Several subsidiaries of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration have stipulated that close relatives of people in leadership positions should not be hired, to prevent nepotism and ensure fairness in the hiring process.

A recent notice about hiring new college graduates from the Shandong Tobacco Monopoly Administration said that candidates who are the spouses or the immediate family members of company leaders should not be employed.

Relatives within three generations and those related by marriage should also not be hired, it said.

The notice quickly became a trending topic over the weekend on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, receiving more than 500 million views.

Amid economic headwinds in recent years, more graduates have opted for stable jobs at State-owned enterprises, and competition has grown more intense.

Netizens said preventing close relatives of workers in positions at SOEs from being hired is a good way to create a fairer employment environment for graduates. They also called for more transparent hiring practices at these companies and at government institutions.

The tobacco monopoly administrations in the provinces of Shanxi, Qinghai, Gansu, Henan and Yunnan also released similar notices this year.

The Gansu administration stipulated that candidates who are related to workers — specifically spouses, children and children's spouses — should not apply for jobs at the administration. Meanwhile, the Henan administration required candidates who are close relatives of employees to report such relationships in their applications.

In 2020, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration enacted restrictions on nepotism in job hiring. In 2019, the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security also issued requirements to prevent nepotism in government institutions.

According to a release on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision in 2020, there have been frequent reports of nepotism in SOEs in the finance, telecommunications, electric power and tobacco sectors.

A release issued by the inspection and supervision teams sent by the CCDI in 2016 found that among the 691 people in leadership positions at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, 220 had spouses working at the bank, while 240 had children employed there.

It also noted that other forms of nepotism were taking place at SOEs, including customizing job positions for candidates who are related to people in leadership positions, and offering favors to companies that hire them.

Zhu Lijia, a professor at the National Academy of Governance, said that in the past it was common in certain industries for children to assume the posts of their parents, which seriously harmed the sense of fairness in employment.

This is why local governments, SOEs and government institutions have issued requirements to prevent nepotism in the hiring of candidates, he told Red Star News.

Apart from issuing the requirements, people in power must also stay vigilant, make more effort to crack down on misbehavior, and improve supervision, he said.