**Table 1: Effects of cadre rotation on local environmental policy implementation**

- **<mark>Pros of the cadre turnover system Cons of the cadre turnover system</mark>** • Bridges horizontal gaps: Improved • Incentivizes self-maximizing and rent-seeking coordination among departments cadre behavior  _E.g., an EPB director’s prior work_  _E.g., short-term staying mayors and Partyexperience in the local coal secretaries in Datong City (Shanxi) extracted management bureau can help to rents from local industries but did not identify common interests between both undertake economic restructuring Datong City departments and thus aid the formation urgently needed. of green coalitions._ • Encourages cadres to prioritize short-term,

- • Bridges vertical gaps: transfer of visible results over long-term gains. resources, knowledge, and policy support  _E.g., many leaders invested significant_  _E.g., a cadre exchange program resources in planting trees in city centers, an between county and municipal EPB initiative that produces quick and visible officials in Wenshan (Yunnan) results, but delayed economic restructuring, as enhances communication across this process is more difficult and complex and administrative levels and improves can take years to bear fruit. cadres’ knowledge of upper or lower_ • Results in damaging discontinuity in local green _governments’ daily environmental_ initiatives (“new lords, new laws”) _tasks._  _E.g., newly-posted cadres often stop existing_

- • Builds government-enterprise alliances: _initiatives, regardless of their merits, in order_  _E.g., local cadres’ insider knowledge to place their own stamp on a locality. This can reduce information asymmetries frequently comes along with policy uncertainty between the regulator and the as local departments “wait and see” whether regulated.  Officials who previously the next leader will select a different focus. worked in state-owned enterprises have_ • Constrains implementation capacity: limited _a better understanding of SOEs’_ local knowledge and networks

- _internal processes and politics and can_  _E.g., in an average tenure period of three to_

- _use this knowledge to better regulate four years, more than half of a leaders’ time_

- _them or persuade them to join green could be taken to familiarize themselves with_

- _growth initiatives._ _<u>the locality and establish trust of subordinates.</u>_

_Source: Eaton and Kostka (2013, 2014)_ The incentives local cadres face to secure particular goals during short tenure terms are sometimes starkly at odds with the center’s long-term plans for green and low-carbon urbanization. _Figure 3_ suggests how the personal political incentives of promotion-hopeful cadres might affect their prioritization of different green growth policies. While there are likely to be many factors involved in the selective implementation of greening growth, the “political accomplishment value” ( _zhengji_ ) along with the time frame of a given initiative are particularly important in steering cadres toward some policies and away from others. In the context of the recent green FYPs, binding environmental targets (e.g. energy intensity targets) would tend to be assigned a higher “political accomplishment” value than non-binding soft targets (e.g. increasing service sector as a proportion of GDP). The “project time to maturity” axis implies that projects which deliver tangible results within the leaders’ tenure (i.e., within three to four years) will tend to be selected over projects with a longer time-frame. The matrix shows how these political accomplishment and time considerations interact in the process of selective policy implementation. It suggests that, in allocating their energy and scarce resources to competing projects and fulfilling environmental policy mandates, leading officials are likely to pick green projects with both high political accomplishment value and a high probability of producing results within their own tenure cycle (quadrant 3). By contrast, projects which are not seen to enhance a cadre’s chances of promotion and which take a long time to produce results will tend to be ranked at the bottom of the prioritization list (quadrant 1). Projects that make cadres stand out in their peer group (high political accomplishment value) but without deliverables at the end of the tenure period might also be sidelined, depending on how much 19