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.
| 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:
| 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.