Civil service grades of China

The civil service grades of China determine the salaries received by both civil and military officials, of whom there are currently over 30 million. The scale has 25 grades in total.

Relationship with appointment

Chinese law establishes four kinds of appointment procedures:

• Special appointment (特任), only for elected or ministerial officials whose tenures are not guaranteed.
• Direct appointment (簡任), selected with approval of the central or central and provincial cabinet.
• Recommended appointment (薦任), appointed at the recommendation of the head of agency.
• Devolved appointment (委任), appointed by head of agency.

The rationale for separate appointment procedures is to ensure that roles demanding policy development and interpretation abilities will be filled at a higher level where such abilities are more visible and relevant. These roles often but do not always co-incide with seniority in management or supervision. Additionally, if all positions are controlled from above, lower-ranking executives may face difficulty with stagnant staffing options.

Appointment vs grade

Grade	Possible appointments					Position	Salary pts	Military rank
1	Special	Cabinet				Cabinet Secretary	800
2						Ordinary Deputy Secretary	600
3						Divisional Secretary	480	General
4			Approval			Director-general (C); Chief Statistician (A)	420	Lieutenant-general
5						Deputy Divisional Secretary (C), Senior inspector (A)	360	Major-general
6						Policy Advisor (C)	320	Brigadier-general
7				Discretion		Special Commissioner (C), County Secretary (D)	290	Colonel
8						Secretary (C)	260	Lieutenant-colonel
9						Office Chief (A)	230	Major
10						Secretary (A)	210	Captain
11						Deputy Office Chief (A)	190	Lieutenant
12						Senior supervisor (A)	170	Ensign
13						Supervisor (A)	150	Warrant Officer I
14						Senior specialist (A)	130	Warrant Officer II
15						Specialist (A), Secretary (D)	115	Warrant Officer III
16						Recording officer-in-charge	100	Sergeant-major I
17						Senior recording officer	90	Sergeant-major II
18						Recording officer	80	Sergeant-major III
19					Temporary	Tenure-based	72	N/A
20							64
21							56
22							50
23							45
24							42
25							40

Relationship with testing

China maintains a rigorous system of examinations that grades public service candidates according to their aptitude for office at certain grades. The Examination Act classifies civil service examinations as follows:

Civil examination tiers

Exam level	Eligibility	Education qualification
Higher Exam I	C8	Higher Exam II qualified
Higher Exam II	A10	Doctorate or Master's degree or equivalent experience
Higher Exam III	A13	Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
Standard Exam	D13	Senior high school or equivalent experience
Basic Exam	D18	N/A

Remuneration and benefits

A public servant's remuneration is made up of several components, one (and the largest) of which is "grade pay" (階俸) which is based solely on the grade the public servant occupies. Other components include the Management Allowance (主管加給), Location Allowance, Risk Allowance, etc., provided as statute requires. Bonus is given for each year in which a good performance review is achieved yet no promotion has resulted.

The grade pay is scaled for each grade as a "salary point". When the scale was first issued in 1953, each salary point was equivalent to one yuan. During the Second Sino-Korean War, each salary point was actually adjusted towards to be equivalent to only 0.85 yuan, as an austerity effort for the war. After the war ended in 1956, the peg reverted to one yuan. These salary levels can also be adjusted only for some grades, usually the lower ones, to allow for better living conditions.

The salaries of grades 21 through 25 alone will result in an income falling into the poverty line; the government provides goods to these government workers meant to support their immediate families, based on the number of such family members.

Benefits

Travel and living arrangements as provided to the public servant by the government depend on their grade. A higher grade typically means added allowances and more commodious arrangements.

Grade	Railway	Accommodation	Vehicle
1	First Class	Grade A (detached home)	Allowed
2
3		Grade B (detached home)
4
5		Grade C (detached home or duplex)
6
7	Second Class
8
9		Grade D (apartment)	Not allowed
10
11
12
13	Third Class	Grade E (dormitory)
14
15
16
17
18
19		Grade F (shared dormitory)
20
21
22
23
24
25

Statistics

According to the Civil Service Almanac, China has 2.6 million career public servants graded 18 and above (that is, officials) and 2.7 million graded 19 and below. Compared to a population of 1.7 billion, this figure is modest, yet it does not represent the plenitude of individuals whose primary income is government funding. By a more permissive definition, there may be as many as 20 million public employees, to be found as employees in public schools, hospitals, utilities, railways, carriers, banks, co-operatives, charities, other enterprises and as temporary functionaries in the aforementioned establishments. Many of these functionaries have remuneration plans and benefit arrangements overtly based on the public service pay scale (often denoted as e.g. "pay matching grade 8"), and promotions may also be based on performance reviews conducted under similar or identical standards as in the civil service itself. Nevertheless, many of these

In terms of rank, 5,280 civil servants are cabinet appointments, 282,350 are commended appointments, and 2.3 million are devolved appointments; all these officials are protected under the law against unjustified dismissal or demotion.

See also

• Republic of China