Xiao Jiang (pseudonym), a second year graduate student at Beijing International Studies University, starts her studies in the library every day at 8 a.m., and usually finishes at 10 p.m.
Jiang is one of the 3,620 candidates who have applied for a position offered to students by China's Foreign Ministry in the 2017 round of civil service recruitment.
In the spring of 2017,44 applicants will be offered this position after several rounds of written exams, oral exams and interviews.
"I am currently doing exercises for the recruitment like crazy," Jiang told the Global Times on Wednesday. "I don't think much about how many people have applied for this position. I just want to make an effort for it."
The registration process for the 2017 round of civil servant recruitment finished on Monday, with 2.1 million people applying for more than 27,000 vacancies in about 120 central departments and agencies, with around 1.48 million then judged to be qualified to take the first round of exams on November 27, according to Li Zhong, a spokesman from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, news portal chinanews.com reported on Thursday.
The 2017 round has the same number of job vacancies as in 2016. The numbers of newly recruited government workers rose from more than 16,000 in 2011 to 22,000 in 2015, said the Xinhua News Agency.
"Most Chinese people like stable and long-term work," an employee from the Foreign Ministry who got his job this year, told the Global Times on Wednesday on condition of anonymity, adding that she uses the foreign language she learned in college in her job.
"I feel very lucky to be enrolled through the civil servant recruitment," a man surnamed Ye who entered a government department in Beijing on his sixth attempt, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
According to Ye, he hoped to realize his own value by working for the government, and more importantly, he expected the position would provide him with a house in Beijing as some government bodies still own significant property portfolios in the capital which they can distribute to their employees.
"Even though I earn a little bit less than before," Ye said.
Top job
Among the 27,000 vacancies, the position of a receptionist for the central committee of the China Democratic League (CDL), a non-Communist political party with around 230,000 members, is the most competitive, with 9,837 applicants for one job.
The receptionist position, which will provide services to the daily affairs, conferences and activities of the CDL, has been listed in the recruitment for the first time in several years.
The CDL position only requires applicants to have a bachelor degree and two years of grassroots work experience, while many other vacancies ask candidates to either be a Communist Party of China member, a college-graduate village official or have at least five years of grassroots work experience.
"The most popular position changes every year, but in general they are the vacancies provided by the central government with relatively fewer limitations on the candidates' academic background and work experience," Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"Their opportunism showed that many candidates have a casual view of the civil servant recruitment. They just want to give it a shot," Xiong added.
In the 2016 round of recruitment, around 460,000 applicants did not show up when they exams were held, and that number was more than 500,000 in 2015.
"Anyway the knowledge I learned from preparing for the civil servant recruitment can also be used in other exams and interviews," a graduate student from the Communication University of China who has applied for a position with the Foreign Ministry, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Uneven demand
However, more than 200 vacancies lack any applications.
According to chinanews.com, those are mainly vacancies in remote regions such as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region or positions which require specialized skills. For instance, many of the neglected positions are related to meteorological departments.
The imbalances in applications reflect the serious problems facing fresh graduates looking for work, as most people want to work in certain industries in the country's top cities, making them intensely competitive.
"Some departments are concerned more about the candidates' degree or identity, but ignore their actual abilities," Xiong noted.
He added that government departments should make reasonable standards for applicants according to the real demands of the position.
"To change the status quo, not only should the discrimination of academic background be eliminated, but also the attractiveness of grassroots work needs to be enhanced by providing more space for applicants to develop their career," Xiong said.
