AGAINST

Chen Yizhou

china.com.cn

Would a U.S. president be a good county head in China? Theoretically, people may think it's a waste of talent. But a U.S. president is very likely to end up failing as a county head in China and the reason is simple: There are cultural and institutional differences between the two countries.

So why should we spend money on the officials' temporary overseas service program? Even if all Chinese officials are trained to be as capable as the U.S. president, they will find they have to start everything from scratch at home. If it's to learn governance, it's unnecessary to spend so much money on training officials overseas. There are so many teaching materials available on the Internet.

If the temporary overseas civil service program is to be used as a platform to learn about different systems of governance, it's better to send scholars first, not officials.

Zhang Tianpan

Yangtze Evening News

The era we live in demands lifelong learning for everyone, especially civil servants. But, by no means should the government pay for these officials' overseas experiences, because ultimately we taxpayers foot the bill.

Government is not an institution for talent training and development. Schools are responsible for that. If the government needs certain types of talent, it may cooperate with educational institutions or invite teachers to give classes to officials. But, instead of doing so, the government of Dongcheng District chooses to send officials abroad for training. This is a huge waste of administrative resources.

Civil servants are not supposed to be more privileged than the public. The public needs ordinary civil servants devoted to serving the people more than those who are only interested in controlling others. This training program will not necessarily produce civil servants meeting the public's requirements.

He Rufeng

hinews.cn

Although China's Civil Service Law allows civil servants to serve temporarily in posts at higher- or lower-level government departments or even state-owned enterprises, it does not say civil servants can visit government departments in other countries. Obviously, to send officials abroad as temporary civil servants is without legal grounds.

China is not lacking in talented people. For years, China has sent students to developed countries for further education and many have returned and been recruited by the government, to take advantage of their skills. China is not rich yet and its government expenses are huge. Particularly, people are very angry at officials' traveling abroad at taxpayers' expense. There is no guarantee that officials will gain useful experience abroad. Probably, it will be a huge waste of taxpayers' money.