New approaches to promotion

Growth-oriented criteria for officials should be replaced with emphasis on sustainable development and the rule of law

In China's bureaucratic system, there used to be hidden rules that influenced whether a senior official in a region was promoted. The most obvious was the "GDP law": Whoever made the greatest contribution to GDP growth was promoted more quickly than his rivals.

For this reason, high-ranking local officials followed more or less the same path as they sought to climb the career ladder. They concentrated on attracting business investment, launching large construction projects such as subways or big plazas, and developing realty programs, all of which could stimulate GDP growth over a short period.

However, these types of construction and investment programs can breed bribery in both the bidding and construction stages. Even if high-ranking officials try to remain clean, their subordinates can take advantage and drag them into dirty deals.

In addition, these projects do not necessarily relate to people's livelihoods. Instead, the authorities often demolish local residents' houses with little reimbursement to make way for construction projects, which can provoke public outrage.

Such outcomes can cast a shadow over the reputation of leading officials as the anti-graft campaign continues.

As a result, senior officials in many cities and regions have turned away from the blind pursuit of GDP growth. A side effect is that some tend to sit idle in their offices instead of pressing on with local development efforts; to quote some media, "Our officials are turning clean, but also lazy".

Holding a senior government position brings fairly good material rewards and extremely high social status in China, which is not always the case in Western countries.