Nepotism puts system for promotions in spotlight
Guidelines governing the appointment of party officials are too general, says Xinhua, leading to adoption of so-called 'hidden rules'
A dragon begets a dragon, a phoenix begets a phoenix and the son of a mouse is good at digging holes, goes the Chinese idiom.
Sadly, however, a culture of nepotism in the promotion of young officials has caused overwhelming public disgust.
The most recent case was that of 30-year-old Yuan Huizhong, the daughter of a former secretary of the Communist Party political and legal affairs commission in Yangzhou , whose appointment as deputy secretary of Yangzhou's Communist Youth League in February was exposed by a microblogger.
According to the city government's website, Yuan received a PhD from Nanjing University three years ago.
She then worked as assistant to the head of Xihu township before being made deputy secretary of the Weiyang district Communist Youth League committee in Yangzhou and head of Chengbei township.
The media quoted an expert as saying it usually took at least nine years for a township cadre to be promoted to her level. Even though an official from the city's party organisation committee, responsible for party personnel matters, said that Yuan had earned the job fairly, and that her father had exerted no influence on the selection process, the phenomenon still provoked wide discussion.
Xinhua said the rules on promoting party officials were too general when it came to avoiding conflicts of interest and left room for the application of "hidden rules", inevitably provoking public challenges.