China’s Central-Local Relations in the Xi Jinping Era: Reining in the Provinces?

• In Event: Party Politics and Promotion in China: Privilege, Merit, Loyalty and Gender

Abstract

Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has displayed profound centralizing tendencies, including the de jure and de facto concentration of power in the Party itself and in the person of Xi. Most observers take for granted that, as part of Xi’s anti-corruption drive, leadership reshuffles, and institutional reforms, central authorities have tightened their control over China’s provincial authorities. Yet, while it is clear that Xi has appointed allies to top leadership posts in several provinces, scholars have yet to examine the extent and consequences of changes to broader provincial leadership teams. How much has Xi Jinping broken with past practices to saturate provincial administrations with outsider officials? Has Xi-era centralism erased differences in the governance behavior of localist and outsider officials of the sort described in past work by Persson and Zhuravskaya (2016)? To address these questions, this paper expands a database on China’s provincial party standing committees—12-15 member provincial leadership teams—compiled by Bulman and Jaros (2019). We first compare the personal characteristics of provincial leaders appointed during the period of the 18th CPC Central Committee (2012-2017) with those from the 15th-17th CPC Central Committees under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao (1997-2012). We then assess whether differences in the policy behavior of localist and outsider leaders have continued during the Xi era. Preliminary findings suggest that provincial leadership teams have become more outsider-dominated under Xi, but that the policy gap between localists and outsiders remains. At a theoretical level, this suggests a genuine departure in regional governance practices under Xi, but also shows that increased central control over appointments during the Xi era has not always translated to enhanced supervision and personnel management incentives.

Authors

• Kyle Alan Jaros, University of Oxford

• David Janoff Bulman, Johns Hopkins University