Chinese authorities on Monday denied reports that the national civil servant recruitment examinations was leaked, saying that such reports were "misleading" and "extremely irresponsible".

The exams, one comprising of an administrative aptitude test and the other an essay test, was held on Saturday across China. More than half a million Chinese sat for the exams in the hope of landing a government position. On average 42 people are competing for every available position.

A number of online articles claiming that certain test questions were dropped has led to rising suspicion that the tests were leaked.

The Western China City News reported Monday that an article was posted on a test website (www.ksgov.cn) last Thursday, suggesting examinees pay attention to social security problems of farmers deprived of land in preparation for the essay test.

On Sunday, the website posted another article, hailing Wang's "correct" guess.

The Ministry of Personnel said in a statement that the so-called "correct predictions" differed greatly from the test's questions.

The essay test, which lasted 110 minutes on Saturday, consisted of five questions, mainly on the sustainable use of China's land resources.

The ministry said the test papers are confidential documents before exam day and the setting, printing, delivering, safekeeping and using of the test papers follow strict procedures.

"Investigations show that test questions of the 2007 national civil servant recruitment examination were not disclosed," said the ministry.

The ministry said the results of the examination will be released by the end of December.

Since 1994, China has organized 13 civil servant recruitment examinations for departments of the central authorities and regional units of these departments.

This year more than 1.16 million people applied to sit for the examinations, 530,000 people were deemed qualified to take the tests. They are competing for 12,700 government jobs.

A string of cheating scandals, including test paper leaks and surrogate exam-takers, plagued China's university entrance exams in recent years.

In 2004, several people, including college teachers, were convicted of selling test papers and sentenced to jail terms.

Source: Xinhua