Pedestrians crowd a street in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province. Photo: CFP 

By all accounts Mou Yang is a hardworking and smart young woman, but people were still shocked to learn she had been elected by government officials to be the next mayor of a township in the city of Yidu, Hubei Province. What surprised them was her age: she’s only 25.

Mou is one of the many beneficiaries of a youth movement in Hubei’s bureaucracy that has been backed by an extensive training program and the result of an obvious need to bring young talent into leadership positions.

Yet the media and netizens are suspicious. They see the province’s affirmative action program targeting rising young stars as a chance for people with connections to jump ahead of others who may be more deserving of promotion. They worry the system that offers early promotion fails to pass the test of transparency and is far from a meritocracy.

Mou’s three promotions within 14 months prompted an investigation by the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily, which found that her career in government began just three years ago.

Over the last year she was the assistant office director of the Yidu Statistics Bureau, before being promoted to the Party Committee and deputy town chief of Honghuatao county. She held that job for eight months and was then appointed the deputy secretary of the Party committee and the county leader.

Mou’s meteoric rise through the ranks caused concern in part because of her tender age and lack of experience, and also because her promotions left other more experienced officials in her wake. Many had worked a dozen years in the hope of getting the kind of position Mou reached in just a few years on the job. 
Web users questioned Mou’s seamless rise up the political ladder, believing her promotions had more to do with her family background than her abilities. Mou’s father, Mou Shaozhu, is an inspector in Yichang Discipline Inspection Commission, which investigates fraud and abuse of power in government. Her mother retired from a local commercial bank, reported Xinhua.

Mou has defended her promotions saying her family had nothing to do with them, and that she never expected they would happen so quickly.

“Time will tell. My future performance will dissuade public suspicion,” she told Xinhua. Mou has refused all other interviews with the media. Her bosses say she is under tremendous pressure since the media and Web users took an interest in her.

Wang Dafa, director of the Organization Department of Communist Party of China’s Yidu Committee, also told Xinhua that Mou is an exceptional talent and that her promotions followed formal procedures and rules. Her performance had been exemplary, he said, and no complaints had been received until her promotions began to make headlines and zoom around the Internet.

The Organization Department is in charge of promoting Party officials.

Hundreds being promoted

It’s no coincidence that Mou and hundreds of other young officials in Hubei have catapulted into positions of power that normally takes years of service to achieve.

The province recognized some time ago that its bureaucracy was aging and new blood was needed to cope with challenges of modern times. Official statistics show that of the 3,658 officials in leadership positions just 1.5 percent are under the age of 35 and 9.7 percent are between 35 and 40.

This led the province to establish a young official’s promotion and training program earlier this year, which targets those born in the 1970s and 1980s.

Official from the Organization Department of Hubei Province, which acts much like the government’s human resources department, told the Global Times that 2,160 younger adults have already entered the training program and most of them are expected to bump up several levels after they finish their training.

Despite an obvious need, Hubei’s youth movement has opened the door to accusations of nepotism. The public and media have raised concerns about just who is getting the plumb positions, and there have been charges of age discrimination by those who are being left behind.

“We cannot exclude the possibility of under-the-table deals, because setting age limits deprives one group of people and amplifies the rights of another group,” Zhang Liangui, a researcher from the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told the Global Times.

Lin Zhe, an expert on anti-corruption at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee blamed a lack of transparency in the election process of officials in Hubei for creating public distrust. 

“The organization department should empower the people and let them exercise their right to vote and make all the reasons for decisions public,” Lin told the Global Times.

“We decided to select a batch of excellent young officials born in 1970s and 1980s for training and dispatch them to key positions,” said Liao, adding that 80 young officials have already finished their training and will soon be promoted. Another 2,080 trainees have already been selected.

When asked about the criteria used in the selection process, Liao avoided answering directly. “We choose those who are outstanding,” he said. When asked to further explain he added that his department has very strict assessment standards, “but the specific rules are confidential, and we cannot make them public."

Most of elections of government officials have no public input and are based on recommendations from one level of government to another. The public learns who their new government leaders are only after the results are published.

Dong Xueyan, 48, the director of the Science and Technology Bureau in Yidu, experienced the problem firsthand when he tried to request younger workers. “They said we don’t have many young officials,” Dong said, adding that the average age of leaders in his bureau was about 52.