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The Politics of Innovation in

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Issues & Studies 51, no. 2 (June 2015): 79-109.

The Politics of Innovation

in China: Local Officials as
Policy Entrepreneurs
JESSICA C. TEETS

In this article, I address the puzzle of what motivates local officials

in China to do something newcreate a new policy, launch a pilot, adopt
an experimental policyespecially when such innovation has uncertain
outcomes. Despite the uncertainty and risk, we observe a great deal of
policy innovation, both the creation and adoption of experiments, at the
subnational level in China. In this article, I explore local policymakers
incentives regarding innovation to understand why they experiment with
new policies under conditions of political risk and uncertainty. I utilize
data from existing studies on policy innovation, including the Local Governance Innovation Awards (), to conduct this analysis. This analysis is significant because many scholars have noted that
local innovation and adaptation is the key to authoritarian resilience in
China. Therefore, the ability to encourage innovation (and capture good
ideas) is vital to continued success, and Xi Jinpings administration must
institutionalize innovation by realigning incentives to reward sustainable
innovation rather than superficial or face innovation. This institutional change might help transform the political and economic system in
China through incremental policy innovation rather than fundamental
reform.
J ESSICA C. T EETS is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at
Middlebury College, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Chinese Political Science. Her
research focuses on governance and policy diffusion in authoritarian regimes, specifically
the role of civil society. She is the author of Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China
Model (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and editor (with William Hurst) of Local
Governance Innovation in China: Experimentation, Diffusion, and Defiance (Routledge
Contemporary China Series, 2014). She can be reached at <jteets@middlebury.edu>.

Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan (ROC).

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KEYWORDS: local policy innovation; experimentation; cadre incentives.

* * *
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or
more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new
order of things.
Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference
between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.
Niccolo Machiavelli

As these two quotations from Machiavelli illustrate, despite the

risk of introducing a new order, many policy entrepreneurs attempt to do just this. In this study, I address the puzzle of what
motivates local officials in China to do something newcreate a new
policy, launch a pilot, adopt an experimental policyespecially when
innovation is uncertain and risky. Innovation is uncertain because local
officials usually have terms under 5 years which is often not long enough
to show results, and risky because officials do not know if these results
will be positive or negative. Policy change seen as ineffective or worse,
resulting in negative outcomes, might cause the official to lose his position. However, despite the uncertainty and risk, we observe a great deal
of policy innovation at the subnational level in China.
In fact, policy experimentation at the subnational level in China is
often credited with the economic and governance successes enjoyed since
the reform era began in 1979 (Cao, Qian, & Weingast, 1999; Florini, Lai, &
Tan, 2012; Heilmann & Perry, 2011). However, what is less understood is
why officials at the subnational level engage in this risky behavior. These
officials are bureaucrats embedded in a large and complex bureaucracy,
and seemingly not the agents with the most incentive in any political
system to enact policy innovation. Furthermore, the existing literature
on this topic provides evidence of multiple causal mechanisms, ranging
from Joseph Fewsmith (2013) contending that local political needs for
governability influence innovation, to Xuelian Chen and Xuedong Yang
(2009) arguing that concerns about party-state reputation and legitimacy
drive this behavior, to Sebastian Heilmann (2008a) positing that central
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officials direct these innovations from the top. This variation and seeming
lack of incentive for local innovation suggests that multiple causal pathways might exist in different issue areas, across geography or time. This
article explores these varying causal pathways to understand the underlying incentive structure facing local officials. In this way, this article is intended more as a theory-building exercise rather than an empirical analysis
able to test competing explanations; however, the next step in this research agenda would be to design measures to conduct this type of analysis
as I explain in the conclusion. Although the evidence provided is insufficient to prove that one causal pathway is dominant, it is able to help us
distinguish between the incentives underlying different explanations and
to measure these variables to undertake a systematic and comprehensive
analysis versus single case studies. This is an ambitious research agenda
covering multiple levels of analysis and several policy areas; however, it
is valuable in understanding this driver of policy change. In this article,
I first map the relevant explanations from the existing literature on policy
experimentation in China and then apply these to data collected through
the Chinese Local Governance awards program to analyze why subnational
officials might innovate under conditions of uncertainty.1 This analysis is
supplemented by the authors interviews, but again, this is to examine the
underlying incentives for innovation rather than to provide evidence to
distinguish between competing explanations.
Beginning in 2000, the China Center for Comparative Politics &
Economics (CCCPE) initiated an award program for Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance under the leadership of Keping Yu
(). This was inspired by the American Government Innovations
award program at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University. The CCCPE also established a database

The China Local Governance Innovations Awards were founded in 2000 by Director
Keping Yu and organized by the China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics
(CCCPE), the Center of Comparative Studies on Political Parties of the Central Party
School, and the Center of China Government Innovations at Peking University. For more
information, see http://www.chinainnovations.org

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to track and analyze the applications for local governance innovations,

and researchers from this program have published most of the analyses of
policy innovation in China. This award is held every two years, and has
completed seven rounds to date, with over 500 local governments below
the provincial level participating. As of 2014, out of a total of 1,888 nominations, CCCPE has selected 113 finalists, with 70 projects receiving the
exemplary prize and 85 projects receiving a qualifying award. In each
round, 10 winners are selected and receive recognition in the Peoples
Daily, participate in an awards ceremony in Beijing, and are awarded
50,000 RMB.
In this article, I define policy innovation or policy experimentation as creating or adopting a new policy to address perceived governance problems. As Cels, de Jong, and Nauta clarify, innovation differs
from invention in that it does not have to be new to the world, but only
new to the local situation (2012, p. 4). The term policy entrepreneurs
refers to only subnational policymakers in order to focus my analysis on
a specific set of incentives; however, this term is often applied to nonstate actors like members of civil society or think tanks (Roberts & King,
1991). In fact, Andrew Mertha (2009), Xufeng Zhu (2008), and Daniel
Hammond (2013) all recently use this concept to analyze policy change
in China, and focus both on bureaucrats and non-state actors like civil
society and media. I use this term in a similar way to Kingdons classic
definition of a policy entrepreneur by their willingness to invest their
resourcestime, energy, reputation, and sometimes moneyin the hope
of future return. That return might come to them in the form of policies
of which they approve, satisfaction from participation, or even personal
aggrandizement in the form of job security or career promotion (1984,
p. 123).
The existing literature on local experimentation specifically and
cadre incentives more broadly finds that local innovation occurs due to
aggrandizement, specifically because the central or provincial government signals that it is desired in a certain policy area, and the target responsibility management system ties innovation to career advancement
and security concerns. The logic supporting this argument is that subna82

