If personal incomes, working conditions and future development
opportunities can be improved in underdeveloped regions, more and
more talents will be attracted to work there, says a signed article
in People's Daily. The following is an excerpt.
In the application process for the national civil servant test
of 2008, many positions attracted over 1,000 applicants - one of
these positions attracted 3,592 test-takers; but no applicants
showed interest in 59 positions in underdeveloped regions.
In another instance, almost 200 undergraduate students recently
competed for 45 places at the "rural education graduate" job fair
held at Henan Normal University. If enrolled, they can study free
of any test and charge for a master's degree in education, although
they must work in an assigned middle school of a poor county for
four years. It has such a great attraction that the number of
applicants increases year by year. According to statistics, the
number of university graduates choosing to work in the central and
western part of the nation increased by 550,000 this year. A key
reason is that the government has adopted a series of preferential
policies to encourage them to work in these regions and this has
achieved some positive results.
For example, those graduates who are willing to work in the
western rural regions can get loans for education and the
government will pay these loans for them.
But working in a rural area, rather than in cities, not only
means different living and working conditions, salaries and social
status, but different chances for future development. That is why
some people would rather drift in a city than work as a civil
servant in underdeveloped areas.
At present, some urban primary and middle schools have hundreds
of millions of yuan spent on them while rural schools are short of
money. Teachers in rural areas only earn several hundred yuan a
month, 10 times less than the salaries earned by their urban
counterparts, even though they teach the same subjects.
The allocation of public resources should become more balanced
and tilted more toward those regions that need the resources
most.
(China Daily December 29, 2007)