A record number of people are set to take China’s notoriously tough national civil service examination this weekend, reflecting the growing desire of Chinese workers to seek employment in the public sector rather than the private sector.
Around 37 lakh people have registered for the tests on Saturday and Sunday, which will be the first after the government raised the age limit for some posts. For general candidates, the age limit has been increased from 35 to 38, while for those with postgraduate degree, the age limit has been increased from 40 to 43.
Millions of applicants will compete for 38,100 civil service vacancies across the country, which equates to an average of 97 people per job.
Some jobs are especially in demand. According to data published in Chinese media, the vacancy for which the most applicants came was the role of an immigration officer in Ruili, a city in the southwestern Yunnan province bordering Myanmar. 6,470 people have been given approval to apply for one job.
Beijing announced in October that the age limit for civil service exams would be raised in line with China’s recent increase in the retirement age.
China’s aging population and shrinking pension budget have forced consideration of its relatively low retirement age. Last year, the government approved a plan to gradually raise the retirement age for the first time since the 1950s. The statutory retirement age for women will increase from 50 to 55 years in blue-collar jobs and from 55 to 58 years for women in white-collar jobs. The retirement age for men will increase from 60 to 63.
Although public sector jobs are generally low-paying – and in recent years some debt-ridden local authorities have struggled to pay salaries – demand for job security is increasing in an increasingly challenging economy. Reminiscent of the Maoist era, civil service jobs are known to provide an “iron rice bowl” – an idiom that refers to having a job throughout life.
In the years of China’s reform and opening-up, it was said to be steeped in the risks and rewards of commercial enterprises. xiahai, Or “jumping into the sea”. now people talk Shangan, or “landing ashore”, to describe successfully passing examinations in a stable public sector.
“The occupational structure of China’s job market has clearly shifted over the past decade from high-wage, high-skill jobs in manufacturing and construction to low-wage, low-skill jobs in the gig and informal sectors. In the latter, benefits and pensions are absent or uncertain, and formal contractual obligations are weak,” said George Magnus, research fellow at the University of Oxford’s China Centre. “With 12 million graduates coming into the market every year…it is not difficult to understand the preference for secure public sector jobs.”
China’s unemployment rate is 5.1% for the general workforce, and 17.3% for 16 to 24-year-olds, excluding college students. In 2023 the government temporarily stopped publishing youth unemployment figures, which had reached a record 21.3%, resuming publication a few months later with a new methodology that did not include students.
After the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt China’s economy after the trade war and weak consumer demand, many young people prefer to “lie in”, that is, do nothing, rather than seek employment in jobs that they feel do not match their level of education or do not provide enough benefits. And next year, China is bracing itself for a record 12.7 million graduates.
Raising the age limit for the exams has been generally welcomed, particularly because it could help workers avoid the well-documented “35 year old curse”, where companies refuse to hire people over the age of 30.
But some have also talked about the challenges of preparing for the exams while caring for young families, a balance that new graduates are less likely to worry about.
The Civil Services Examination is extremely tough, consisting of questions from law, physics, biology, politics and logic. Since last year, there has also been a section on political theory, which “focuses on candidates’ ability to analyze and solve problems using innovative principles of the Party”, according to an official announcement. Last year’s questions covered Xi Jinping’s major speeches and Communist Party plenums over the past 12 months.
A 35-year-old mom shares her daily routine on Xiaohongshu to prepare for this year’s tests. This included starting before dawn and cramming in study sessions around taking care of the kids, resulting in four to five hours of sleep a night. “Days are for PowerPoint presentations, nights are for formulas and picture books, waking up at 4 a.m. is exam preparation time”.
Additional research by Lillian Yang
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