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tional officials follow orders from above (either the provincial or central
government) in order to receive promotion or other forms of career success, including initiating experimental policies. However, although all
cadres operate under the same promotion system, not all engage in policy
experimentation and others continue innovating even when ordered to
desist. Another, although less dominant, argument in the literature is that
cadres innovate due to pragmatic motivations, specifically situations of
social instability or economic crisis. This need-based argument contends
that local officials experiment when facing an ungovernable situation,
with a sort of a necessity is the mother of invention motivation. However, many cadres innovate in wealthy areas without much social protest.
In fact, most of the nominations for the Local Governance Innovation
awards are from wealthier areas. Most nominations are from the countylevel and prefectural-level of government, with wealthier governments
more represented, suggesting that a certain level of resources might be
necessary for innovation. In the first five application rounds, the top 10
provinces that submitted the most applications included 7 provinces or
cities from the more developed eastern areas. Zhejiang province tops the
list with 99 applications, followed by three provinces and cities from the
central and western regions, with Sichuan province submitting 60 applications (X. D. Yang, 2013). If case studies in the existing literature support
both arguments, how do we understand this variation?
I argue that this variation is explained by the fact that local officials
are engaged in a learning process where they are learning that an innovation strategy is the most successful path to career advancement and also
to solving persistent local problems. I define learning as a rational,
strategic act whereby local officials use examples of others promotion
trajectories to determine the most effective tactics to gain promotion.
This type of rational learning is distinct from deeper forms of learning in
the literature that require internalization.2 This lesson might be learned in
different ways and at different speeds, but we are observing more conver-

For a good overview of learning models see Meseguer (2005).

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gence around this strategy over time as evidenced by increasing numbers

of pilot programs in China.3 This lesson is learned through a number of
sources, including observation of other cadres career trajectories, gossip,
party school training and exemplar campaigns. Increasingly numerous
lessons of successful policy entrepreneurship reduce the risk and uncertainty surrounding innovation, as the norm shifts toward experimentation. Moreover, different motivations appear to encourage innovation in
different policy areas, with direction from above playing more of a role
in economic experiments, like high-technology zones, and local need motivating more innovation in government administration and management,
like elections and transparency initiatives. Understanding how local officials learning reduces the costs and increases the benefits of innovation
helps us theorize why we see more policy experimentation by cadres in
the largest bureaucracy in the world, and it also has implications for the
sustainability of these innovations.
Innovation motivated by orders from a superior will not have much
political will behind it, and innovation motivated by local need might not
be continued once the initial problem is resolved, leading to short-lived
and trivial policy experiments. Worse, these motivations might lead to
innovation merely for the appearance of innovation, or what I call face
innovation, creating unsustainable innovation that wastes resources. As
I discuss in the conclusion, the central government must institutionalize
this informal learning process and also create incentives for sustainable
innovation in order to benefit from subnational policy experimentation.
Subnational policy innovation allows for adaptation to changing conditions, and a gradual process of political and economic reform without
fundamental change in existing governance institutions, which represents
a pathway for reform in China without revolution.

A measure of policy innovation does not currently exist, so this change over time is derived from author interviews with staff at the Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local
Governance Program (2014).

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Innovation under Uncertainty

Innovation is risky because it might challenge vested interests, has
uncertain outcomes, and might contradict bureaucratic incentives to implement rules versus reimagining them. First, innovation has the potential
to destroy established organizations and power centers that prospered
under the old rules by threaten[ing] to obliterate incumbent interests,
interrupt[ing] traditional funding pathways, and reassign[ing] bureaucratic
turf (Cels, de Jong, & Nauta, 2012, p. 6). Innovation might also embarrass existing organizations if too successful: they may produce outcomes
so obviously preferable to the current situation that those responsible for
the status quo cannot accept the new situation without acknowledging
their failure (Cels, de Jong, & Nauta, 2012, p. 7). Second, in addition
to sometimes challenging existing authority, innovation is often risky because the outcomes are uncertain. It is difficult to assess if the new policy
will be successful, what benefits and unintended consequences it might
cause, and when results might appear. Third, the bureaucracies in which
subnational policymakers are embedded might not reward innovative
behavior. As Weber noted, bureaucracies create a rational bureaucratic
behavior focused on following existing rules, regardless of effectiveness
or logic, rather than innovative behavior (1947). The incentive structure
inside a bureaucracy promotes implementing rules and does not reward,
and often punishes, innovation. Citing research on civil servants in the
Netherlands, Cels et al. argue that there is a tendency among many bureaucrats to avoid risks and to perceive risk in making even minor changes,
and that these tendencies are further incentivized by accountability procedures (2012, p. 11).
Given the risky and uncertain nature of innovation, why do local
policymakers create or adopt new policies at increasing rates in China?
In fact, the China Local Governance Innovations Awards program has received 200 to 300 applications for the annual awards from 2000 to 2012.4

Author interview, Beijing, October 24, 2013.

