“Pre-assigned Selected Students” and Bureaucratic Recruitment in China

• In Event: Political Recruitment and State Capacity in China

Abstract

Since the introduction of the National Civil Service Examination (NCSE) and Civil Service Examination (CSE) at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels in the 1990s, the Chinese bureaucracy has been considerably modernized and the CSE has been the dominant channel of bureaucratic recruitment in China. Since the early-2010s, however, several provinces have initiated programs of “Pre-assigned Selected Students” (PSS, dingxiang xuandiao sheng in Chinese), which recruit bureaucrats directly from graduates of top universities and place them at higher-level positions. Compared to the CSEs that recruits bureaucrats at the entry level and are open to a wide range of applicants, the PSS programs share many similarities with corporate management trainee programs and represent a dramatically elitist approach. During the last decade, the PSS programs have been adopted by almost all provinces and hundreds of prefecture-level governments. Moreover, over 10% of graduates across China’s top universities joined the civil service via PSS programs via PSS programs in 2021.

Nevertheless, we know very little about the PSS programs, and more importantly, why and how the Chinese Communist Party copied corporate-style human resource programs. Why have the PSS programs become so popular, both from the demand and supply sides, during such a short period of time? What are the implications of PSS programs? Based on close examinations of archival sources and semi-structured interviews with dozens of PSS participants, this paper argues that PSS programs help the Chinese bureaucracy expedite bureaucrats’ upward career mobility by promising an express lane for a selective group. While the Chinese bureaucracy exhibits dozens of administrative steps, seniority-based promotions to each administrative level often need to follow bureaucratic rules and are also highly restricted by age limits. As a result, bureaucrats recruited through CSEs need to overcome several hurdles to reach senior offices, and the supply of younger, senior officials has been under chronical shortage across Chinese provinces. In order to meet quota of staffing younger officials for senior positions, an increasing number of Chinese provinces have been incentivized to implement PSS programs. The increasing popularity of PSS programs among top university graduates is contributed by the diminishing labor market and studying abroad opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the decreasing payoffs of private sector employment and living in mega cities. Although remote provinces, cities, and counties have attracted young talents through the PSS programs, the novel program may also create unintended consequences, such as increasing factionalism, biases against women, and elitist biases in policy making. While the early participants of PSS programs have received promised early-stage promotions, the dramatic expansion of PSS programs casts doubt on whether the express lane will be sustainable over the long term.

Author

• Fengming Lu, Australian National University