Test takers vie for more than 22,000 public service jobs in China
A record number of civil service positions on offer this year, but competition will be fierce
The central government will offer a record number of national public service positions next year, according to the organiser of the official entrance exam.
More than 22,000 coveted postings were up for grabs, a significant increase from the 19,300 offered this year, the China News Service quoted the State Administration of Civil Service as saying yesterday. Party membership is not a prerequisite for about 80 per cent of the jobs, a sign that the central government is putting professionalism ahead of ideology. And more than 2,000 jobs will be based in the capital.
The top three bodies with the largest number of openings were the foreign ministry, the Shenzhen General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection, and the China Banking Regulatory Commission, CNS said.
The Communist Party's anticorruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, is offering 28 posts, down from 48 last year.
Popular employers like the State Administration of Taxation and China Railways Corp have also posted many openings.
Candidates must sit the cut-throat national public servant's exam, or guokao, whose registration period runs until next Friday. Only about one in 75 people who applied to take the test would be offered jobs due to the highly competitive nature of the exam and the surging demand for government jobs, the news service said.
Last year, more than 1.5 million hopefuls registered for a guokao that promised fewer than 20,000 jobs. In the end, 99,000 candidates sat the tests.
Zhang Huisui, CEO of a technology start-up in Beijing that created a guokao test app called Gongwuyuan, said it was unlikely that interest would be dampened by the continuing anti-graft campaign and austerity measures launched by President Xi Jinping because the job market had tightened.
"The national frenzy for public service jobs will continue as long as the recruiting process remains transparent," Zhang said. "These are decent jobs offering high social status and security."
News of the higher number of public service positions drew mixed reactions online.
"I don't have a college degree and I feel discriminated against since I don't qualify to take the exam," one microblogger wrote.
"One of my public service friends in Beijing quit his job after less than a year," another wrote. "He was earning half my salary back then and even I could barely afford living in Beijing."