China

Officials to be psychologically assessed

By Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-19 07:54

Leaders' mental health as vital as skills in periods of social transition

BEIJING - An official's psychological health will be assessed along with his or her other abilities in selecting senior government officials and leaders for State-owned enterprises, a senior Party organization official said on Sunday.

"The country is undergoing a period of economic and social transformation. Officials face unexpected psychological pressures due to a variety of internal contradictions," Wu Hanfei, chief of the examination and assessment center under the organizationdepartment of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, told China Daily in Beijing.

How to assess an official's "psychological qualities" and "moral integrity" remains a challenge, he said at a two-day leadership forum held at Peking University, beginning on Sunday.

The organization department is trying to address the problem by building a pool of questions for evaluating candidates.

From the proposed 170,000 questions, they have selected more than 60,000, he said, though he did not reveal how many relate to psychologically assessing candidates.

"Officials' psychological health is not only related to their physical health, but also influences their leadership and executive abilities in emergency situations," said Xiao Mingzheng, chief of the human resource management research center at Peking University.

China improved its selection criteria for officials in recent years by taking candidates' wider abilities into consideration.

The emphasis on officials' psychological health follows a string of suicides.

At least 13 government officials are known to have died abnormally in 2009. There have also been at least eight suicides by officials so far this year, according to statistics released in September on www.people.com.cn.

In the latest case, Tong Zhaohong, vice-president of the Higher People's Court of Zhejiang province, was found dead in a bathroom in his office building on Sept 21, 2010.

Tong, who committed suicide by hanging himself, left a short note on his office desk. He was reported to have been suffering from depression for a couple of months.

"Chinese officials face challenges from the conflicts that have emerged between value and morality under cultural globalization," Liang Tiangeng, director of the human resources department under the Ministry of Agriculture, said at the forum on Sunday.

"Officials' psychological outlooks will change as they become more materialistic. They will care more about immediate gratification and take a fast track to advance their careers as quickly as possible," he said.

Many of the officials who committed suicide reportedly became depressed when investigations began on their involvement in alleged cases of corruption and bribery.

Li Chengyan, a professor in the government school at Peking University, said: "An honest and upright political environment will help officials steer clear of corruption and its accompanying psychological pressures."

China Daily