Why brains are joining the brawn(2)

Fierce competition

Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the non-governmental research group 21st Century Education Research Institute, is not surprised by this trend. "It's an outcome of the fierce competition in the job market in recent years. Graduates find it difficult to find a job and grab whatever opportunity exists, regardless of whether they really like it or not."

This year has been described as the hardest year yet to find a job in China with 6.99 million college graduates flooding into the job market. This is the largest number of graduates ever but the number of jobs available has dropped by 10 to 15 percent over the previous year. According to 51job.com, a job hunting website, an average new graduate will send out at least 50 resumes in the hunt for work this year.

The increasing popularity of work as a chengguan officer is also due to the relatively high pay, pensions and other benefits they enjoy. Although chengguan officers are not technically public servants, since 2011 they have enjoyed the same salary packages as public servants and are officially personnel of government-affiliated institutions - known locally as a "golden rice bowl." The annual income of an entry-level chengguan officer ranges from 60,000 yuan ($9,785) to 80,000 yuan.

Xiong believes another reason for the influx of master's graduates to the chengguan is that some postgraduate degrees are no longer regarded as being as valuable as they once were. "In the past, college graduates unable to find a job were encouraged to take postgraduate exams to avoid the competitive job market. Now, two to three years later, they have graduated and the same problem emerges again."

Although college graduates working as butchers and dustmen have been widely reported in the national media, the public seems to find it particularly hard to accept the fact that postgraduates are becoming chengguan officers - formerly notorious for beating up street vendors and burning homes in compulsory relocation projects.

Shanghai has seen many incidents involving chengguan officers in recent years. In 2009, chengguan officers arrested Sun Zhongjie, a van driver, in Pudong New Area. A plainclothes officer had asked the van driver for a lift and then, when he agreed, other officers swarmed over the van, arrested the driver, charged him with operating an illegal taxi and seized his van.

In protest later Sun cut his finger off and the affair gained widespread media attention. Although the chengguan issued a statement denying entrapment, within a few days the municipal government admitted there had been entrapment and the driver was given his van back and compensated.

In 2011, five chengguan officers in Minhang district were arrested and sentenced to three to five and a half years in jail for beating up an unlicensed street vendor leaving him paralyzed.

An unconsidered move

Many people think that graduates becoming chengguan officers is a bad or unconsidered career move and a waste of time. "Are chengguan officers trying to revamp their image? Or are our graduates too depraved today?" Weibo user Longchenzi demanded.

"China's youngsters are cramming into the system. All they want is to become part of the government. I am worried about the future of our country," another netizen, Buffet's Disciple, wrote on Weibo.

Xiong Wenzhao, a law professor at the Minzu University of China and vice president of China's Urban Management Association, doesn't agree.

"People who oppose the employment of well-educated chengguan officers are self-contradictory. On one hand, they hope that the qualifications required for chengguan officers are higher so that they can be legally literate; on the other hand, when well-educated people are hired as chengguan, they think they're unprincipled. This lack of understanding has become the biggest difficulty for chengguan officers carrying out their duties," Xiong said.

He believed that the notoriety earned by chengguan is in part due to its local status. "Unlike the local police force, for example, which is administered by China's Ministry of Public Security, the city management and law enforcement bureau is a local body and does not enjoy support from the central government. That's why the officers have been prone to negative media coverage in China."

Another reason is that chengguan often have to deal directly with the disadvantaged groups of the city - the street vendors, beggars and vagrants. This high-profile work has often involved controversy.

"But patrolling the streets and cracking down on unlicensed street vendors is just one of a multitude of the tasks undertaken by the urban management officers," Xiong Wenzhao said. "They also have to deal with illegal buildings which often involves confronting these disadvantaged groups."

Xiong Wenzhao insists that chengguan is not solely a Chinese law enforcement system. In common law countries similar duties are performed by the police or sheriffs and in other countries there are officials who enforce municipal by-laws like littering and illegal parking.

The chengguan system in China can be traced back to 1996, when the Law of the People's Republic of China on Administrative Penalty legitimized local governments' right to "have an administrative organ exercise other administrative organs' powers of administrative penalties." Previously, law enforcement in public areas was a duty shared by various local administrations.

In Shanghai in 2000 chengguan teams were trialed in several districts and later expanded to cover the entire city.