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JanIn previous years, the results of the national examination for admissions to the civil service were released in mid-to-late January. It is planned to recruit about 14,500 candidates in 2019, which is nearly half that of 2018 and the lowest in 10 years. The number of candidates actually taking the written examination was 920,000 in 2019, equivalent to a recruitment rate of 63: 1.
Faced with the fierce competition every year, many people challenge the profession of civil service. Some believe that the civil servants are “overpaid”, which leads to excessive enthusiasm of graduates towards the civil service. They propose that the salaries of civil servants shall be lowered to a reasonable level for social equality. However, the civil servants complained about this gross misunderstanding, explaining that their income even cannot reach the “individual income tax threshold”.
Is the public image of civil servants reasonable? What are the situations actually facing civil servants? Today, the “Grassroots Information" study group of Xi’s spirit recommends Liu Xin, Professor of the School of Public Administration and Policy, and Research Fellow of the National Academy of Development and Strategy of Renmin University of China, to clarify some misunderstandings of the public about the civil service.
Is civil service an under-occupied profession nothing much except reading newspapers and drinking tea?
When people talk about “civil service”, they usually refer to a general concept.
According to the provisions of the Civil Servant Law of PRC, the civil servants are the staff members who perform official duties according to the law and are members of the administrative establishment of the state, and whose salaries and welfare benefits are borne by the public finance of the state. The civil servants include the staff members meeting the above three conditions from the party and government organs, people's congresses and their standing committees at all levels, CPPCCs at all levels, judicial organs, procuratorial organs, democratic parties and the organs of the Federation of Industry and Commerce.
Many staff members who are regarded as civil servants by the public are actually not part of the “civil service”. They perform certain public duties, but they are not members of the administrative establishment. For example, the staff members working in the administration service halls at all levels of governments include civil servants, staff members from government affiliated institutions, and outsourcing labors or personnel outside the staffing plan. The status and remuneration of the above three categories of personnel vary greatly.
The civil service is a quite general occupational class. The occupational differences among various groups of the civil service including comprehensive management personnel, professional & technical personnel and administrative law enforcement personnel and so forth are as large as that among different positions in an enterprise. Some posts have demanding requirements for academic qualifications, professional and technical capacity and management capability, while some involve relatively simple administrative affairs or services, with relatively low requirements on the academic qualifications of the incumbents. Some posts feature great pressure, heavy tasks and frequent working overtime, while some are relatively easy with less technical content and therefore the staff members can go to work and leave office according to the work schedule.
Therefore, we cannot simply take the situation facing some civil servants or even any individual civil servant for the whole.
Some people always have a rather distorted picture of the civil service, believing that civil servants are under-occupied, drinking tea and reading newspapers all day. In fact, every unit has staff members who fish in troubled waters, are unable to and not willing to perform their duties. However, there are also many diligent and hard-working staff members who bear hardship without complaint. Generally speaking, the situation is even worse in remote and small places where more civil servants count their thumbs.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, with the high-handed posture against corruption and higher requirements for targeted poverty alleviation and environmental protection of the central government, the work pressure and load of civil servants at all levels have greatly increased. Working in “workdays and weekends, day and night” has become the new normal for many grass-roots civil servants. They are on duty in weekends, work overtime in holidays, visit villages and households, and work during the day and write reports at night. Not long ago, a grass-roots cadre born in the 1980s in Yunnan province attracted widespread attention for the huge contrast between his image with white hair and vicissitudes of life and his age.
Do the civil servants enjoy high salaries and welfare benefits?
Let's look at their salaries first.
On the whole, the salary level of civil servants is actually not high compared with that of enterprise staffs with similar job nature, academic qualifications and work experiences in the same region. Especially in large cities and relatively developed regions, the salary level of civil servants is generally lower than that of their counterparts in enterprises, and sometimes with great differences.
However, in some backward regions, due to the small scale or unstable operation of enterprises, the salary level of civil servants is higher than that of their counterparts in enterprises.
In fact, there is severe wage inequality among civil servants. The wage gap among civil servants in different regions and even among the same level civil servants in different cities and counties in the same province is quite large.
In addition, the salary levels of civil servants are closely related to their administrative levels and length of service. As the vast majority of civil servants are at or below the section level before retirement, the salary levels of grassroots civil servants are pitifully low. For this reason, in recent years, the number of grass-roots civil servants who have resigned due to unreasonably low salaries is growing.
Certainly, comparing with the salaries of enterprise staffs, stability is the most prominent advantage of civil servants, as the income of enterprise staffs may fluctuate greatly depending on the performance of the enterprises.
Then, let’s look at the welfare benefits of civil servants.
In the past, the most attractive welfare benefit of civil servants was the housing allotment system. However, after the reform of the housing system, the welfare-oriented public housing distribution system has been abolished for most local civil servants. Only some national civil servants who have attained certain administrative levels are still entitled to welfare-oriented public housing distribution.
