According to reports from Xinhua News Agency, with the surge of corruption scandals involving senior government officials over the past year, enhancing the quality of civil servants has been earmarked as an urgent necessity by Central Government.

Interaction

"We not only want to be instructed by Central Government on how to build a new countryside, we also want to inform Central Government of the problems we meet in the process," said a trainee on the course from a central province. Another official from eastern Jiangsu Province added, "As far as I am concerned, the fundamental problem local governments face in developing the countryside is ignoring Central Government's policies of building a new socialist countryside."

Criticism and suggestions from the course participants is to be compiled into briefings that will be given to state leaders together with information on how far Central Government policies to build a socialist countryside have progressed in each region.

"Collecting this material will be helpful in providing a rounded perspective on the problems that exist in China's countryside and will make Central Government leaders wiser about the situation in rural areas," said a senior official in charge of the training program.

The program features top-level attention to county-level officials, something that should also make communication between Central Government and local government bodies smoother.

Of course, one or two training courses are not enough to transform China's rural areas into a new utopia, but ongoing training combined with greater communication about the problems faced by countryside officials should help.

Concerns

The new round of civil servant training focuses on updating their knowledge about new trends in social and economic development and government work. The training courses are intended partly to inform about the reasons behind Central Government policies, and partly to educate local officials how to better manage their regions. To encourage civil servants to participate in training, a promotion scheme will be established based on the principle of "no posting or promotion before training." Under the scheme, no new civil servant will be posted until he or she passes an exam at the end of the training course. Training records and study archives will also be kept as an important basis for the future evaluation and promotion of civil servants.

This new round of civil servant training by the Central Government started in 2000, but back then only senior government officials qualified for the courses. In the ensuing six years, the Chinese Government had launched a series of new policies on civil servant training and tried to integrate training into the civil servant career path.

The official newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the People's Daily, published an editorial on the unprecedented civil servant training campaign, which said, "The purpose of the campaign is to improve the participants' capacity to build a well-off harmonious socialist society, and also to enhance the Communist Party's governance capacity and leadership role."

Professor Wang Guixiu from the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC gave a prudent comment on the new initiative. "I want to maintain a reserved attitude to the effects of the training. As far as I am concerned, the essential measure to enhance governance ability for governments at all levels lies in promoting political reforms to limit and supervise government power, so as to enforce governance by law," Wang told the Beijing Review.