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Dannie Peng

An organised ring that helped people in the central Chinese province of Henan cheat their way to government-sponsored jobs has been exposed.
An official investigation concluded that a province-wide exam held to fill the posts last month had been compromised by “large-scale, organised cheating” with suspects paying officials overseeing the exam to obtain test papers and the correct answers in advance, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday.
The case was the latest in a string of similar crimes as graduates face increasingly fierce competition to get jobs in the civil service or other government-sponsored posts amid faltering economic growth.
The jobs at stake were part of an initiative to combat youth employment by creating temporary grass-roots posts in fields such as education, agriculture, healthcare and rural revitalisation. In Henan alone, more than 3,000 such positions were available.
Although they are not civil service jobs, those filling the posts will receive stipends from the local authorities.
When the results of the exam were released, they were greeted with widespread scepticism because dozens of successful candidates received significantly higher marks than their competitors.
Some of the successful candidates scored more than 80 points out of 100, while the second-placed candidates were languishing in the 60s.
Suspicion deepened when it emerged that in some cases only one or two candidates had achieved such high grades – exactly the number needed to fill the posts in question.
Local police said they had detained the main members of the cheating ring, while the provincial authorities said the exam results had been voided.
Affected candidates will receive a financial subsidy, while a new exam will be held later this month.


Unlike civil service roles in China – frequently referred to as “iron rice bowls” due to their exceptional job security and benefits such as housing subsidies and medical coverage – these rural posts offer no such entitlements.
But these two-year postings are still desirable for many graduates as successful candidates will be given preferential treatment when sitting the civil service entrance exam after the end of their term.
The fierce competition to fill these posts also highlights the pressures facing young Chinese people at the start of their working lives. Last year more than 12 million new graduates entered the job market at a time of high youth unemployment and slowing economic growth.
The Henan cheating case is the latest in a string of similar cases.
Earlier this week CCTV reported that the vice-principal at a special education school in Leizhou in Guangdong had allegedly offered the top scoring candidate in a teacher recruitment exam incentives to drop out of the selection process.
Earlier this year, a bizarre case became a national talking point after it emerged that fraudsters had been trying to scare off competitors in a civil service exam by using people’s personal data to register hundreds of “ghost” candidates to artificially inflate the numbers competing for positions.


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Candidates for postings in Henan were found to have paid officials for an advance look at the questions in an entrance exam


Candidates for postings in Henan were found to have paid officials for an advance look at the questions in an entrance exam.


CCTV

Chinese exam fraud ring helped candidates cheat their way to government-funded jobs

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Candidates for postings in Henan were found to have paid officials for an advance look at the questions in an entrance exam

Candidates for postings in Henan were found to have paid officials for an advance look at the questions in an entrance exam