Another attractive welfare benefit is the retirement benefit. The pension level of civil servants is indeed higher than that of their counterparts in enterprises. It aims to control the salary level of civil servants while providing better retirement protection, so as to restrain the corruption and inertia motivation of civil servants to a certain extent. Therefore, the salaries and welfare benefits of civil servants shall be taken as a whole, instead of simply focusing on the salary level of civil servants and the high pension replacement rate of civil servants.
In addition, some people may question whether all civil servants have gray incomes. As a matter of fact, those who are really likely to get involved in power rent-seeking are the minority of the entire civil service, mainly including some middle and senior leaders or departments or posts that have the administrative approval authority and the law enforcement power.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, with the continuous high-handed posture against corruption of civil servants and the establishment of strict and detailed supervision, inspection and review mechanisms, even the original space for corruption has been greatly narrowed. Although corruption and power rent-seeking have not been completely eliminated, the overall situation has been greatly improved. Judging from the current requirements of the central government, anti-corruption and discipline requirements will not be eased for a long time to come, and the possibility of corruption and seeking illegitimate income relying on power is becoming increasingly smaller.
Why are the civil servants always under fire?
The civil servants are always the focus of social attention and even the object of criticism mainly due to the following reasons:
First, there are numerous civil servants. The masses seldom come into contact with any specific enterprise, but they often deal with government departments, especially with civil servants who handle specific affairs. Therefore, civil servants are more likely to arouse attention from the general public.
When any citizen has unpleasant experiences when dealing with staff members of a certain government department, it may easily escalate to dissatisfaction against the entire civil service. The government departments dealing with the masses most frequently are also those against which the public are most dissatisfied, such as the public security, taxation, industry and commerce, education, environmental protection, urban management and other departments. The government departments that have less direct contact with the public are less criticized by the public.
Second, serving the public is the duty of civil servants or government staffs. Therefore, it is normal and quite necessary for the masses to pay more attention to and even supervise the civil servants. Along with the economic growth, the sense of participation of the public has enhanced, and the requirements for the service level of the government and civil servants have increased. With the popularization of the Internet, there are more channels for the public to express their dissatisfaction towards the work of civil servants, with greater influences.
However, there are still some civil servants or government staffs who have not changed their ideology and work style immediately. Especially in some underdeveloped regions, the working attitude and style of many civil servants make the citizens very uncomfortable. The situation of inaccessibility, unfriendliness, and rudeness has not improved yet in some places.
Third, in some occasions, the public dissatisfaction is not related to any individual civil servant. For example, due to unclear division of functions and poor coordination among different government departments or thoughtless attitude in formulating policies, the grassroots civil servants may find it hard to implement policies. It will also lead to public discontent or even negative image of the civil servants. In addition, the public dissatisfaction with many social issues including income distribution, relocation, employment and so forth is also easily linked to civil servants. Under these circumstances, civil servants take the blame for policy defects.
How can the civil service get back into the swing of things?
To sum up, it is not difficult to see that there are still many problems in the civil service of China today, but we shall not take a part for the whole and run to extremes. From a long-term perspective, the civil service shall get back into the swing of things by taking appropriate measures. To this end, the government may have a lot of things to do, including but not limited to the following aspects:
First, the post setting of the party and government organs shall ensure clear job responsibilities and full workload of the civil servants to reduce overstaffing, thus making it impossible for those who are still drinking tea and reading newspapers during work to count their thumbs.
Second, efforts shall be made to strictly control the admissions to civil service, strengthen the construction of ethics and morals of civil servants, enhance performance assessment, continuously optimize the working attitude of civil servants, and improve their service capacity. Meanwhile, the withdrawal mechanism of civil servants shall be established and refined, so that those unqualified can quit as soon as possible.
Third, it is necessary to establish and implement a survey and comparison mechanism and adjustment criteria for the salaries and welfare benefits of civil servants and that of their counterparts in enterprises, so that the salaries and welfare benefits of civil servants can guarantee that all spare no effort to perform their duties and could be recognized and accepted by the general public, and could be flexibly adjusted according to the conditions of the labor market.
Fourth, it is required to strengthen the management of personnel who are not members of the administrative establishment of the state but engaged in government-related work. Although many of them are not included in the civil service, their work often represents the government and is closely related to the general public. Therefore, the government shall make great efforts to strengthen the control over the work undertaken by those staff members and enhance their management when it is really necessary to choose them.
Fifth, greater efforts shall made to continuously optimize government functions, improve the quality of policy decisions, and reduce public dissatisfaction against civil servants due to unclear government functions or policy-making issues.
Liu Xin, Research Fellow of the National Academy of Development and Strategy of Renmin University of China
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yveXNdOPkn39em5ySxMQaQ
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