Development of the Civil Servants' Performance Appraisal System in China: Challenges and Improvements

The performance appraisal system for civil servants in China was developed following the establishment of the national civil servants system in 1994. Since the Civil Servant Law of the People's Republic of China was issued, the system has been rectified twice to clarify some technical issues. Although much progress has been made since 1994, the current system is far from successful in practical operation. To improve its implementation among government agencies, the Chinese performance appraisal system needs to address some challenging issues, including the following: better connection of the performance appraisal system with other human resource management (HRM) systems, consideration of the performance budget system, and improvement of appraisal technical activities.