This article looks at public values as an alternative public management instrument to the traditional public instruments or those of New Public Management (NPM). China offers very explicit examples of public values deliberately built on the boundary between the public and the private. We examine this issue through the civil servant recruitment examinations in China and the point of view of the candidates. We propose a cultural approach to the "publicness" of these examinations to understand the public/private articulation of the values they convey and their roles in the field of public management in China. We highlight a set of spiritual and moral values from the private sphere that are transmitted in the public values through the civil servant recruitment examinations, often to legitimise the government and its social control.