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The existing literature contends that innovation has become an informal

part of the incentive system facing subnational officials, although scholars
differ on whether this incentive originates directly from the central government or indirectly through local needs and motivations. In the next
section, I examine the argument and evidence for each explanation, and
contend that understanding innovation as a learned strategy helps explain
the variation we see in who chooses to innovate.

Incentivizing Innovation:
Experimentation under Hierarchy or Pragmatism?
As a direct mechanism, the central government might encourage
local officials to experiment with designated policies. In the post-Mao
period, the CCP institutionalized the experimentation under hierarchy
approach as part of the overall governance decentralization adopted to
promote economic reform. Sebastian Heilmann (2008a) finds that norms
of experimental policymaking derived from CCP revolutionary history
were institutionalized into the PRC administration as experimentalism
(shiyan zhuyi ):
An experimental policy process of proceeding from point to surface (youdian
daomian) entails a policy process that is initiated from individual experimental points (shidian) and driven by local initiative with the formal or informal
backing of higher-level policy-makers. If judged to be conducive to current
priorities by Party and government leaders, model experiences (dianxing
jingyan) extracted from the initial experiments are disseminated through extensive media coverage, high-profile conferences, intervisitation programs
and appeals for emulation to more and more regions.

This dominant experimentation under hierarchy approach examines

how central policymakers encourage local officials to innovate in response
to governance challenges and then integrate the local experiences back
into national policy formulation, such that national policymakers wishing
to change central economic policies often used the results of experimental
programs to overcome opposition from defenders of the old policies
(Heilmann, 2008a). This approach combines the centralized definition of
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program objectives with extensive local implementation experiments

where bottom-up policy innovations are effectively fed back into national
program adjustments and into horizontal policy diffusion (Heilmann,
Shih, & Hofem, 2013). Policy experimentation is thus a purposeful and
coordinated activity geared to producing novel policy options that are injected into official policymaking and then replicated on a larger scale, or
even formally incorporated into national law (Heilmann, 2008b).
According to this approach, political elites at the center signal to
subordinate officials to innovate in certain designated areas to change
national policies through the experimental points system. In one of Heilmanns historical examples, after securing the informal consent of the
prefecture Party committee, the Party committee of Yongjia County (in
Wenzhou, Zhejiang) initiated experiments with new incentives for peasant
households in response to declining agricultural production resulting from
collectivization policies in 1956 (Heilmann, 2008a). Due to the antirightist campaign, however, the experiments were labeled anti-socialist,
and local cadres were expelled from the Party and sent to labor camps
(Heilmann, 2008a). Interestingly, the same prefecture-level leaders who
tacitly endorsed the experiments a few months earlier ended up repressing them at the height of the campaign. In the system of experimentation
under hierarchy, decentralized experimentation minimized the risks and
the costs to central policymakers by placing the burden on local governments and providing scapegoats in cases of failure (Heilmann, 2008b, p.
21). If experiments went awry, they could be phased out silently, rather
than terminated by public formal administrative decisions or documents
(Heilmann, 2008b, p. 28). Sometimes, central leaders sent subtle signals
to local officials warning that their projects had lost support, but rarely
did failing experiments endure public scrutiny. Such interactions occur in
an informal setting, where the politics of policy innovation are both subtle
and contextual. Factions within the central state may allow particular
local innovations to be taken up as central policies or to speed up the wide
top-down implementation of directives that may lack local support. Pet
projects supported by key central leaders (e.g., experiments linked to The
Harmonious Society under Hu Jintao) are often given preference in topJune 2015

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down diffusion, sometimes with clearly suboptimal results (e.g., the Great
Leap Forward).
However, if innovation serves the interests of certain cadres at the
central level and is often dangerous for those at subnational levels of government, why do we observe such a large amount of innovation at lower
levels? Many China scholars argue that the cadre incentive system, composed of the Target Responsibility System and one level down supervision responsibility, creates similar incentives even at lower levels (Ahlers &
Schubert, 2014; Heberer & Trappel, 2013).
Beginning in the 1990s, the central government recentralized most
aspects of the political management system after years of economic reform characterized by the decentralization of much authority to subnational governments (Pearson, 2005; D. L. Yang, 2004). A key element
to recentralizing political control is maintaining and strengthening the
cadre management system. Under this system, the central party organization department appoints and reviews officials at the provincial level (onelevel down), which then occurs at the subnational level through the same
one-level down practice. Local officials, whether concerned about career
advancement or security, are theorized to be incentivized to implement
policies or design experimental pilots that might otherwise be incompatible with local interests or simply too risky.
The Target Management Responsibility System (gangwei mubiao
guanli zerenzhi ) consists of a set of performance
criteria that align local officials behavior with the preferences of the
center. Subnational officials are evaluated regularly using this system,
which uses economic targets like public goods provision to evaluate cadre
performance and determine promotions and raises (Tsui & Wang, 2004;
Whiting, 2004). Although there is debate over the weighting of targets,
officials are promoted based on a combination of targets prioritizing economic development, the maintenance of social order, and political connections (Bo, 2002; Landry, 2003, 2008; Whiting, 2001). Officials ranked as
excellent under the Responsibility System receive bonuses, pay raises,
medals, honorary titles, and merit records (Edin, 2003). While promotion
is not officially considered a reward under this system, officials who re88

