A survey of national Public Service appointments in China has found they do not always offer equal opportunities to qualified job seekers.

Conducted by the Constitutionalism Research Institute of China University of Political Science and Law, the survey showed that while they never publicly acknowledge any form of discrimination, PS employers in China didn’t hesitate to hide their preferences on age, gender, education and state of health.

Official statistics showed that more than two million eligible candidates sought 15,290 job vacancies in national-level Public Service offices in 2011.

The survey scrutinised 9,762 employment posts, including those from the Cabinet Departments and State judicial organs, in 2011.

Public Service recruitment rules restrict eligible candidates to Chinese nationals aged from 18 to 35, which the survey defines as discrimination, saying that “no evidence suggests people aged above 35 cannot be competent enough to become Civil Servants”.

Meanwhile, vacancies in which successful candidates were allegedly recruited based on gender increased from 1,203 in 2010 to 1,519, accounting for 9.9 per cent of the total number in 2011, the survey said.

“These vacancies were mostly for males only, or the job descriptions explicitly announced that males should register for them,” the survey said.

The survey also found that some employers disqualified either AIDS patients or HIV carriers.

One of the co-authors of the survey, Liu Xiaonan said Government Departments and public institutions at the State level should have zero tolerance for discrimination in employment and take the lead in rooting it out.

For more on international age discrimination, go to our international section.

Article from PS News