The jobs in government which attracted the most applicants in 2008 were not elite positions in the mandarinate in the Foreign Affairs and Finance ministries in Beijing and the like. Of the top ten government bodies which received the most expressions of interest for positions, eight were provincial tax bureaux, topped by Guangdong, all of them along the prosperous coast; and two were the customs bureaux of Shanghai and Shenzhen. The bottom ten, which attracted the least interest, were all provincial statistics bureaux.
