China pvt sector ‘uncertainty’ pushing youth to civil service

Agencies Sick of working long hours for average pay, Dong Liang is looking to throw in his job at a small tech company in Shenzhen for work with China’s ci...

AgenciesSick of working long hours for average pay, Dong Liang is looking to throw in his job at a small tech company in Shenzhen for work with China’s civil service.The 24-year-old from Huizhou city in Guangdong province is one of millions of young Chinese desperate to find steady work in a time of deep economic uncertainty following the coronavirus pandemic.Though he has been employed in China’s fast-growing tech sector since he graduated in 2018, China’s vast bureaucracy holds an irresistible allure, promising a stable career for life and a host of benefits.“I have been working a lot of overtime in the past two years and the tech company’s future is so uncertain,” he said a day before an interview for a provincial civil service job.“Every workmate beyond 35 likes talks about their concern over job losses in Shenzhen – it’s just exhausting.”China’s overall job market has improved steadily as the economy has rebounded from the worst of the pandemic early last year, but young people, particularly fresh graduates from universities, are still having a hard time finding steady employment.As a result, a new wave of young Chinese talent is spurning the private sector and settling for jobs with the nation’s civil service. Their enthusiasm for the public sector has only grown in recent months after last year’s economic downturn, as well as the government’s decision to delay the retirement age and the high-profile regulatory difficulties of some private businesses.More than 1.58 million candidates registered for China’s national civil service exam this year, up sharply from 1.05 million in 2009 and 125,000 in 2003. They will compete for about 25,700 jobs at ministries and state agencies, putting the average chance of landing a government job at about one in 61.If provincial and municipal government exams are included, there are up to 9 million candidates – most of whom are fresh graduates – vying for civil service jobs each year, said Li Dongjie, who sees a growing market for his Dongliang civil servant training centre in Shenzhen.Li’s ambitious plan is to build a full civil service employment service chain, from exam training to headhunting services for top government jobs.The 36 year old is looking for investors, predicting a 20-person team could achieve more than 30 million yuan (US$4.6 million) in annual revenues in Shenzhen alone.“Authorities’ demand and budgets for recruiting talent are higher than in previous years,” Li said. “The attraction of a civil service career is also unprecedentedly high among young people.“If a young person’s stereotype of a civil service position was a stable but dull, low-income job five to 10 years ago, obvious changes have taken place in the past five years, whether it is because of changes in China’s political and economic atmosphere or public concern about China’s rapid ageing.”New Chinese graduates are also more patriotic and willing to support Communist Party philosophy than the previous two generations, he added.In many cases, there is a simple financial calculation too – the incomes of civil servants are normally far superior to those offered by private companies.Dong said if he were successful in securing a junior officer post at a town-level government in Huizhou city in the Greater Bay Area, he could earn up to 14,000 yuan (US$2,200) a month, plus benefits.By contrast, workers who graduated with computer science degrees in 2019 earned the highest income among all professions, with an average monthly salary of 6,858 yuan, according to the Yuekai Securities Research Institute.A principal staff member in a district-level department in Shenzhen could earn an annual income of more than 300,000 yuan, Li said.The growth of a civil service support industry in recent years reflects the changing job tastes of young Chinese, who are now more willing to look away from the private sector.The trend has also minted a new class of Chinese education entrepreneurs. Since 2019, Li Yongxin, co-founder and chairman of civil service exam training firm Offcn Education Technology, has been the richest person in China’s education sector, according to the Hurun China Rich List. He has topped the list with a net worth of US$13 billion after building an empire on helping graduates understand what it takes to work for the government.Earlier business leaders like Yu Minhong, the founder of English-language training giant New Oriental Education and Technology Group, tapped demand in the early 2000s for English education that was considered critical for young Chinese looking for a job with the government or foreign firms.Making money in China’s education sector has gone through a major transformation in recent years, according to Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of Hurun Report.