The making of ‘exam ronins’: young people’s desire for public service jobs in China

ABSTRACT

Public service positions are increasingly sought after by university graduates in China, especially in the post COVID-19 era. Drawing on Gramsci’s hegemonic power, this article analyses the ‘exam ronin’ phenomenon among young Chinese people, a term used to describe those who chronically remove themselves from the labour market to prepare for civil service exams. The findings reveal a more nuanced and complex picture than previous studies indicated regarding the reasons why young people choose civil service jobs. The study found that the participants’ decisions to work towards securing civil service jobs were the result of constrained career options and an absence of vocational guidance. In addition, their choice-making processes were shown to be influenced by heightened parental ambition and Confucian societal sentiment in relation to civil servants. The young people in this study perceived the exam-based recruitment system as fair and meritocratic, and viewed exam success as indicating ‘people of higher quality’. The participants’ ‘horizons for action’, i.e. the arena within which actions can be taken and decisions made, appear to have been shaped by their strong attachment to the party-state.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service jobs
• young people
• Confucian heritage
• school-to-work transition
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 “Iron rice bowl” refers to the job assignment system that comes with a lifetime guarantee of a steady salary and the benefits of a socialist welfare package (Hoffman, 2006, p. 551).

2 Bianzhi is the authorised number of personnel (the number of established posts) in a party or government administrative organ (jiguan), a government service organisation (shiye danwei) or a state-owned enterprise (qiye) (Brødsgaard, 2002). By controlling Bianzhi, the party-state is able to exercise control over the entire administrative apparatus from the central to local level. The benefit for workers of having a Bianzhi is that it affords them “iron rice bowl” privileges, i.e., the lifetime guarantee of a steady salary and the benefits of a socialist welfare package (Hoffman, 2006). However, employees with Bianzhi can neither change jobs nor gain rapid promotion or a salary increase, as was the case in the planned economy.

3 These exams include the provincial/national civil servant exams and exams to apply for jobs at various governmental departments.

4 The social class classification used in this study follows the work of Lu (2004), which originated from the social-cultural context of contemporary China.

5 Suzhi may be glossed as the human qualities involved in the processes of governing contemporary China (Kipnis, 2007).