Civil Servant Recruitment in Xinjiang Favors Han Chinese

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) will hire 840 civil servants from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) through its 2006 recruitment exam, of whom 38 will be ethnic minorities and the remainder Han Chinese, according to materials posted June 26 on the XPCC's Personnel Testing Authority Web site. Ethnic minorities make up over 60 percent of the XUAR population, according to statistics cited in a 2003 Tianshan Net article. The positions available include 197 jobs with the public security police, 480 with the prison police, 37 in the court system, and 41 in the justice bureau, as well as positions at other offices within the XPCC.

According to a roster of open positions (available as a download from the Testing Authority Web site), most of the positions are reserved for ethnic Han Chinese. Of the remaining slots, 26 positions have been designated for Uighur men, 2 for Kazak men, and 1 for a Mongol man. In addition, six positions are available for Uighur or Kazak men, while three positions are open for Uighurs, Kazaks, or Kirgiz of either sex. Of these positions, 22 are with the public security police, 6 are with the prison police, 3 are in the court system, 4 are in the justice bureau, and 3 are in a land and natural resources branch office. According to an explanation of the rules governing the recruitment process, eligible candidates include school graduates who are XUAR permanent residents, residents of interior provinces who graduated from XUAR schools, university students in a Western Development Project volunteer program, and "all other people who meet the recruiting requirements." These recruiting requirements include upholding national and ethnic unity and resisting ethnic separatism and illegal religious activities.

The PRC government established the XPCC in 1954 as a means of settling demobilized soldiers and Han migrants to perform border defense functions and to support economic development. The government's White Paper on the History and Development of Xinjiang says that the ranks of the XPCC are now "a mosaic of people from 37 ethnic groups, including the Han, Uygur, Kazak, Hui, and Mongolian." It describes the XPCC as "a special social organization, which handles its own administrative and judicial affairs" but "in accordance with the laws and regulations of the state and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region." Article 4 of the PRC Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. Nonetheless, recent government hiring in the XUAR has favored ethnic Han Chinese.

For more information on conditions in the XUAR, see section III(a), China's Minorities and Government Implementation of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law, and Religious Freedom for China's Muslims in section III(d) of the 2005 CECC Annual Report.