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ceive excellent evaluations for two or more years in a row are normally
promoted: In short, today almost all Chinese local officials have been
structured into a highly personalized, individualized incentive scheme
(Han, 1999). Heberer and Trappel (2013) investigate the impact of these
evaluations on the behavior of leading county and township cadres at the
subnational level, and find that the performance evaluation system has
become an important incentive for local cadres. In the post-Mao political
economy of public goods decentralization to the subnational level and
fiscal recentralization to the central level, successful innovation might
help local officials bridge the resource gap to meet promotion targets
without increased funding. Additionally, Kennedy and Chen find that
interviewed subnational officials such as mayors and party secretaries
operate under the responsibility system with a list of key duties that are
counted towards promotion, and that in addition to targets like social
stability, economic development and urbanization, political innovation
itself is counted as a promotion measure (2014). In this way, the target
responsibility system creates the indirect incentive for subnational innovation by helping local cadres meet the promotion criteria set by the
center if successful, and the direct incentive that as innovation itself
becomes part of promotion, the benefits of innovation increase regardless of whether successful. According to surveys conducted by CCCPE,
about half of the respondents (nominated officials) considered ideas of
innovation to be first suggested by some knowledgeable leaders (a 57.8
percent rate for the fourth round of awards, and 48.1 percent for the fifth
round) (X. D. Yang, 2013).
Arguments based on promotion goals contend that political elites
at the center desire certain types of policy innovation and use the cadre
management system to incentivize subnational innovation. However, critiques of these arguments point out the wide variation in subnational innovation despite the fact that all cadres operate under the same incentive
system. If the experimentation under hierarchy framework and the cadre
evaluation system all encourage innovation, why do we observe officials
often acting like Weberian bureaucrats and simply implementing central
policies without innovating? Additionally, if innovation is incentivized
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and orchestrated from the center, why do we see not only variation in
the existence of innovation but also local officials deviating from the
centers authorized instances of innovation? For example, Heilmann,
Shih, and Hofem find that out of 53 cases of high-technology zones, 39
cases evidence medium to very high functional deviation or variation from the intended programs and goals causing them to update the
framework to experimentation under the shadow of hierarchy (2013,
p. 905).
Critics of the promotion-incentives school of thought contend that
this observed variation illustrates the presence of other factors impacting
subnational officials willingness to innovate, including the weighting
of innovation targets in the target responsibility system, capacity for innovation (i.e., resources like revenue), and social or bottom-up factors
that might affect the cost-benefit calculation. First, Heberer and Trappel
(2013) argue that the performance evaluation system has become an important incentive for local cadres, but important variations exist among
different groups of officials. Partly, this is due to the weighting of political innovation targets counted toward promotion varying across
municipalities and provinces (also see Kennedy & Chen, 2014). Thus,
differences in innovative behavior might correspond to the weight innovation plays in cadre evaluation across China.
Second, some areas might have few opportunities for lower-level
cadres to experiment, such as poorer regions with significant resource
constraints or those with conservative governors or party secretaries at
the provincial level. Moreover, not all leading cadres are willing to initiate innovation due to personal risk aversion. Although it is clear that
personality must play a role in this decision, this analysis focuses on the
institutional rather than personal factors that influence the decision to
innovate. All cadres operate under the same institutional setting, which
while not changing personalities, will influence their behavior if in a more
conducive setting that increases the perceived benefit of innovation while
reducing the perceived risks.
Third, other critics point out that the observed variation might be
due to factors intervening between the incentive system and local official
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behavior. For example, Xufeng Zhu (2013) finds that age, tenure, cadre
position, and neighbor and central signals significantly impact innovation
in one policy areathe administrative licensing system. Zhu observes
that these factors disrupt the linkage between the incentive system and
cadres interests in career advancement. For example, older cadres (both
in age and tenure) are less willing to adopt experimental policies, although
age works differently for mayors who are more likely to innovate versus
party secretaries who are less likely. Also, year 4 (out of the possible 5)
in tenure is the lowest level of innovation likelihood, especially if they
are promoted internally versus cross-regionally (Zhu, 2013). Simply put,
cadres who desire career security versus advancement might act differently under the same evaluation system, disrupting the intended outcome
of subnational innovation.
Additionally, this variation might be driven by another factor disrupting the incentive systemthe credibility of central signaling. If
central signals about innovation are not credible, the perceived costs of
experimentation are higher and benefits lower. Ciqi Mei and Margaret
Pearson (2014) examine this issue through the use of the Holding to Account system adopted by the Hu-Wen administration, which is separate
from, and outside of, the normal promotion procedures. Local officials
who fail to perform a duty, or to perform it correctly, are to be held-to-account (wenze ). Unlike the normal promotion procedures described
above, this new system clearly specifies both the punishment for noncompliance and the target of the punishment. The cadre responsibility
system designates targets, but the punishment for not meeting these is
unclear. However, the hold-to-account system clearly specifies that
punishment might range from extraction of a forced apology to forced
resignation.5 Also, the hold-to-account system specifically targets a
jurisdictions leading officials such as party secretary or government

Article 7, Interim provisions on the accountability of party and government leading cadres
(), General Office of Party Center and General
Office of State Council, 2009.

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ISSUES & STUDIES

head.6 The central government has shown its willingness to use the
hold-to-account system, most visibly with the forced resignation of the
Beijing mayor and the national health minister in the 2003 SARS crisis.7
In addition to incentives such a promotion and raises, the centers threat
to hold officials accountable should prompt alignment with central goals
such as innovation. However, Mei and Pearson (2014) actually find the
opposite outcome, that the lack of credibility of using such punishments
in a consistent and comprehensive way actually creates an incentive for
local defiance of central preferences. Since the central government does
not have the capacity to uniformly monitor and sanction all cadres and instead uses the kill the chicken to scare the monkey strategy, the inability
to sanction all offenders creates the incentive for local defiance.
These critiques all point out factors that might impact the ability of
the incentive system to change local behavior, and highlight the role of
more bottom-up factors like response to local need. These pragmatic
arguments focus on local need incentivizing innovation as an indirect
mechanism encouraging local experimentation. In this literature, local
officials maintain authority for policy innovation regardless of policy
shifts and fads at the center, and it is local needs or problems that motivate local officials to experiment and adopt innovative policies. Although
factional politics at the center might dictate how transparent local governments might be about these innovations, policy change is driven by local
officials responding to governance challenges that impact community
wellbeing and their standing in the community. For example, Madam

