“Whether China's cadre system rewards performance is disputed: Li and Zhou (2005) find that provincial leaders' promotion chances rose with economic growth, whereas Shih, Adolph and Liu (2012) find no evidence that growth was rewarded with higher Central Committee rank and point to factional ties, education and revenue collection.”

Context. Jia, Kudamatsu and Seim (2015) reconcile the findings in part: performance matters most for officials who also have connections to senior leaders.