The Politics of Innovation in China: Local Officials as Policy Entrepreneurs

In this article, I address the puzzle of what motivates local officials in China to do something new—create a new policy, launch a pilot, adopt an experimental policy—especially when such innovation has uncertain outcomes. Despite the uncertainty and risk, we observe a great deal of policy innovation, both the creation and adoption of experiments, at the subnational level in China. In this article, I explore local policymakers' incentives regarding innovation to understand why they experiment with new policies under conditions of political risk and uncertainty. I utilize data from existing studies on policy innovation, including the Local Governance Innovation Awards (中國地方政府創新獎), to conduct this analysis. This analysis is significant because many scholars have noted that local innovation and adaptation is the key to authoritarian resilience in China. Therefore, the ability to encourage innovation (and capture good ideas) is vital to continued success, and Xi Jinping's administration must institutionalize innovation by realigning incentives to reward sustainable innovation rather than superficial or “face” innovation. This institutional change might help transform the political and economic system in China through incremental policy innovation rather than fundamental reform.