Assistant Professor Lee Jonghyuk from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), presented for the 27th Politics and IR Brown Bag Session. His topic, “The Anatomy of Meritocracy: Collective Career Incentives and Subnational Variations of Economic Growth in China” looked at how the competition for promotion among Chinese provincial officials could have a positive economic impact on China at the subnational level.
It is generally accepted that promotions within China’s provincial bureaucracies is highly dependent on producing strong economic results. This creates incentives among local officials to compete among themselves to achieve the greatest economic growth—referred to as the “Promotion Tournament” (PT). The more intense the competition, the greater the likelihood of higher economic growth.
However, not all officials may engage in this competition with the same fervour. This depends on their individual prospects for promotion. Officials with little central experience, connections, and education, are generally seen as having little career prospects (i.e. ‘dead-enders’), and thus have little motivation to engage in PT. Ironically, officials with all these advantages and the best career prospects (i.e. ‘rising stars’) would also not be highly motivated to compete aggressively since their path is more or less assured. It is those who fall in between these two extremes—officials with good but not guaranteed prospects—that would be most highly motivated to compete (i.e. ‘careerists’), willing to take risks and jumping at every opportunity to succeed. This suggests that the greater the number of careerists in the provincial standing committee, the greater the provincial growth rate.
To test this hypothesis, Assistant Professor Lee drew upon an extensive database which included the biographical and career progression data of over 4,000 CCP cadres. Using his Machine Learning Model, he established a system to predict the possibility of promotion for each individual, and from there sort them into the categories of dead-enders, rising-stars, and careerists. This method had a prediction accuracy that surpassed the conventional theoretical model by 11.7%.
The model found a positive co-relation between the number of ‘careerists’ and provincial economic growth. In contrast, no clear co-relation was found when comparing provincial GDP with the number of ‘rising-stars’ and ‘dead-enders’. For example, in Fujian between 2002 and 2003, when the proportion of careerists increased by 3.5 times, there was a 3% increase in GDP growth rate. In addition, this growth effect was observed to be much greater when ‘careerists’ were in ‘rank-and-file’ positions, rather than higher positions like governor or party secretary.
While the number of careerists is not the sole indicator for provincial economic growth, this model shows that political composition is also an important that should be taken into consideration.