Yesterday - almost 1 million people across China sat the country's civil service examination.

The number of test takers was down 60,000 on last year's turnout of 1.03 million, meaning that the 970,000 applicants who actually made it into the exam room (down from the 1.33 million who registered), faced better odds of actually landing a position in the national-level civil service than those who sat the exam in 2010.

This is the second year in a row that the number of applicants who sat the exam has fallen, the number of positions that applicants are competing for, however, has continued to increase.

According to today's Beijing News, there were about 18,000 vacancies on offer, or one 1 position for every 53 applicants - not the easiest of odds, but better than last year's ratio of 63.6:1.

Yesterday's written exam marked the end of this year's testing season.

Aside from sitting the exams, applicants for central government level positions were expected to have at least 2 years of "grass-roots" work experience.

Applicants for some of the positions - those that required either technical knowledge or special language skills - were required to sit more than one exam. For example, the more than 30,000 people who applied for positions with either the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) or the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), had to sit one test which included an essay component plus a section that tested their general administrative abilities, this was in addition to an earlier exam that ranked them according to their specialist knowledge.

The government office in charge of organizing the exams emphasized that the hiring of public servants is all about ensuring that the country's civil service is manned by qualified personnel and no consideration is given to the potential benefits of reducing unemployment. Media reports on the exam also state that the exam aims to be be fair and open and went on to quote official data about those who were eventually hired after last year's exam - 29.1 percent were from rural households, 15.9 percent were from what are classified as "worker" families and over 92 percent were from "grass-roots" ordinary families.

In another indication that competition among candidates to get their hands on "golden rice bowl" may have subsided a little this year, the position with the most applicants in this year's intake - a research position with a government department devoted to handling "nationality policy" - attracted 4,124 applicants. Last year, the most popular position attracted 4961 people.

Links and Sources
The Beijing News: 公务员局：国考降温
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