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The iron rice bowl
A Chinese job decision weighs something the salary does not show: 编制, a post inside the state establishment. It carries security, a pension and standing, and it is reached through 考公, the civil service examination, which draws millions of applicants for tens of thousands of places and grows more competitive each year. The older name for it is 铁饭碗, the iron rice bowl — a bowl that cannot break. A private job paying considerably more can still lose to one with 编制, and the family is usually the side arguing for the bowl.