Recruitment today involves test scores, merit appraisals, performance checks, competition for promotions and the sacking of unqualified or dishonest officials.

The accomplishments are key to the government's ability to ensure its policy of economic reform and opening up to the outside world, Minister of Personnel Zhang Xuezhong told a national conference yesterday.

"China is building up a more efficient government capable of dealing with the major challenges facing the country under a growing market economy in the new century with the help of an efficient, honest and proficient civil service," he said.

More than 11,000 of civil servants have been fired and 11,624 others forced to quit since 1993, proving the weakening of the so-called "iron rice bowl," a name people dubbed civil service employment for its permanence.

Zhang told the conference on civil servant administration the system of 5.4 million government workers is better now than before 1993.

Of the employees, 56 percent work in law-enforcement jobs as police officers, tax collectors, market supervisors and regulation enforcers. Sixty per cent work for counties and townships.

More than 56 percent have attended junior college or higher, up 25 percentage points since 1993. Many are experts in science, technology, computers and foreign languages.

The workforce is younger now than in the past, too. Civil servants under 35 make up more than 40 percent of the employees, with only 6 per cent older than 55, the ministry said.

Zhang at the conference pledged to further improve China's civil service system.

The reforms in coming years will focus on improving officials' abilities to fight corruption, teach them the ways of the market economy and help them administer better with more professional knowledge.

Furthermore, Zhang said, the government must further intensify its efforts to improve its employees' abilities.

(China Daily 09/23/2001)