Turnover of Local Government Officials and Local Air Quality

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Lingyun He,Nini Chen
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12429

©2022 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

100 China & World Economy / 100–121, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2022

*Lingyun He, Professor, School of Economics, and Institute of Resource, Environment and Sustainable

Development Research, Jinan University, China. Email: lyhe@amss.ac.cn; Nini Chen, Postgraduate Student,

School of Economics, Jinan University, China. Email: 794309938@qq.com. This research was supported by

the State Key Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19AZD003).

Turnover of Local Government Offi cials

and Local Air Quality

Lingyun He, Nini Chen*

Abstract

This paper constructs a fixed effect model to study the impact of turnover of local

government offi cials on local air quality, and the mechanism through which this effect

takes place, using data from 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2015 to 2019. This

research shows that turnover of local government offi cials led to a decline in local air

quality, mainly due to a “responsibility gap period.” It also found that the heterogeneity

of officials and the difference in the implementation of political initiatives by cities

affected the length of the “responsibility gap period” – the shorter it was, the lower

the air pollution was during offi cial turnover. Air pollution in China is still severe and

the Chinese central government should therefore further reform the turnover system

to improve local air quality during the turnover of key local offi cials by shortening the

“responsibility gap period.”

Keywords: air quality, Chinese political initiative, offi cial turnover, promotion incentive,

responsibility gap period

JEL codes: H7, H11, M51, Q53

I. Introduction

China’s economy has been growing at a high speed for over 4 decades since economic

reform and opening up began. This is regarded throughout the world as a “miracle of

economic growth.” However, China’s rapid economic growth has taken place at the cost

of severe environmental pollution, especially air pollution. The World Development

Indicators 2006 showed that 13 Chinese cities ranked among the top 20 most polluted

cities in the world (World Bank, 2006). This phenomenon is believed to be closely

related to the central political centralization system and the local fi scal decentralization

©2022 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

101

Turnover of Government Offi cials and Local Air Quality

system in China (Sheng and Yue, 2012). Chinese political initiatives affect the specifi c

implementation of these two systems, including local financial incentives and cadre

assessment standards.

Before the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the

cadre assessment system, pursuing a political initiative that prioritized economic

construction, was based on the measurement of GDP. To develop the economy rapidly

during their tenure, local government officials very often ignored environmental

regulations, and sometimes even acquiesced in, or condoned, local enterprises’ excessive

sewage discharges to stimulate local GDP growth, thereby obtaining political promotion

and seeking rents (Jia, 2012; Wu et al., 2013).

To cope with air pollution, China has increased its emphasis on environmental

governance and has imposed strict regulations. In 2 016, the number of important

environmental protection instructions issued by the central government increased to

more than 800, which was more than twice that of 2011.1 After the 18th CPC National

Congress, China witnessed a notable political shift in focus from GDP orientation to eco-

environmental protection. The corresponding offi cial assessment criteria and incentive

mechanisms for cadres are also changing. In December 2016, the Central Committee of

the CPC and the State Council issued the Assessment Method of Ecological Civilization

Construction Goals, which includes assessing eco-environmental protection as part of the

comprehensive assessment of leading cadres. It means that eco-environmental protection

has become an important index of the assessment system for officials. Local officials

have therefore started to pay attention to environmental protection and governance

during their tenure while developing the local economy for better promotion prospects.

In September 2013, the State Council issued the Action Plan for Air Pollution Control,2

and the central government began to implement various measures to reduce the emission

of air pollutants. As shown in Figure 1, China’s emissions of SO2, nitrogen oxides, and

smoke (dust) have shown a downward trend since 2012. According to statistics from

the China Ecological Environment Bulletin 2018,3 among cities at the prefecture level

and above in 2018, the number of cities with air quality meeting the standards rose to 121,

accounting for 35.8 percent of all cities – up 65.7 percent from 2015 – which shows that

environmental performance assessment has indeed played a role.

1Data source: 2012 National Environmental Protection Conferences of China, available from: https://www.

mee.gov.cn/gkml/hbb/qt/201112/t20111226_221778.htm. The 2015 National Environmental Protection

Conferences of China, available from: https://www.mee.gov.cn/gkml/sthjbgw/qt/201701/t20170125_395242.

htm (online; cited June 2022).

2https://www.mee.gov.cn/zcwj/gwywj/201811/t20181129_676555.shtml (online; cited June 2022).

3https://www.mee.gov.cn/ywdt/tpxw/201905/t20190529_704841.shtml (online; cited June 2022).