Chinas cadre management system distinguishes between leading positions and nonleading positions. The former means positions designated with formal responsibility; the
latter means positions with equivalent ranks but not with formally designated responsibility, although certain responsibilities could be designated to them ad hoc. In the holdto-account policy, however, the term leading officials has a narrower definition than
officials holding leading positions. It means the leading members of party committees
and governments and their working departments at and above county level, including the
leading members of the functionary offices of aforementioned working organs. Interim
provisions on the accountability of party and government leading cadres, 2009 (as cited in
Mei & Pearson, 2014).
7
2003 marked the so-called first year of Chinas Accountability Era (Zhongguo wenze yuannian ).
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Zhang Jinming, the county party secretary in Buyun township in Sichuan,

viewed initiating the first direct and competitive elections for the mayor
of a township as a solution to the difficult situation the local government faced in which local residents refused to cooperate in any project
launched by the township government (Florini, Lai, & Tan, 2012, p. 63).
Madam Zhang was willing to bear the political risk of this experiment,
which was later halted by the center, in order to reestablish the social
stability in her township (Kennedy & Chen, 2014). In this example, incentives established at the center play a secondary role in the willingness
of local officials to adopt new policy innovations. Instead, innovation
is more strongly rooted in a response to governance problems and often
persists even in the face of central sanctions. This was also the motivating factor for experimenting with the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee,
where there was not a strong interest in such innovation at the center at
the beginning or available resources to be gained by the Ministry of Civil
Affairs. Instead, as Hammond finds, this experiment was advocated by
Minister Duoji Cairang of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in response to his
perception of poverty as a major challenge to social stability: . . . I would
argue that Duoji was not motivated by what might be called rational selfinterest or a ministry building tendency . . . a more likely alternative
motivation are pragmatic concerns born of increasing urban poverty and
enterprise reform . . . Duoji drew a clear ideological connection between
socialism, the legitimacy of the party, and the MLG (2013, pp. 134-135).
Evidence from the Local Governance Innovation program supports
this local need motivation for innovation. Zengke He (2007), Xuedong
Yang (2013), and Keping Yu (2010) all recently analyzed the nominations to create typologies of policy experiments in which local officials
are engaging, namely, four categories of political reform, administrative
reform, public service, and social management. Jiannan Wu, Liang Ma
and Yuqian Yang find that the main type of government innovation is
management innovation () which accounts for 69.3 percent
of nominations, and consists of cases of administrative reform to increase
problem solving, improve governance, decrease administrative costs, and
increase working efficiency (Wu, Ma, & Yang, 2007; see also Wu, Ma,
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Su, & Yang, 2011). The dominance of this category of innovation shows
the prevalence of innovation in response to local problems, as do the surveys conducted by CCCPE. Through these survey results, Xuelian Chen
and Xuedong Yang find that the majority of the locally initiated governance innovations appear to be motivated by responding to crises and
other problems. Chen and Yang divide the nominated innovations into
two types based on the respondents motivations for innovation: the first
type refers to reforms in response to crisis and governance problems, and
the second refers to learning from advanced experiences and to scientific
ideas from other areas. 61.7 percent of all applications belong in the first
category, and are responses to financial crises, performance management
crises, trust crises, and social conflicts (Chen & Yang, 2009). Additionally, Xuedong Yang reports that the nominators original goal of innovation was to solve issues rising at the time (2013).
However, similar to the experimentation under hierarchy arguments, we observe wide variation among local officials in responsiveness
to local problems. In short, both the top-down and bottom-up incentive
arguments seem to only explain a small percentage of subnational innovation. In the light of contradictory evidence, how should we understand
local governance innovation? First, these two primary explanations apply
to different types of innovation. The majority of the cases found in the
experimentation under hierarchy literature are in the economic policy
realm, such as high technology zones, and the majority of the cases found
in the local need literature deal with government administration, like
local elections. Second, I contend that incentives for meeting targets or
solving governance problems exist and are important, but multiple strategies exist to meet these goals. Many local officials meet the economic
development targets in the incentive system by seizing land to bridge the
local resource gap, which does not create policy innovation or socially
optimal outcomes. Similarly, responding in pragmatic ways to local need
does not have to be institutionalized in an experimental policy but rather
may be done at the discretion of the leader, thus strengthening the rule
of man problem at the local level. I argue that although the existing incentives create a context increasingly supportive of experimentation, risk
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and uncertainty are still high as cadres like Bo Xilai can attest.8 However,
cadres learn over time by watching others experiences that innovation
leads more consistently to promotion in an increasingly competitive system, and this lesson also reduces the perceived risk of using this strategy.
In response, those aspiring to higher positions learn to develop innovative or experimental policies. According to this explanation, innovation
emerges as a strategy for promotion due to cadre learning, which is a
horizontal mechanism rather than simply in response to either a top-down
or bottom-up incentive system. Additionally, for cadres responding to
local needs who do not desire promotions or bonuses, they also learn that
experimental policies help solve problems on a larger scale than one-off
concessions alone.

Cadre Learning: Promotion through Innovation

Although China analysts often argue that only bureaucrats (e.g.,
cadres like Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao) have advanced through the system
since Deng Xiaoping due to the difficulty in pleasing all factions at the
central level, many examples exist of innovators being selected for top
leadership, such as cadres like Zhao Ziyang and Zhu Rongji. I argue that
innovation is a proven way to distinguish oneself from the other cadres
meeting the same performance targets, and that this learning is an adaptive competitive behavior like Mei and Pearson (2014) argue regarding
local defiance. Learning as a mechanism helps explain the variation we
see in subnational behavior in that not all lessons are learned the same
way. Although variation in behavior might initially persist with learning,
as this strategy is increasingly effective over time and perception of risk
lessens, more cadres will implement it as a part of the Bayesian updating

The Bo Xilai case illustrates that some types of innovation might help advance your career
while others derail it. However, often these outcomes are unknown. In fact, the uncertainty and risk of innovation is that the innovator does not know the outcome before the
innovation is initiated.

