China is a unitary state. Cities are classified into four hierarchical levels: provincial, deputy-provincial, prefectural and county. In this paper, the word “city” is used to denote both deputy-provincial- and prefecture-level cities, which constitute the majority of all prefecture-level administrative units.<sup>10</sup> Each city has two top bureaucrats: the city party secretary (PS), the top official of the city communist party, and the mayor, the head of the city government.<sup>11</sup> Though the PS and the mayor have the same administrative ranking, the PS is _de facto_ dominant, enjoying more power over policy making, personnel control and resource allocation within their jurisdictions under the regionally decentralized political system (Landry 2008). While a typical PS is ranked at the prefecture level,<sup>12</sup> some are ranked at the deputy-provincial level either because the city is particularly important or because they hold deputy-provincial level positions at the same time.

The PS is appointed and supervised by the provincial party committee.<sup>13</sup> A full term of office is five years. In practice, most PSs stay in office for fewer than five years. Although some may be appointed for a second term, they rarely stay in the same office for more than 10 years (Wang, Zhang, and Zhou 2020). Figure 1 shows the distribution of tenure lengths in office for the PSs in our data. A large proportion of PSs stay in office for around 3 years, with few having a second term.

Before the reform began in 1978, city leaders were evaluated by their political conformity. After the reform, regional economic performance measures (such as the growth of total output and fiscal revenues) became key performance indicators for their career advancement (Li and Zhou 2005; Wang, Zhang, and Zhou 2020). For example, Li and Zhou (2005) show that between 1979 and 1995, the chance of promotion for provincial PSs increased with their economic performance. At the prefecturecity level, promotion opportunities of PSs mainly include membership in the provincial Party Standing Committee, the vice provincial governorship, and the deputy ministership in the central government.<sup>14</sup>

# **2.2 GDP accounting system and target setting in China**

# **2.2.1 GDP compilation and statistical institutions**

> 10 There are 333 prefecture-level administrative units in China as of 2020: 15 deputy-provincial level cities, 278 prefecture-level cities, 7 prefectures ( _diqu_ ), 30 autonomous prefectures ( _zizhizhou_ ) and 3 leagues ( _meng_ ). We do not consider provincial- and county-level cities because county-level cities are already embedded in prefecture-level cities, while province-level cities are too large to be comparable.

> 11 Top Chinese local officials could of course be viewed as both politicians and bureaucrats. Since they are typically professional life-time careerists in the Chinese bureaucratic system, who are selected for their capacity and evaluated professionally, and aim at rising in rank and importance, it is likely better to view them as bureaucrats rather than politicians, which has the connotation of catering to voters, non-existent in China.

> 12 The ranks of China’s officials are similar to those of administrative units.

> 13 Appointments of PSs and mayors of deputy-provincial level cities are also subject to the oversight of the Central Committee. These deputy-provincial level cities are governed by provincial-level governments though.

> 14 For deputy-provincial-level ranked PSs, the positions for promotion include provincial secretaryship and governorship as well as ministership in the central government.

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