Birth influences future: examining discrimination against Chinese deputy mayors with grassroots administration origins

The study investigates whether the level of government at which Chinese officials begin their careers influences their future political outcomes, specifically promotion and political downfall, with a focus on deputy mayors in municipal cities. In China’s centralized, appointment-based system, research has largely emphasized performance-based and network-based promotion mechanisms, but little attention has been paid to discrimination by origin of career start. The authors posit that officials beginning at grassroots-level governments face structural disadvantages in building ties (guanxi) with higher-level leaders and often come from less advantaged family backgrounds, reducing their promotion prospects and increasing their risk of political falling. The study aims to provide systematic empirical evidence on this discrimination, addressing a gap in the literature and highlighting implications for governance stability.

Two main schools dominate the literature on Chinese officials’ careers: performance-based promotion, emphasizing economic performance (e.g., GDP growth) and education as key drivers of advancement; and network-based promotion, emphasizing guanxi, family background (e.g., princeling status), and patron-client ties as decisive (Bo, 1996, 2002; Landry, 2003; Li and Zhou, 2005; Shih et al., 2012; Opper et al., 2015; Zeng, 2013). While studies document how performance and networks shape promotions, fewer examine political downfall, with some linking corruption and downfall to economic contexts and factional ties. Studies on discrimination in Chinese politics have focused on gender and ethnic disparities among elites (Su, 2006; Fu et al., 2018; Tian and Bush, 2020). No systematic empirical research had examined discrimination against officials with grassroots administrative origins, forming the gap this article addresses.

Design: The study uses two complementary quantitative approaches: (1) time-dependent competing risk regression (Fine–Gray model) to model cumulative incidence and sub-distribution hazard ratios (SHRs) for promotion and falling in the presence of competing events; and (2) classical logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for the binary outcomes by end of 2019. Outcomes: Political promotion—event of interest is promotion to municipal level; competing event is leaving the official circle (retirement, corruption investigation, death, switching to business). Coding: promotion=1; competing exit=2; censored=0. Survival time (Time_Promotion) is months from career start to event or December 2019. Political falling—event of interest is political falling (corruption investigation, unnatural death); competing event is peaceful falling (natural death, switching to business). Coding: falling=1; peaceful=2; censored=0. Survival time (Time_Falling) is months from career start to event or December 2019. Key independent variable: Career Starting Level—government level where the official began: grassroots=1, municipal=2, provincial=3, central=4. Controls: Tenure (years in post), Age, Gender, Party (CPC vs democratic parties/non-partisan), Minority (Han vs minority), Native (serving in native city), Abroad (study-abroad experience), CCYL (Communist Youth League work experience), Education (junior college, bachelor, master, doctorate), average real GDP growth during tenure, Ln Per Capita GDP, Ln Population of city. GDP data calculated at 2000 constant prices; pre-2000 GDP excluded due to data reliability. Data: Biographical data for municipal-level (dijishi) deputy mayors incumbent at end-2008, compiled from city almanacs, official city websites, and Baidu Encyclopedia CVs. Time-to-event tracked through December 2019. From approximately 2,204 deputy mayors nationally, 1,675 records (about 76%) had complete required information and were analyzed. Subsamples for robustness: (a) Standing committee membership: standing (n=506) vs non-standing (n=1,169); (b) Regional divisions: western (n=499), central (n=629), eastern (n=547). Estimation and interpretation: Competing risk models report SHRs; logistic models report ORs. Values >1 indicate higher promotion probability or falling risk (depending on model context); values <1 indicate lower probability/risk. Consistency across both methods was required to conclude an effect.

Descriptive: In the full sample, 55.64% were promoted to municipal level, 44.36% were not; 12.18% experienced political falling by 2019. Promotion (competing risk; full sample): Relative to grassroots starts, SHRs increase monotonically with starting level—municipal=1.32, provincial=1.78, central=2.72—indicating progressively higher promotion probabilities. Similar increasing trends appear across standing/non-standing and regional subsamples (some municipal-level effects are less significant in certain subsamples). Promotion (logistic; full sample): ORs also increase with starting level—municipal=1.36, provincial=1.91, central=2.54—confirming higher odds of promotion relative to grassroots starts across subsamples. Falling (competing risk; full sample): SHRs are below 1 relative to grassroots, indicating lower risk with higher starting levels; central-level start SHR=0.41 is significant, with decreasing trends across subsamples though significance varies (municipal/provincial often not significant in time-dependent models). Falling (logistic; full sample): ORs decrease with higher starting levels—municipal=0.69, provincial=0.48, central=0.25—many estimates significant, reinforcing that higher starting levels associate with lower odds of political falling across subsamples. Controls: Merit proxies (Education, GDP Growth, Ln Per Capita GDP) generally show nonsignificant or inconsistent effects on promotion, suggesting capability/performance did not drive advancement at this level. Age correlates negatively with promotion and with falling (older officials less likely to fall). Female and non-Communist-party (democratic parties/non-partisan) deputy mayors are less likely to fall, potentially reflecting marginalization and lower exposure to corruption opportunities. Native status sometimes aligns with higher falling risk; faster local economic growth associates with greater falling risk in some models.

Findings support the hypotheses that higher career starting levels increase promotion chances and reduce political falling risks among Chinese deputy mayors. These results align with network-based explanations: early placement in higher-level governments facilitates longer-term relationship building (guanxi) with superior leaders and exposure to influential networks and norms, which are pivotal in promotion decisions within China’s authoritarian cadre system. Additionally, the historical state job allocation system linked starting level to family background strength, making starting level a proxy for both acquired and inherited political capital. Merit-based indicators show limited influence on outcomes at this senior echelon, underscoring discrimination by origin rather than capability. The observed patterns imply social stratification within the bureaucracy: grassroots-origin officials are structurally disadvantaged, face lower promotion probabilities, and higher risks of downfall. This mismatch between the critical role of grassroots cadres and their career prospects may fuel discontent and could threaten the sustainability of CPC rule, especially given grassroots cadres’ centrality in crisis implementation (e.g., COVID-19 responses).

The study provides the first systematic empirical evidence that the level at which Chinese deputy mayors begin their careers strongly shapes their subsequent promotion and risk of political falling: higher starting levels yield greater promotion probabilities and lower falling risks, while grassroots origins associate with the lowest promotion odds and highest falling risks. Contributions include: (1) documenting discrimination against officials with grassroots beginnings; (2) focusing on deputy leaders, a typically understudied but crucial cohort in China’s promotion pipeline; and (3) introducing competing risk analysis to the study of Chinese officials’ careers. The authors highlight policy significance: the inequity facing grassroots-origin cadres contradicts their importance to governance and stability. Future research directions proposed include testing whether starting-level effects extend to chief leaders, examining analogous phenomena in other authoritarian contexts, and exploring strategies to mitigate these disparities.

Data constraints include incomplete CVs leading to a 76% usable sample of deputy mayors incumbent at end-2008; reliance on publicly available biographical sources (city almanacs, official sites, Baidu) may introduce measurement error. GDP data prior to 2000 were excluded due to reliability concerns. Time-to-event assumptions may be less relevant for falling, as indicated by weaker significance in competing risk models for some starting levels. The study focuses on deputy mayors and a single cohort (incumbent in 2008), which may limit generalizability to other ranks, periods, or institutional contexts. Some control effects vary across subsamples, and unobserved factors (e.g., informal patronage networks not captured by proxies) may remain.