The Chinese government intends to upgrade governance by training its officials.

Training has become an integral part of the working life of Chinese officials in recent years. The Chinese government has never before attached so much importance to improving the personal quality of its officials, and specialized training schemes seem the best means to do so.

The Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee produced an ambitious cadre training plan in late 2002: as from 2003, it would send 500 provincial/ministerial officials (the first echelon below the central leadership of the Chinese officialdom pyramid), 8,800 prefectural/bureau-level officials (the second echelon, including heads of jurisdiction divisions or departments directly under the province, and heads of departments directly under a ministry or commission), and 100,000 county/departmental-level officials (the third echelon, including top leaders of counties/cities /departments directly under a prefectural-level jurisdiction division and heads of departments directly under a bureau-level department) to school each year. The goal was to refresh the administration skills of CPC and government officials at and above the third echelon within five years.

Many doubted the feasibility of such a gigantic program, expecting it to peter out and be quietly shelved. Statistics, however, prove that 20 million or so CPC and government officials from around China have since attended full-time training sessions.

The CPC Central Committee published the Operational Regulations on the Education and Training of Cadres on March 29, 2006. This marked the first time that the CPC had ever decreed systematic rules and policies concerning cadre education and training. Seven months later, on October 23, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee convened to discuss the National Cadres’ Education and Training Plan (2006-2010). General Secretary Hu Jintao, known as a doer rather than a mere talker, chaired the meeting and stated, “In the coming five years, we should undertake cadre training on a large scale and improve cadre quality by a large margin; we should also give priority to enhancing the quality of training.”

“Cadre quality” is no longer confined to “political consciousness” -- the level of ideological identification with the political ideas of the CPC -- as was previously the case. In the past, it was “political quality” that dominated evaluations of Chinese cadres. In the WTO era, however, political consciousness alone is insufficient to deal effectively with various public management and economic development problems that occur. Overall training is the solution.

Since the majority of Chinese government officials are CPC members, the central and local CPC schools -- whose defined task is to train CPC cadres -- have joined the national and local schools of administration in undertaking the program’s domestic training, while a number of universities in the United States, Europe and Singapore are commissioned to provide training abroad. Overseas training of Chinese officials is consequently a hot topic both at home and abroad. Professor Mao Shoulong of the Renmin University of China interprets this approach as “widening the horizons of Chinese officials.”

China will, in the space of three to five years, train a pool of human talent to be conversant in international developments, practices and the game rules of its respective areas of expertise, making it adept in international communication, coordination and cooperation, according to the Ministry of Personnel plan. The expected result is an elite team of WTO rules-savvy public servants, including administrators, legal workers and negotiators.