MCLC: Officials looking for new jobs

[MCLC LIST]

MCLC LIST
Officials looking for new jobs
Source: China Real Time, WSJ (4/9/15)
Amid Corruption Crackdown, 10,000 Chinese Officials Want New Jobs
By Chun-Wei Yap
Candidates review materials before the civil servant recruitment exam in Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, on March 22, 2015. Zuma Press
Something’s eating away at China’s iron rice bowl.
More than 10,000 civil servants are looking to quit their jobs, according to a report by the local employment website Zhaopin, which found new sign-ups from government employees have spiked since the Lunar New Year in late February.
Those numbers, which rose 30% from a year ago, are startling for a profession once regarded by the Chinese as a highly sought-after lifelong sinecure.
Zhaopin conducts its survey each year in the weeks after the Spring Festival, a period during which job hunting traditionally ticks up as China’s workforce starts to sift for new opportunities in the new year. The survey counts the number of people who have posted a resume on the website.
It isn’t the first sign that China’s civil service is no longer the holy grail for job seekers it once was. Last year, nearly a third of applicants dropped out of an opportunity to sit for the national civil service examination, a necessary step toward becoming a mandarin. Meanwhile last year, 16 of China’s 23 provinces reported declining registrations for the exam.
What gives? The Zhaopin report gave a vague explanation for the decline, pointing to “affected ability to fulfil one’s potential in the civil service.” Stagnating pay is also a problem, the report said.
Perhaps more pertinently: President Xi Jinping’s war on corruption among officialdom has meant sharp curtailments on civil service perquisites. Government jobs are no longer as lucrative or cushy. Official cars for lower-ranking mandarins have been nixed. Gifts for civil servants, from alcohol to mooncakes, have become a target for graft-busters.
Lavish funerals and weddings have also been targeted. In the case of one major state-owned company, Sinopec Corp., there are now even rules capping the number of people that employees can invite to their weddings (150 guests maximum). Employees of such companies aren’t exactly civil servants, but these firms are controlled by government-appointed officials and are widely seen as a corollary of the Chinese state.
So what are China’s wouldn’t-be mandarins looking for in a new vocation? They’re not so different from the rest of the world, it seems. The hottest target sectors, the Zhaopin report says, are Internet firms, property development, and finance and fund management.
– Chun-Wei Yap. Follow him on Twitter @cw_yap
by denton.2 at osu.edu on April 9, 2015
You are subscribed to email updates from MCLC Resource Center  
To stop receiving these emails, click here.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/mclc/attachments/20150409/474a6d35/attachment-0001.html>