As well as removing redundant officials from key departments, administrative posts in government institutions from city to township level have also been cut by some 320,000 during the period, according to figures provided by the Committee on the Organizational Structure of the CPC Central Committee.

Before 1998, the total number of the country's administrative officials peaked at 5.18 million. The redundancies have brought a heavy financial burden.

Fiscal income in Huanglong (Yellow Dragon) county in northwest China's Shaanxi province, for example, used to support more than 4,400 "civil service officers," out of a local population of over 40,000.

The government restructuring was initiated at the 15th CPC National Conference held in 1997, which decided to streamline ministry-level departments and commissions from 40 down to 29, halving the number of jobs in the Central Government.

Wider reforms followed at municipal and provincial levels in Beijing and Shanghai municipalities, and Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, which on average cut the total number of their government officials by 20 percent.

Then county-level restructuring was first introduced in Anhui province in east China, with its pilot project targeting 70 percent of some 14,000 institutions affiliated to township governments in the province and 40 percent of local government posts.

Xie Zhengding was among those county leading officials made redundant. He used to be an official in charge of tea production in Jinzhai county, Anhui province. "I majored in agronomy. However, I nearly forgot my specialty after being stuck at an office desk job for a long time," said the former official who lost his post last year.

Since then, he has led seven agro-technicians in setting up a tea-cultivation demonstration garden. The new job brought him an income of 100,000 yuan (12,000 US dollars) last year, double his salary as a civil servant.

Qian Weizhong, a senior civil servant still in his job at the Shanghai Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau after the restructuring, referred his former work routine at the office as "a cup of tea and a piece of newspaper every day."

However, with some 14,000 posts gone from Shanghai's municipal government, Qian's workload has multiplied. "Now I'm doing the same amount of work as several people used to do," he said.

Those former officials made redundant have become sought after and well-qualified candidates for jobs in organizations and businesses, because of their policy expertise and a wealth of experience.

The public has favored and accepted the reforms well. A poll conducted in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou suggested that approximately 80 percent of citizens in the three big cities regard the restructuring as "basically successful" or "completely successful."

(Xinhua News Agency October 24, 2002)