Measuring the Goals and Incentives of Local Chinese Officials

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or reward based on the results of monitoring since upper levels control access to political office and advancement. As well, websites are visited by citizens, and thus provide a way for citizens to assist upper levels of the state in monitoring lower level officials, similar to how general media openness is used at times to minimize local corruption (Lorentzen, 2010). 3.3 Mayor Control and Websites as Venues of Display While government websites may have been intended as tools of supervision, this tool is blunted because website content is wholly controlled by the county mayor, and because there are multiple ways of meeting the information requirements laid out in OGI regulations. For example, county websites are supposed to contain economic development plans, but counties can either publish economic development plans with technical details and procedures or it can publish economic plans full of positive rhetoric and self-praise. Similarly, counties can publish financial budgets and accounts with detailed breakdowns by line item or they can publish high-level, aggregated financial information that casts the county’s performance in a positive light. This control over website content means county government websites are not an objective means for monitoring local officials but rather a public stage for PR displays by county cadres to both upper levels of the state as well as subordinates and citizens. The party secretary and mayor are the two top leaders in any Chinese county. The party secretary exerts political leadership, while the mayor leads day-to-day government functions and operations (Guo, 2009). Websites, which are part of e-government, are a government administrative function rather than CCP function. This means that while the party secretary no doubt can exert control over the content of local websites, the mayor holds primary responsibility for determining the content of county government websites. 3 Based on interviews with county-level and provincial-level officials, I find that the mayor is ultimately responsible for determining the overall strategy of website content as well as making all critical decisions related to content. Day to day maintenance of the website, 3 Analysis of websites reveals no clear relationship between the tenure of county Party Secretaries and website content. 9
including upkeep of servers, management of the codebase, and updating of web pages is done by an information office (xinxi wangluo zhongxin, xinxi zhongxin, or dianzi zhengwu guanli zhongxin) within the county government. In some counties, the county propaganda department will be involved, determining what news content is posted; however, if any content falls outside of the normal content parameters defined by the mayor, both the information office as well as the propaganda department will escalate the decision of whether to publish content to the mayor. When new mayors take office, the content of websites are reviewed and refreshed. Given mayoral control of website content and an audience that includes political superiors as well as the masses, websites are a prime venue for presentation of self by the county mayor. By examining what content mayors put forth on these public forums for their political superiors as well as the ordinary people in their jurisdiction, I am able to obtain a measure of the goals and incentives of these local elites. 3.4 Limitations The goals and incentives revealed through these public websites are unlikely to represent the full spectrum of goals and incentives that motivate county mayors. Indeed, there are certain goals such as the pursuit of rents through illegal means that cadres would have strong incentives to keep private. In addition, there are other goals, such as building deep relationships with factional sponsors or superiors, that public communications are not particularly conducive for. Thus, the measure provided by these data is not intended to encompass the whole range of goals and incentives that motivate local elites. 4 Results 4.1 County Websites and County Characteristics From the 2,796 counties websites that were identified, a random sample of 100 counties was selected for additional analysis. This set of 100 counties are located in 29 of China’s 31 provinces. 4 Sixty-one of these counties are county-level cities (xianji shi) or 4 The two provinces not represented in the 100 counties are Hainan and Qinghai. 10
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Page 15 and 16: of economic competence. Other web p
Page 17 and 18: Figure 3: Content of Websites by Ma
Page 19 and 20: expressions of good will and attent
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Page 23 and 24: gang (Guizhou), Luchun (Yunnan), Zh
Page 25 and 26: white-spaces to delineate the bound
Page 27 and 28: etc. did not interfere with the aut
Page 29 and 30: References Anonymous. 2007. “Peop
Page 31 and 32: Li, Hongbin and Li-An Zhou. 2005.
Page 33: Papers. New York: Public Affairs. 3

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