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process associated with learning. We are seeing a norm shift toward local
policy innovation in all policy areas across China.
How Does Learning Lead to Innovation?
The incentive system for subnational cadres is mostly established
at the central level; however, solving local problems is also important
to many officials either as an end in itself or simply as a means to meet
career advancement and security goals. Innovation is a strategy to attain
these goals rather than a direct result of the established incentive system,
and is a learned adaptive response to the changing political economy
at the subnational level in China. I contend that through observing the
promotion trajectories of other cadres, local officials have learned that
innovation is a more successful strategy over time, which have served to
reduce the perceived risk of this strategy.
At the subnational level, the political economy changed substantially
throughout the 1980s and 1990s with significant public-goods decentralization and fiscal recentralization. The resulting resource gap motivated
cadres to reimagine strategies for career success, specifically how to meet
the promotion targets and advance community welfare without additional
funding. Policy experimentation helped many local cadres bridge the resource gap, and over time other officials learned from these successes to
adopt policy innovation as a promotion strategy. This promotion strategy is best illustrated by the famous example of Zhao Ziyang pioneering
the use of the Household Responsibility System for privatizing farmland.
Recognition of his policy innovation by supervisors helped him secure
promotion to the next level of government, before being promoted to
Premier in 1980 and General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1987
(Zweig, 1997). However, the Target Management Responsibility System
prioritizes both economic development and social stability, which might
conflict with one another (Heberer & Schubert, 2006). Both the social
stability path used successfully by Jiang Zemin during the 1989 protests
and the governance innovation path used by Zhao Ziyang in the early
1980s have proven to be successful, so the selection of one promotion
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strategy over the other might initially depend on the types of learning experiences or lessons drawn (Teets & Hurst, 2014). However, over time
as one strategy appears more successful than another, we would expect
convergence around this strategy under a rational learning approach.
The process of experimental policy making allows local officials to
develop models to resolve difficult governance problems which, if successfully diffused into national policy, elevates their status and aids in
promotion. Many local officials mentioned this as a reason to work with
civil society groups; not only do these groups offer international best practices in poverty alleviation, community participation, and environmental
conservation, but they also assist with financial and technical resources
to help implement these ideas.9 As local officials learned through direct
interaction, groups provide the government with community networks,
specialized knowledge (training, new models, technology), and also run
pilots for the government to test new policy ideas.10 To further encourage decentralized policy experimentation, both the central and provincial
governments create innovation awards to encourage policy innovation
at lower levels that can then be tested and disseminated by provincial
leaders.11 For example, in one province with such an innovation in governance award, the district leader agreed to partner with a communityparticipation group in order to develop a new model for integrating
economic migrants and their children into new urban communities. This
experimentation with reforming the household registration system (hukou
) enabled the county head to win the governance award with its cash
award and recognition from the mayor.12 Additionally, innovation is itself increasing a category on cadre evaluations, so may directly help with

Author interview with local official, Chengdu, Sichuan, July 10, 2008; Teets & Hurst
(2014).
10
Author interview with Health Bureau cadre, Kunming, Yunnan, June 6, 2007.
11
For example, the Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance Program: see
Yu (2002).
12
Author interview with staff member of community-participation NGO, Beijing, June 1,
2008.
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promotion in addition to indirectly through solving governance problems.

Furthermore, the interaction between the promotion process and
mandatory retirement age serves to increase the benefits of pursuing an
innovation strategy as a way to accelerate out of the age trap. The
age trap occurs because when cadres are promoted, they are transferred
through key posts geographically and hierarchically before being appointed to higher-level positions in the central government. If that process takes too long, officials are past the age where they can hold the top
positions in either the party or state. Thus, the incentive created by the
interaction of these two promotion institutions is to accelerate promotion.
In fact, as Yushan Wu (2015) finds, only three candidates from the Central
Committee or Politburo were able to succeed Hu Jintao as President based
on the age restriction, and the next potential President or Premier of China
must be under the age of 60 in 2022 (or born after 1962) and promoted to
the Politburo standing committee in 2017, which severely limits the number of people in contention for the highest positions. In response, we find
convergence around the strategy of innovation to achieve an accelerated
promotion trajectory, learned through peer networks. Local officials are
engaged in a process where they are learning that an innovation strategy
is the most successful path to career advancement (and also to solving
persistent local problems). This lesson might be learned in varying ways
and at different speeds, but the increasing numbers of pilot programs in
China illustrate convergence around this strategy. This lesson is learned
through a number of sources, including observation of other cadres career
trajectories, gossip, party school training, and exemplar campaigns. Over
time, increasingly numerous lessons of successful policy entrepreneurship reduce the risk and uncertainty surrounding innovation, as the norm
shifts toward experimentation. In this way, peer learning also represents a
selection mechanism, albeit an informal one, and differs from the mechanism suggested by Heilmann and Perry (2011) in that the impetus for
change begins at the lowest levels of government rather than the highest.
Mei and Pearson (2014) argue that this observed convergence around
a strategy of local innovation even in the face of central sanctions should
not be understood as a decline of the centers political authority but, rather,
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the result of a dilemma intrinsic to the control mechanism used by the center.
Using the hold-to-account mechanism, the sanctioning of transgressors is
necessarily selective, and a shared belief that the actual risks of defying
the center are low seems to have quickly emerged among local officials.
In other words, although local officials undoubtedly are aware of the centers
political clout, and in particular of their superiors power over their aspirations
for promotion, nevertheless the behavior pattern between the center and local
officials that is repeatedly observed by other local officialsthe pattern of
selective sanction in the short rungenerates among local officials a shared
view that being sanctioned is an event of small probability and, even if an
official is sanctioned, the cost in the long term is in fact not that high. The
calculation based upon such a shared view is rather simple: it is worthwhile
to local officials to defy the center if it brings them high long-term benefits
in the context of the seemingly strict top-down sanction in the short run; defiance hence persists and is diffused. (Mei & Pearson, 2014)

