Measurement, promotions and patterns of behavior in Chinese local government

In this paper, the everyday politics of rural Chinese officials will be analyzed, largely drawing on my own fieldwork in central China, and studies by Western and Chinese scholars who have spent extensive periods of time working alongside rural officials. The dual identities of Chinese officials as market players and the implementers of government policy are outlined. The paper will examine the formal, informal and semi-formal dynamics of political power in rural China, and propose a matrix of incentives and constraints that can be used to analyze the behavior of rural officials across different regions of China.