believed that his real application would stand out all the more amid a sea of phonies and that rivals would be scared off by the number of applicants ahead of them in the queue. His cunning plan almost worked — he got noticed — but once authorities discovered what he’d been up to, they banned him from applying to the civil service for the next five years.

[...O]ver the past few years, applications to the civil service have begun to surge: 1.5 million people registered to take the 2013 entrance exams, an increase of nearly 15% year-on-year. And competition for the most-coveted government positions is intensifying. In one much discussed example in October, more than 9,000 (apparently real) people applied for a single job in the municipal Statistics Bureau in the megacity of Chongqing.

As the applications increase, the caliber of applicants is also increasing dramatically, according to Liu Xin, a professor at the Institute of Organization and Human Resources at Renmin University. “In other countries like the U.S., talented people would never choose to work in the civil service — the private sector is always their first choice,” he says. “But in China, it’s the exact opposite.” More and more talented young people are signing up for government jobs, he says.

[...] According to Renmin University’s Liu, that guarantee of job security is one of the key factors driving the renewed interest in the public sector. That guarantee has become increasingly important as the global financial crisis bites harder in China. “As a civil servant in China, unless you quit or make a big mistake, you have a job for life,” he says. “It’s the iron rice bowl. That’s especially important during an economic downturn.” Another plus is that state-sector workers routinely receive free food, free local transport and special access to cheap housing, paid holidays and other perks.

See also Chinese College Graduates Play It Safe and Lose Out, via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil servants, civil service, civil service examination, college students, graduates, job market, private sector
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In China, “bureaucracy lit” is a hot genre, far outselling spy stories and whodunits as the airport novel of choice. In these tales of overweening ambition, the plot devices that set readers’ pulses racing are underhanded power plays, hidden alliances and devious sexual favors. The current craze began in 1999 with “Ink Painting,” by Wang Yuewen, and has become so intense that last year a deputy bureau chief who writes a series under the pseudonym Xiaoqiao Laoshu was named China’s 17th-richest author. “Officialdom lit” is hugely popular, not just as a peek behind the curtains, but also as a go-to guide for aspiring cadres in search of their own sycophancy strategies.

[… But t]he trifling plots of bureaucracy lit look positively petty compared with the grand crimes surrounding the downfall of one of China’s highest-flying politicians, Bo Xilai, formerly the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a former British business partner. Bo’s wife — or a woman rumored to be her plumper stand-in — was given a suspended death sentence, while Bo’s former police chief got 15 years for abuse of power, corruption and defection. Bo himself is facing a criminal investigation into charges including abuse of power, corruption, improper sexual relationships and possible involvement in covering up a murder. It’s hard for any novelist to compete.

Lim goes on to describe the “gargantuan irony” of official celebrations of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Also at The New York Times is a spoiler-laden review of Mo’s Sandalwood Death and Pow! by Ian Buruma, who concludes with a sympathetic assessment of the author’s widely criticized politics:

Perhaps Mo Yan really is in tune with the current Communist regime. Perhaps he simply wants to play it safe. But the political perspective of his fiction is also a reflection of his peasant spirit. To a villager, all politics are strictly local, especially in China, with its vast distances. The capital is far away. National politics aren’t the peasant’s concern. What counts is food on the table, fertility, sex and staying out of trouble, if necessary by appeasing the powerful, be they local or foreign.

[…] To demand that Mo Yan also be a political dissident is not only what the Dutch describe as “trying to pluck feathers from a frog.” It’s also unfair. A novelist should be judged on literary merit, not on his or her politics, a principle the Nobel committee hasn’t always lived up to. This time, I think it has. It would be nice if Mo Yan were more courageous, but he has given us some great stories. And that should be enough.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, books, bureaucracy, civil servants, corrupt officials, corruption, literature, mo yan, Nobel Prize, officials, Wang Xiaofang, yu hua
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Xu Maiyong, a former vice mayor of the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, was convicted of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power and sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court of the city of Ningbo on May 12.

Jiang Renjie, a former vice mayor of the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, was convicted of bribery and sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court of the city of Nanjing in April 2008.

Both Xu and Jiang appealed the courts’ decisions after their trials. Their appeals were rejected by higher courts.

The two cases were highlighted in an April opinion piece in the Shanghai Daily, which lamented the wealth gap between China’s ordinary citizens and its supposed 115 billionaires; a figure “vastly understated, for a huge number of our citizens prefer to be extremely modest about their economic circumstances.”

Some of our civil servants are much richer than they appear to be. Since they are not legally required to state their income, we can only get a glimpse of the picture from the occasional exposure of disgraced officials.

Last month, the Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu Province upheld a death sentence for former deputy mayor of Suzhou, Jiang Renjie. He is guilty of, among other charges, taking bribes exceeding 100 million yuan, from property developers.

And former deputy mayor of Hangzhou Xu Maiyong is still waiting for a verdict for allegedly taking 160 million yuan in bribes, nearly all from property developers.

Any rich survey that fails to take into account of officials, incorruptible or otherwise, would necessarily misrepresent China’s wealth picture. That misrepresentation leads to misconceptions about the origins of the wealth.

China Daily cited Jiang as an example of official corruption in May, again as part of a broader trend:

Officials from key departments, such as land and resources, housing and rural-urban development as well as law enforcement, tend to be the most vulnerable as the bribes they are offered reflect the significance of their departments, Song Hansong, head of the department targeting crimes committed by officials, under the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), told China Daily.

