Stanford PhD physicist gets his dream job as a rural clerk in central China

While other candidates attended little-known colleges and vocational schools in China, Su graduated from a leading American institution ranked third in the Best Global Universities list.

Of the six candidates competing with him for the same position, Su came first in the written test, interview and final score, according to Suzhou authorities.

He will not be working in a city, but instead will be in a rural town. The list shows he applied for the post of township basic affairs management in Lingbi, a county of nearly 1 million people in northern Anhui province that comes under the jurisdiction of Suzhou.

According to the recruitment notice published in January, two people would be recruited to work in towns in Lingbi county.

The job description includes public service, rural revitalisation and the promotion of social civility, which usually refers to encouraging decent behaviour and eliminating outmoded rural customs, such as extravagant funerals.

Xu Xuchu, a professor at the China Academy for Rural Development at Zhejiang University, said township-level officials in China were at the forefront of local governance.

According to Xu, although there is a professional division of labour in rural posts, in most cases grass-roots administration requires staff to take on broader responsibilities.

For example, Xu said, clerks might be responsible for economic matters in the town, such as industrial development planning, as well as improving rural living conditions, ecological protection, ideological propaganda and the election of rural cadres.

“I think his intelligence and diligence make him a better academic researcher than me, and there is no doubt that he has a bright future ahead of him,” he said.

Su came from Xiao county, a region of around 1 million people in northern Anhui province. He enrolled in the doctoral programme in applied physics at Stanford’s physics department in 2016, and his dissertation on serial X-ray crystallography was submitted in August 2022.

Before that, he completed undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China where he was awarded the Guo Moruo Scholarship, the university’s most prestigious.

Su did not respond to requests for comment on his career path.

Xu from Zhejiang University said people should not judge Su’s personal choice from a worldly perspective without knowing his thoughts and experiences.

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In Xu’s opinion, Su’s recruitment was neither a waste of talent nor a misallocation of resources – using his talents to build his hometown might be Su’s ideal career – or else he might have chosen to work in a more developed city.

Xu said Su’s unusual career path could hold promise in terms of personal growth. He said that in rural China, where talent was scarce, Su’s impressive background made it difficult for governors not to notice him and give him important roles.