This example shows how local cadres learned from one another successful strategies to achieve promotion targets. As Xuedong Yang finds, surveys with local officials whose projects are the finalists of the innovation
awards show that an increasing number of the respondents consider their
innovations to be learned from the advance experiences of other places,
with 11.8 percent selecting this answer in the fourth round and 12.8 percent in the fifth round (2013). Furthermore, as to whether they selected
this answer as their primary motivation, respondents all indicated that
they went on one or more study tours to learn from others (X. D. Yang,
2013, p. 23). Learning from other subnational cadres promotion trajectories occurs via informal sources like observation and information sharing
(gossip), as well as from more formal strategies like study tours, exemplar
campaigns and innovation awards coordinated by the central government.
The Local Governance Innovations Awards program offers a good illustration of this more formal learning mechanism, in that CCCPE staff train
local cadres in policy experimentation and innovation through the Party
school network (Shambaugh, 2008). In fact, the Central Party School
also supports the biannual Local Governance competition, along with
Peking University. In addition to observation, gossip, exemplar campaigns,
innovation awards and training, another source of learning originates
from think tanks, research centers, and civil society organizations. These
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organizations offer a new source of ideas for policy innovation to local officials, and increasingly play a larger role in policymaking (Mertha, 2009;
Ngeow, 2015).
Based on the analysis of experimental policies and the Local Governance Innovation Awards program, I theorize that a process of peer learning is creating a new promotion strategy of innovation. Learning from
others using this strategy helps reduce the costs associated with experimental policies for individual cadres, namely, risk and uncertainty, and
also increases the perception of the likelihood of success by demonstrating how an innovation strategy is a successful way to accelerate promotion and by showing how particular experiments might be designed. In
fact, the Innovation Awards program finds that almost half of the winning
nominations were based on learning, with adoption and then improvement cases accounting for 29.9 percent, and direct adoption cases accounting for 14 percent (X. D. Yang, 2013).
In summary, the target management, one level down and holding
to account systems all seek to align local incentives with central directives. Competition among cadres to win promotion motivates a search for
better strategies, but this could result in many outcomes. Additionally,
local needs in the community in which officials are embedded also exert
influence, but perhaps less so for higher government levels like county
and above where cadres rotate through many areas and hope to be promoted out of the province in which they serve. I contend that a process of
local-cadre learning explains the increase in subnational policy innovation
despite the risk and uncertainty, as cadres learn from the promotion successes of others. This is an adaptive response to the political ecosystem,
and leads to subnational governments serving as experimental policy
laboratories as observed by many scholars and China analysts.

Implications and Next Steps in this Research Agenda

Although the motivations behind policy innovation are difficult to
ascertain and complex, I argue that they are vitally important to under100

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standing reform pathways in China. Increasing amounts and types of