“Corruption and bribery account for the majority of crimes committed by officials,” he said ….

In March 2011, Jiangsu provincial higher people’s court upheld the death sentence meted out by a lower court to Jiang Renjie, former vice-mayor of Suzhou city in Jiangsu, for accepting bribes of up to 100 million yuan.

From 2001 to 2004, Jiang, who was in charge of urban construction, planning and real estate development, abused his position to help secure “illegal interests” in land development, land ownership swaps, and project bids.

Some further details of Xu Maiyong’s case can be found in a Caijing report published immediately after he was placed under investigation in April 2009:

People close to the case said Xu’s investigation is related to the Xixi wetland park project in Hangzhou. Development of the park, strongly opposed by local residents, began in 2004.

In 2008, three people connected to the project were convicted of taking 9.9 million yuan in bribes, including the deputy chief of a district construction bureau, who received a suspended death sentence.

Xu has been involved in the project since its inception, rising through the ranks to become chief of its management committee in April 2006.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: billionaires, civil servants, corrupt officials, corruption, death penalty, execution, Hangzhou, Jiangsu, Suzhou, Zhejiang
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The problem, Communist Party functionaries say, is that civil servants talk too much — at meetings, in speeches and when speaking off-the-cuff in public. It’s the official Chinese version of yada-yada-yada, blah-blah-blah.

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To set an example for his peers, Li Yuanchao, a top member of a key Central Committee department, told the state-run New China News Agency that he is keeping his speeches short during meetings. In one recent video-conference, he kept his remarks to just 10 minutes, officials said.

Vice President Xi Jinping scolded underlings at a recent Central Party orientation meeting, declaring that bureaucratic long-windedness lengthened meetings and cut productivity.

So there’s a new unwritten policy among bureaucrats: when it comes to speechifying, less is more.

Scholars say long speeches by Chinese officials are legendary, often making a U.S. congressional filibuster seem like a haiku in comparison.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, civil servants
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A group of Chinese primary school students who were tasked with supervising a civil service test proved their worth by catching 25 exam cheats, state media said Thursday.

The 18 students in northwest China’s Gansu province uncovered the cheats while administering the test to 265 candidates for positions as judges, prosecutors and police officers, the Lanzhou Morning News said.

The students were brought in by the Liangzhou district government to supervise the test to ensure “openness and transparency,” the paper said.

Other supervisors included officials and middle-school teachers, it reported, but added that the pupils were solely responsible for catching the cheaters.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cheating, civil servants, students
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More than 300 exam sitters were caught cheating on site in the exam rooms on November 30, while another 700 were busted after their exam paper were found to have “shared much conformity”, the State Administration of Civil Service said here on Sunday.

The cheaters were mainly found in the northeastern province of Liaoning and the capital city of Beijing.

They would be disqualified for the exam, and, in serious cases, be barred from the civil servant exams for both central and local governments for the next five years, it said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cheating, civil servants
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“In order to expand the knowledge base in an all-around way and to promote life-long learning,” the Shanghai municipal government issued a trial directive, about building a study-style (Â≠¶‰π†Âûã) evaluation regime for government agencies. Civil servants in the city, according to the new regime, are each supposed to read 6-12 books a year, and they should spend 7-10.5 hours a week on reading.

And, it’s learned, this reading regime is almost on par with the level of major cities in developed countries.

But, the question is, how can employers know whether their employees read in their free time, and how many books they read? Moreover, people read books differently, fast or slow, or intensively or extensively. How can you measure the efficiency of reading? Imposing a “reading quota” is nothing but adopting a trend. If the government does want to create a reading environment, the best way is to promote talent (‰ªª‰∫∫ÂîØË¥§). The government should encourage studying and reading, but the way to do it shouldn’t be an administrative order, but an incentive system. [Full Text in Chinese]

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil servants, reading, Shanghai
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China ordered civil servants to do without cars, elevators and air conditioning Tuesday as part of an energy-saving awareness campaign.

The government targeted its employees with the one-day ban so that they could serve as an example to others, the official China Daily newspaper said, and because they use so much energy: the 7 million civil servants consume about 5 percent of the country’s total electricity a year – equal to the amount consumed by 780 million farmers.

At the State Family Planning Commission , “a few hundred people” were following the directive, said Chen Bingshu in the agency’s public affairs department. Some, she said, were climbing as many as seven flights of stairs to get to their offices. But not Chen. She said she flouted the rules and drove her car to and from work because she needed to nurse her 6-month-old daughter at lunchtime and wanted to conserve time in the commute.

[Full text]

See also China Daily’s “‘Three-nos’ call to help save energy.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, civil servants, energy conservation, energy demand, State Family Planning Commission
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China, trying to rein in official corruption which has blossomed alongside 30 years of economic reforms, is to examine civil servants on their morality as well as work performance, Xinhua news agency said.

Morality would become a “key criterion” when making decisions on promotions, pay rises and rewards, and even punishment, Xinhua said late on Monday, quoting a senior official with China’s personnel authority.

“Civil servants, who are at the forefront of civil affairs, should take the lead in improving their moral standards, which is in line with China’s ‘socialist concept of honor and disgrace‘ — a concept that extols patriotism, plain living and honesty among others,” said Xinhua, quoting the vice minister of personnel, Yin Weimin.

See also CDT’s “Figures of China Corruption” (link)

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil servants, corruption, moral standards
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