No need to worry about civil servants quitting

Candidates review before the civil servant recruitment exam of Jiangsu Province at Nanjing Forestry University in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu province, March 22, 2015. More than 190,000 candidates here will compete for 5,872 positions this year. [Photo by Liu Jianhua/Xinhua]

It has proved somewhat sensational when a job search website released a survey revealing that the number of civil servants who quit their jobs after Spring Festival was 30 percent more than after the holiday last year.

However, the website has not revealed how many government employees quit their jobs after Spring Festival this year or last year. So it is too early to reach the conclusion that an increasing number of civil servants are leaving for other jobs. In fact, this is highly unlikely, since they still enjoy better working conditions and have more privileges than their counterparts in private enterprises.

It is definitely true that the intensified fight against corruption has greatly squeezed the room for government employees to acquire extra income. Most civil servants will now think twice before trading their power for personal gains, even if they have such a chance, as the risk of being caught is much higher than before.

It is also true they are under more pressure to provide better service to the public, as both the central and local governments are tightening their supervision over how civil servants use their power.

In such circumstances, it is natural that some may want to quit.

But if anything, it is not a bad thing that a government employee who is not in the job to serve the public decides to quit. If they apply for and sit the exams for a government position simply because of the attraction of the possibility of rent-seeking, the dream of being able to climb up the hierarchy or the stability of positions in a government, then they should not be civil servants.

We believe that with the intensifying crackdown on corruption and the tightened supervision over the use of power, the opportunities for rent-seeking will continue to be considerably reduced in the years to come, and those who joined the ranks of government employees with the hope of making a fortune by abusing power in their own interests may feel that they made the wrong choice. It is good for such people to quit as civil servants.

And in saying this, we should bear in mind there are always those who would value a job as a government employee and who would be eager to do a better job. So there is no need to worry about civil servants being in short supply.