Government jobs still popular among young Chinese

BEIJING - Young Chinese people still want to become public servants despite the country imposing the strictest ever scrutiny on officials, said a senior human resources official on Friday.

In this year's provincial recruitment programs for civil servants, the ratio between available vacancies and qualified applicants is 1:25.2, compared with 1:24.9 last year, said Li Zhong, spokesman with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS).

Recruitment programs are ongoing in 21 provincial regions. There are so far 101,800 vacancies, a 13.2 percent decrease year on year, and the number of qualified applicants has totaled 2.56 million, down 12.3 percent from 2013, Li said.

As the country has unveiled a large-scale campaign against harmful working practices among officials and stepped up anti-corruption efforts for more than a year, behaviors of public servants are under tight supervision from both discipline agencies and the public. This has led to concerns that young people are less enthusiastic about government jobs, especially low-level ones.

Li attributed the popularity of public servant roles to people wanting a stable job, social respect and welfare benefits.

However, some government positions draw no applications, such as in remote areas or those requiring specialist skills, whereas applications will flood in for positions having lower requirements for hukou (Chinese household registration) and educational background, said Li.

"The government will continue to analyze the existing problems in civil servant recruitment and bring forth constructive reform such as lowering the requirements for jobs in remote and harsh areas," he said.