City Administrative Level and Municipal Party Secretaries’ Promotion: Understanding the Logic of Shaping Political Elites in China
Published in Journal of Contemporary China, 2019
This study focuses on the following important but often overlooked variable in studies investigating China’s cadre system: the city administrative level. Using a dataset covering Chinese municipal party secretaries from 2000 to 2017, this article finds that secretaries from sub-provincial cities are more likely to be promoted than those from prefecture-level cities. This result reveals that serving as a party secretary in sub-provincial cities may be a key step towards further promotion among those who become vice ministers at a young age. In addition, economic performance has a negligible effect on sub-provincial secretaries’ better promotion prospects, highlighting the existence of heterogeneity caused by the city administrative level in the promotion tournament.
Recommended citation: Yan, Y., & Yuan, C. (2020). "City Administrative Level and Municipal Party Secretaries’ Promotion: Understanding the Logic of Shaping Political Elites in China." Journal of Contemporary China. 29(122).
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