国内英语新闻:China to launch large-scale public selections of leading officials

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) - The Municipal Party School in Suzhou City, south China's Jiangsu Province, received a special group of "students" Friday morning for a class on current economic development and future trend.

The 46 "students," all freshly-appointed officials of deputy departmental level or departmental level from northeast China's Jilin Province, would soon return home to take office after a two-day visit to local renowned enterprises.

They were survivors of one of the nation's public selection campaigns for leading officials this year.

In China's northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, meanwhile, the fiercest-ever competition just entered its final phase. Out of 1134 candidates, only 103 contenders were left after the primary selection - using written exams and interviews, to head for the final 34 departmental level posts.

The selection campaigns starting throughout the nation this year were uNPRecedented in scale and in the number of posts offered, with nearly 400 above deputy departmental level positions open to the public in provinces of Beijing, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Hunan, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Hainan, Guizhou, Jilin, Shandong and Xinjiang.

The move displayed the advantage of the public selection system for leading cadres (PSSLC), said Zhuang Yan, deputy head of the provincial Organization Department in Jilin.

He said the open selection created a stage for those competent persons, compared with the traditional way to appoint mid-to-top officials only by orders.

The province had broken down the identity restrictions by holding out an olive branch to managers from large enterprises, listed companies and financial institutes, as well as so-called "sea turtles," Chinese returnees from overseas.

This sent 1,889 candidates from all parts of China, except Hong Kong, Macao and Tibetan Autonomous Region, to the province's written tests.

"It is unimaginable in the past. Anyone eligible for the registration requirements can attend the departmental level selection exams," said 40-year-old Shen Desheng, a former municipal taxation bureau head and now the newly-appointed deputy head of the provincial taxation bureau in Jilin.