The political economy of air pollution: Local development, sustainability, and political incentives in China

Political promotion can be seen as the most important career incentive for officials in China. With an emphasis on GDP, the Chinese central government made promoting economic growth the main performance evaluation criterion for Party secretaries. On the contrary, this kind of regional competition among Party secretaries raises the possibility that the central government can motivate Party secretaries to pay more attention to environmental issues. In late 2007, the central government advocated a scientific concept of green development, and the traditional performance evaluation criterion for Party secretaries has been gradually replaced by the Green GDP evaluation criterion. The paper aims to discuss the impact of promotion incentive on air pollution with a panel dataset of 152 Party secretaries across 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2017. We present evidence that the Green GDP evaluation criterion has put Party secretaries under much more pressure to mitigate the side effect of economic growth after 2007. This finding further implies that the effect to constrain the air pollution by promoting or demoting Party secretaries on the basis of Green GDP evaluation criterion is likely to diminish on their second term. That is a perceived tendency of second terms called 'second-term' curse. Therefore, the government must strictly enforce environmental laws and regulations, explore the means to establish and implement a lifelong liability system for major decisions and a retrospective mechanism to hold people accountable for wrong decisions.