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Reassessing the Performance Evaluation System in the Xi Jinping Era: Changes and Implications

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Abstract

Existing literature on China’s Performance Evaluation System and how it shapes cadre behavior tends to assume a hierarchy of work targets either through the framework of soft targets, hard targets, and priority targets with veto power or through target measurability. However, this traditional conceptualization of target hierarchy can no longer capture the nature of content of today’s Performance Evaluation System nor can it explain cadre behavior under the new economic and political order imposed by Xi Jinping. Based on field research conducted in various administrative level localities of four provinces during 2014, 2016, and 2017, I argue that today’s Performance Evaluation System has evolved into an increasingly balanced system driven by three prevailing features: the diminishing hard/soft targets dichotomy, the much more constrained power of priority targets with veto power, and the comprehensive quantification of evaluation targets. This study contributes to an updated understanding of the incentive mechanism of the Performance Evaluation System and how that can help explain cadre behavior today. The findings of the research have important political and economic implications on the Xi administration and the Communist Party.

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Notes

  1. Interview with a municipal official, Yichang 宜昌, Hubei, 30 November 2011.

  2. Interview with a municipal official, Yichang, Hubei, 28 June 2016.

  3. See, e.g., O’Brien and Li ([41], p. 172) call the system “cadre responsibility system” whereas Chan and Gao ([9], p. 4) and Gao ([17], p. 618) refer to it as “the target-based responsibility system (mubiao zerenzhi目标责任制).”

  4. Interview with a county official, Gong’an 公安, Hubei, 1 June 2017.

  5. Interviews: county official, Hubei, 9 June 2016; county official, Hubei, 16 June 2016; municipal official, Hubei, 29 June 2016.

  6. Interview: Yangjiachang 杨家厂, Hubei, 16 June 2016.

  7. See, e.g., Chan and Gao ([9], p. 4) claim that “performance measurement… was introduced in governments at and below the county level in the 1990s.”

  8. Interview with a municipal PES official, Fuyang 阜阳, Anhui on June 19, 2014, revealed that Anhui provincial government conducted a systematic PES on municipalities, but I was not able to obtain formal documents to substantiate this claim. In contrast, county PES officials at Gong’an, Hubei, stated that in Hubei province, there was no PES applied to municipal Party secretaries and government heads (interview, 23 July 2014).

  9. See, e.g., Zhu and Jin ([60[, p. 138) assert that there lacks a performance evaluation system for provincial governments; Su et al. ([45], p. 3) and Choi ([12], p. 969) also acknowledge that they have not found evidence that can attest to provincial leaders’ performance being evaluated.

  10. For example, Hubei provincial government issued methods in 2015 on the evaluation of municipal leading cadres’ work on the rule of law [32].

  11. For example, the central government started in 2014 to evaluate provinces’ carbon dioxide emission reduction [56].

  12. E.g., Edin states that “hard targets tend to be economic in nature… ([14], p. 39).”

  13. See, e.g., Kennedy’s examples of hard targets for township cadres contain both taxes and birth control ([29], p. 711), and Heberer and Trappel’s list of hard target examples include “economic development, stability, increase of local level income, and birth control ([23], p. 1056).”

  14. O’Brien and Li enumerate what constitutes popular and unpopular policies in one paragraph ([41], p. 170).

  15. Interview with a township official, Kaiping 开平district, Hebei, 19 June 2017.

  16. A random comparison of 2016 government work reports between Gong’an and Ninghai 宁海, a county of Ningbo city, Zhejiang province suggests that Gong’an’s 2015 GDP was 21 billion yuan, whereas it was 43.4 billion yuan for Ninghai.

  17. Kaiping district carries the same administrative rank as a county does.

  18. The challenge of gaining systemic access to PES documents has already been well documented ([9], p. 4). And my research experience suggests that this challenge remains today.

  19. Interview with a township official, Kaiping district, Hebei, 19 June 2017.

  20. Interview with a municipal official, Fuyang, Anhui, 19 June 2014.

  21. E.g., in the 2016 PES of its 16 townships, Gong’an County categorizes awards in three tiers: two “first prize” 一等奖, three “second prize” 二等奖, and two “progressive prize” 进位奖 [21].

  22. Interview with two county officials, Gong’an, Hubei, 23 July 2014.

  23. Ibid. 

  24. Ibid. 

  25. Interview with a county official, Gong’an, Hubei, 12 June 2016.

  26. Interview with two township officials, Xiangshan 象山 county, Zhejiang, 12 June 2017.

  27. Kinkel and Hurst discuss a similar issue of the “hyper-quantified conditions” in the judicial cadre evaluation system [30].

  28. Interview with a township official, Gong’an county, Hubei, 18 June 2016.

  29. It is important to note that target quantification is highly contested in terms of whether the quantifying method faithfully captures the work’s content and nature. But measurement accuracy is beyond the scope of this research.

  30. Interview with a township official, Gong’an County, Hubei, 16 June 2016.

  31. Interview with a township official, Kaiping district, Hebei, 19 June 2017.

  32. Interview with two township officials, Xiangshan county, Zhejiang, 12 June 2017.

  33. Interview with a township government head, Yangjiachang, Hubei, 29 May 2014.

  34. For example, a standing deputy county head of Zunyin 遵义city, Guizhou province, resigned after he was too busy to attend both of his parents’ cancer and open-heart surgeries [10]; similarly, a hugely popular county party secretary who once did skydiving to promote local tourism suddenly left his job [11].

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  1. Department of Political Science and International Relations, Middle Tennessee State University, Room 250, Peck Hall, MTSU Box 29, Murfreesboro, TN, 37132, USA

    Zhen Wang

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Wang, Z. Reassessing the Performance Evaluation System in the Xi Jinping Era: Changes and Implications. East Asia 35, 59–77 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-018-9281-x

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