Beyond economic performance: a meta-analytic study of the relationship between performance indicators and cadre promotion in China

This meta-analysis synthesizes evidence from 67 empirical studies to investigate the relationship between performance metrics and cadre promotion in China, advancing theoretical debates about tournament mechanisms in authoritarian regimes. The study yields three principal findings: First, economic performance exhibits robust and consistent positive associations with promotion across all administrative levels, regions, and political identities; second, environmental performance shows conditional effects, with significance restricted to intensity-based indicators such as pollution-to-GDP ratios, though these demonstrate secondary impacts relative to economic metrics; and third, other non-economic metrics reveal systematic disparities–social stability maintenance shows null effects despite policy prominence, innovation only correlates when economically instrumental, and public service investment displays a counterintuitive negative association. These findings refine promotion tournament and political tournament theories by demonstrating how China’s evaluation system selectively operationalizes performance criteria. While confirming economic growth as the dominant promotion driver, the results reveal significant implementation gaps in formal comprehensive evaluation policies, particularly for non-economic metrics. By systematically mapping these patterns, the research provides both an analytical framework for studying authoritarian personnel systems and empirical benchmarks for cross-regime comparisons of performance-based governance. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.