Two civil servants broke tradition by gaining important government positions without taking a grueling exam or accumulating years of civil service experience.

The employees, both senior computer technicians, have commenced their controversial personal contracts with the Jilin provincial government.

Zhang Ming and Li Wenyin will have been appointed senior network manager and the chief engineer respectively for the Jilin Police Information Network until 2006.

The pair have broken China's traditional civil service employment system, which almost guarantees a job for life, except in cases of gross incompetence.

The Jilin provincial government advertised for skilled network personnel last June.

The advertisement sparked a controversy around the country as all government employees, until then, had years of experience as civil servants and passed difficult exams.

"When the ad was publicized, the phone in my office rang off the hook with complaints," said Pei Zhanrong, an official with the provincial personnel department.

But at least one provincial government official defended the contracts: "The Chinese governments must not exclude anyone from consideration. We need talented individuals. That is the most important thing, especially now that China is a member of the World Trade Organization.

He said the government needs an alternative to the civil service system now in place.

But some civil servants criticize the new contracts, saying they waste valuable talent already in existence -- talent that includes people with civil service experience.

They claim the standards set by the Jilin provincial government for special employees are much higher than those for general civil servants.

Chosen from among dozens of candidates, Zhang, 33, has a master's degree from the Shenyang Computer Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while 50-year-old Li is a former professor from the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Jilin University.

They will each earn 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) a year, about eight times the average civil servant's pay in Jilin.

Zhang, who had been paid more while working for Compaq in Shenyang, said, "It is a demonstration of the government's determination to recruit talent."

Other local governments, including Wuxi, in Jiangsu Province, and Wuhan, provincial capital of Hubei, are considering breaking tradition and hiring personnel based on factors other than strict adherence to exam results.
 
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2004)