Some old news: Jasper Becker writes,

The world's biggest bureaucracy says it will end the job-for-life guarantee of its 30 million or more officials. Since 1949 only 3,000 Chinese officials have been sacked, because being an official is synonymous with being a Communist Party member....Since 1949, there have been nine reforms of the bureaucracy but it is has, none the less, grown relentlessly. Chairman Mao Zedong pruned the number of ministries to 25 and packed off tens of millions of people to the countryside for "re-education" but China now has about one official for 25 people compared with one for every 90 when the Communists took power. The latest attempt started in 1992 and is intended to form a Western-style civil service with performance reviews, exams and complaints procedures, which should enforce regulations that are no longer secret internal documents but openly available. The aim is to curb corruption and nepotism and to make decisions more open and transparent, a goal required for membership of the World Trade Organisation.