Too Many Public Servants in China?

Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard said it is not true that there are too many public officials in China. Indeed, he argued that internationally speaking, China has comparatively fewer public employees.

State-salaried people in China constitute 5.1 per cent of the total population and 8.6 of total employment. This is lower than Denmark's 14.9 and 29.9 per cents respectively.

Interestingly, among the developed countries, Korea has one of the lowest percentages of public sector employment as a percentage of total employment - 11.2 per cent in 2004.

Brodsgarrd noted that the impression of having too many public officials was mainly conveyed in speeches by government officials and scholarly publications.

He wrote: "Not only is the Chinese bureaucracy small, it is also plagued by a lack of qualified personnel. To be true, in recent years, the education and professional quality of government personnel has risen considerably, but there are still many problems such as the widespread misuse of academic degrees and titles. "

These include changing technical school and post-secondary school diplomas into college degrees or even doctoral degrees, and equating courses taken at Party Schools to professional diplomas or university degrees.

But clearly, authorities are aware of the problems, and have often stressed the need to build a contingent of qualified personnel so as to improve the state and the party's governing capacity.

After all, as Brodsgarrd pointed out, the Chinese leadership (pictured) has "learned its lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union and they know that improving the quality of public officials and strengthening the capacity of governing institutions is a sine qua non for continued party rule."