An unprecedented number of 1.35 million people will take a nationwide civil servant exam in China on Nov. 29. The business in training for the exam has become a huge industry.

Take a normal graduate, for example: Two reference books are necessary, which will cost about 100 yuan. Buying inexpensive internet training programs will cost at least 1,000 yuan. Interview guidance programs further cost about 2,000 yuan. In other words, the total cost will be 4.2 billion yuan for 1.35 million examinees.

Searching for training institutions for the civil servant exam on the Baidu search engine will uncover roughly 1 million pages, most of them being introductions or advertisements for all kinds of such training institutions. The huge business opportunity definitely does attract these institutions. Although there are no officially appointed reference books or training facilities, the ripple effect caused by the self-initiated behaviors of the market just can’t be controlled in a short amount of time.

China has been organizing civil servant recruitment examinations every year since 1994.

Those who invented this way of public admittance and examination would never have thought that it would give birth to such a huge training market.