policy experimentation help the CCP better adapt to changes in its political and economic systems. However, currently two problems hinder the
current practice of policy experimentation in China from playing this role:
the inability to capture innovation lessons to transfer them and the sustainability of these innovations.
Heilmann, Shih, and Hofem implicitly argue that mechanisms for
learning be included in all experimental policy programs, rather than allowing this learning process to be ad hoc as it is presently. They find
that one policy experimentthe high-technology zones (HTZs)has
a built in mechanism for active contribution to policy-making through
administrative exploration (2013, p. 915). Heilmann and his coauthors
find that the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Science and Technology overseeing the HTZs use the zones for information about which innovations
actually work and which existing policies should be adjusted in response
(Heilmann, Shih, & Hofem, 2013, p. 915). In addition, the wide variation
that the authors find in HTZs (mission drift) resulted from the discovery
by local officials of tangible economic potential (ranging from creative
promotional schemes for start-up firms to opaque property deals) that had
not been recognized by national policy-makers beforehand (Heilmann,
Shih, & Hofem, 2013, p. 915). This variation or mission drift means that
HTZs thus have been a means to deal with pervasive uncertainty regarding the unknown potential, appropriate priorities and effective instruments
of innovation policy. This uncertainty can be reduced if policy-making
is designed as a search and discovery process and includes corrective
mechanisms such as decentralized experimentation, continual centrallocal feedback, regular review and adjustments of national programs
(Heilmann, Shih, & Hofem, 2013, p. 915). One way to institutionalize the
currently ad hoc learning process among local cadres is to incorporate all
policy experimentation under the purview of a national innovation system
with a broader mandate and a higher rank than the current National Innovation System (NIS). A national governance or innovation system would
help diffuse successful experiments and enable the government to capture
experiments that might be able to solve governance problems at a national
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level. This would allow for regular review and feedback, but might not
mitigate the risk of innovation or the problem of face innovation as I
discuss next. Additionally, central authorities should continue exemplar
campaigns and innovation training through the Party School network as
evidence shows that this reduces the costs of innovation for cadres.
Second, while cadre learning may have encouraged the emergence
of a dominant strategy of innovation over the 2000s, does this motivation lead to more sustainable policy change? Although this outcome of
the emergence of an innovation strategy by subnational officials is often
positive and results in economic development, we also see a significant
amount of what I call face innovation. Face innovation is also an adaptive response to learning about promotion strategies, and manifests itself
where subnational officials determine that the appearance of being innovative matters more than the outcome of the innovation. Factors that
might result in face innovation are when tenure in the present role is short
and/or the policy area so complex that results are difficult to measure.
For example, innovation around protecting the environment, such as Bo
Xilais energy-conservation innovations in Dalian, takes a long time to
show any result and is such a complex issue that it is difficult to attribute
any change in the environment to one particular policy. Additionally,
Xufeng Zhu (2013) finds that although tenure in one position can last up
to 5 years, the average is 2.7, meaning that any positive outcomes of innovation introduced by one cadre will be enjoyed by another (as would be
the same with any failures). In these instances, innovation might still be
the best promotion strategy and make the cadre appear to be responsive
to local problems; however, the type of political and financial resources
needed to make the experiment successful and sustainable are not worth
investing. As Fewsmith (2013) finds, failed or face innovation limits the
ability of the CCP to continue to adapt to changing political and economic
conditions.
One of the criticisms of both the experimentation under hierarchy
and local-need approaches is the sustainability of these innovations.
Innovation in response to superior demands might not have the necessary political will behind it at the local level to make is sustainable and
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effective, and innovation in response to local needs might not last once
the problem is solved or the sponsoring official moves to another position. Commitment to the success of these experiments might not be high
enough due to external motivation and quick turnover, which might lead
to face innovation. This innovation is simply the appearance of experimenting without a substantial resource or political will commitment,
ensuring the failure of the innovation when the cadre is transferred. The
phenomenon of face innovation, similar to face or status projects during
the reform era, explains Joseph Fewsmiths findings of the failure of most
subnational innovation (2013). In fact, that is one of the criticisms of the
Local Governance Innovation program (Lu, 2010). Although Xuedong
Yang finds that out of 113 finalists, 106 projects have continued to operate in places where they originated, 86 innovations being continued in
other places, and only 3 projects ended, other studies have found the sustainability of innovation in response to local problems a challenge (2013).
Need-based or pragmatic innovation arguments seem to explain mostly
administrative experiments and might not be sustained once the problem
has been addressed or the innovative cadre moves to another position.
Although the answer to this problem might seem to be increasing
cadre tenure in each position, longer tenures might have the unintended
consequence of placing even more pressure on cadres for face innovation. Instead I argue that possible methods to reduce the problem of face
or unsustainable innovation would be to link promotion to longer-term
results even once the official is transferred. Redefining the innovation
category on cadre evaluations to emphasize efforts to ensure sustainability
and create a learning system with long-term goals, like those recently proposed for judicial reform, would create more political will for sustainability. This redefined innovation category would be measured by indicators
showing efforts at the institutionalization of innovations, such as empowering agencies to implement these policies and funding this implementation, and would also tie this innovation to its long-term performance. For
example, if a cadre experiments with policies to reduce income inequality,
the measure of income inequality in this area could be used some time
later even if the cadre has moved to another post. Although this might
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encourage less face innovation, it might also have the unintended effect
of reducing all innovation since success is still uncertain but riskier than
before. In addition to using sustainability metrics, an additional bonus
for innovation (successful and failed) could be added to the evaluation
process to reduce the risk of experimentation. This would be an effort to
create a culture of experimentation and risk taking at the local level, but
under the auspices and supervision of a national office of policy innovation, which could capture best practices and feed them back into the currently ad hoc learning process.
These two reforms of redefining innovation indicators in cadre evaluations and creating a more powerful national innovation system might
address some of the challenges to the current system. Keping Yu also
advocates the creation of a national governance system, which recently
seems to have received support at the Third Plenum of the 18th Party
Congress in 2013 (Ngeow, 2015). This is important, as Keping Yu argues,
because
government innovations are the innovative reforms conducted by public authorities to increase administrative efficiency and promote public interest.
The process of government innovation is a continuous process of reforming
and perfecting the public sector, it is a form of governance reform . . . The
Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government has always emphasized political reforms, but the political reforms in China are not reforms of
the basic political institutional framework, but the reform of its national governance system, which is manifested in government innovations. (2011, p. 3)

Despite all of the burgeoning literature on subnational innovation in

China, we lack an explanation for why local officials engage in this risky
behavior. Although this article is meant to be a theory-building exercise
rather than an empirical analysis able to test competing explanations,
the next step in this research agenda is to design measures to conduct this
type of analysis. First, the top-down causal pathway begins with elite
(central or provincial) interest in experimentation, and then relies on the
evaluation system (TMS) to align local cadre interests with those of the
elite, resulting in policy innovation. Testing this causal pathway would
require first finding evidence of central signals for experimentation, like
a circular from a Ministry, and then locating evidence (likely from either
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surveys or interviews) that cadres implementing innovations in this area

perceive that they will be rewarded by innovating. Second, the bottomup causal pathway begins with a local problem challenging governability,
and a policy innovation designed to ameliorate this problem. Testing this
causal pathway will require in-depth interviews or surveys to discover
cadres perceptions of severe local governance challenges and why policy
innovation was the only or best solution. Third, the learning causal pathway begins with time-sensitive competition for promotion, and then locating evidence that cadres perceived that innovation was a winning strategy.
Measuring learning is difficult, and would likely require either subnational cadre surveys or a large-scale interviewing process asking about
sources of learning such as participation in training, reading about other
officials pilot programs, or innovation awards. It is likely that these three
causal pathways might be operating simultaneously in different provinces
or policy areas, necessitating using methodologies that allow for multifinality.
Although this analysis might be difficult, China scholars need to
better understand the motivation of local officials engaging in innovation
because subnational experimentation represents a path to successful political and economic change without fundamental (and politically infeasible)
reform of governing institutions. Although not all of the problems facing
the party-state may be solved with technocratic policy solutions, many of
them, such as income inequality, elder care, household registration (),
and land reform, may be ameliorated this way. These solutions could
greatly improve human welfare in China, and reduce social unrest and
thus increase the durability of the CCP. In order to capture this benefit,
the central government must better institutionalize this learning process
to promote the correct lessons, and align incentives to reduce risk and
promote more sustainable innovation versus face innovation.

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