This year's national public servant exam kicked off on Sunday with more than 1.43 million people who passed the application requirements review competing to make the 24,000 recruitment quota, chinanews.com reported.

China plans to recruit about 24,000 civil servants to work for 86 central agencies and 23 directly affiliated institutions in the 2020 civil servant intake, the State Administration of Civil Service said in October.

This year's recruitment process is the first to take place after the country's Civil Servant Law was revised and offers more vacancies than last year's 14,500.

Candidates across the country need to take a national written exam, while those applying for certain positions related to finance, public security, foreign affairs and other fields will take an additional professional skills test.

Candidates will be evaluated based on their overall performance in the written tests, a physical examination and an internship.

Li Manqin, a counselor for the national public servant exam, was cited by chinanews.com as saying that "the recruitment plan of this year has increased but the threshold for applying for the exam has also been increased. For example, many positions ask for professional skills."

Political integrity will be a primary criterion and the majority of the positions in Party and government agencies above the provincial level will require two years of grassroots work experience, according to the administration.

More than 2,700 vacancies will be open only to those working in some primary-level projects, as well as veterans who have college degrees and have served for a minimum of five years.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, certain requirements, such as those for test scores and work experience, will be lowered for those applying for positions in remote poor areas to encourage more college graduates to contribute to the development of communities and areas with harsh conditions.

About 920,000 people took the national civil servant exam in 2018, down from 1.13 million in 2017.