State-Mediated Knowledge Transfer and Resource Mobility: A Case Study of China Local Government Entrepreneurship

his paper focuses on a new phenomenon in China: local government entrepreneurship in constructing infrastructure and attracting investment has been diffused from more developed to less developed regions. We argue that this geographically diffused phenomenon is part of a larger attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to facilitate advancement of less developed regions. The CCP has used a unique and centralized personnel management system to shift knowledge and resources in the interest of local economic development through betweenregion pairing assistance and inter-regional cadre transfer. This diffusion has mixed results: it accelerates infrastructure construction, investment and economic growth in less developed areas, but at the expense of increased social exclusion and environmental pollution.