Officials gathered in Beijing yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of the issuing of a regulation which introduced an examination system to recruit civil servants.

Statistics from the Ministry of Personnel show that a total of 2.4 million people has already registered to take the exam, with 700,000 being selected as public servants for all levels of government departments.

A special guest at the celebration in the Great Hall of the People was Li Wumin, a peasant from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, for whom May 12, 1996 will be a memorable day when he attended the civil servant exam and he became a public servant three months later.

Before that, the 36-year-old said he was so perplexed that he had been laid off for four times after working as a temporary worker for 10 years at the township government of Zu'an in Huxian County.

Like Li, who now serves as vice-head of the Ganhe Town in Huxian County, more than 5,000 peasants were recruited into the civil service system since China began to try to employ civil servants via examinations 10 years ago.

Apart from farmers, about 150,000 people from State-owned enterprises, non-State enterprises, social institutions and job seekers have also been employed as civil servants through the exams.

Based on the principle of "transparency, fairness, competition and merit," the examination system has been successful in reforming China's personnel system, officials said.

At the same time, more than 15,000 public servants had been sacked and another 290,000 resigned from official employment positions for reasons such as incompetence or malpractice during 1996-2002, said Minister of Personnel Zhang Bailin yesterday, who is also the vice-head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

All these adjustments occurred after the nation decided to reform its administrative personnel system to the needs of socialist market economy, Zhang said.

On August 14, 1993, the State Council published the Provisional Regulations on Civil Servants, which came into force on October 1 that year, he said.

After 10 years' development, Zhang said the regulation system of the civil service has taken shape, which is crucial to the establishment and promotion of public service system as well to the demand of rule of law in the civil servant system.

He disclosed that central government departments and their subsidiary units have consecutively conducted open recruitment campaigns during the past nine years, hiring 23,000 public servants.

Besides, all the 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions on the Chinese mainland have adopted the civil service exams, said the minister.

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