Measuring the Goals and Incentives of Local Chinese Officials∗

Understanding the goals and incentives of those who have political power is a precur-sor for comprehending political behavior, choices, and ultimately outcomes. How-ever, there are few measures of the actual goals and incentives of political office holders, especially those within authoritarian regimes. This paper presents a mea-sure of the goals and incentives of China’s local elites through textual analysis of over 80,000 county government web pages. These data are the presentation of self that county mayors choose and provide a unique measurement opportunity to reveal incentives and goals in a way that surveys and interviews cannot. I find that cadres’ goals shift over the course of political tenure—initially, cadres emphasize their at-tentiveness and concern toward the masses through the distribution of public and private goods. In the middle of their tenure, cadres focus on opening channels of communication, providing information on government functions as well as allowing citizens to publicly voice their opinions, be it questions, complaints, or criticisms. At the end of their tenure, cadres put central emphasis on showcasing their economic achievements and progress while reducing demonstrations of concern for citizens and reducing citizen generated content