REDEFINING THE CORRECT VIEW OF PERFORMANCE

The Communist Party of China’s (CPC) recent campaign to strengthen a “correct view of performance” (政绩观) represents a structural recalibration of China’s governance framework beyond mere ideological exercises. Launched in February and expected to continue till July, the initiative acknowledges that the metrics which underpinned political legitimacy over the past four decades—particularly rapid GDP growth and infrastructural expansion—are no longer sufficient to sustain political legitimacy amidst economic slowdown, fiscal constraints and rising societal expectations. In response, the Party is attempting to redefine what counts as bureaucratic success, shifting from a narrow, quantitative conception to a model that combines political loyalty, social welfare and long-term policy execution. 

Chinese leadership has repeatedly stressed in the past few years that genuine achievements must be those that benefit the people and withstand the scrutiny of practice, public opinion and history. This reframing seeks to correct persistent distortions within local governance, where incentives have long encouraged shortsighted governance style, excessive risk-taking and the pursuit of “image projects” designed to produce immediate and visible results. However, practices ranging from data manipulation to wasteful prestige infrastructure are now explicitly framed as manifestations of a distorted performance view that undermines policy effectiveness and public trust. In the absence of electoral competition, the CPC’s authority remains closely tied to performance legitimacy—the ability to deliver outcomes that citizens perceive as meaningful. By linking performance to high-quality development, social welfare and political discipline, the campaign represents a strategic response to evolving dynamics between state capacity and public expectations. 

Drivers of China’s Performance Recalibration 

As economic growth slows and governance challenges become more complex, what counts as “performance” is being redefined from the top leadership. This shift is an attempt to sustain public confidence by presenting governance as more responsive and participatory. Mechanisms such as online feedback surveys and hotlines are being emphasised through the campaign promoting a correct view of performance, giving citizens a more visible, albeit limited, role in shaping grassroots policies.  

This campaign is also closely tied to broader policy shifts underway as China enters the 15th Five-Year Plan period (十五五). With greater emphasis on high-quality development, technological upgrading, and risk management, central leadership requires more consistent policy execution across regions. Redefining performance provides a mechanism to ensure that local actions align with these strategic goals, particularly by discouraging practices that generate financial risks or undermine long-term planning objectives.  This shift in performance evaluation is consistent with Xi Jinping’s emphasis that “the key to evaluating the performance of officials lies in their reputation among the people.” By redefining performance standards at this juncture, the central leadership seeks to ensure that local officials align their actions with these national goals—particularly by curbing debt-driven expansion, reducing regulatory distortions and prioritising durable economic and social outcomes. 

The redefinition of bureaucratic performance extends beyond economic governance into the ideological domain. Legal and policy initiatives such as the Ethnic Unity Law signals that local officials are evaluated not only on development outcomes but also on their ability to advance Party-defined narratives of national identity and social cohesion. By formalising the promotion of shared cultural symbols and the concept of the Chinese nation as a unified community, these measures encourage local governments to align museums, cultural centres and public messaging with broader nation-building objectives. This shift also reflects an effort to address a recurring tendency among local officials to prioritise highly visible cultural projects like museums as indicators of achievement. While the construction of cultural institutions is encouraged, greater emphasis is now placed on their ideological function and alignment with Party priorities rather than on the scale of investment or their symbolic value alone.

Methods for Enforcement 

The campaign's enforcement architecture reflects a trend of substituting decentralised experimentation with tighter top-down supervision as the preferred mechanism for improving policy implementation. Yet, the effectiveness of this campaign depends on the Party’s ability to enforce it across a vast and heterogeneous bureaucratic system. A central instrument to implement these measures is the deployment of central guidance groups, tasked with ensuring that local implementation aligns with Party priorities. They cover not just provincial and local bodies, but also encompass state-owned enterprises, banks, ministries and universities, thereby indicating the expansive nature of this campaign. These groups function not only as supervisors but also as instruments of rectification, identifying deviations and enforcing Party directives regarding performance of these units. This aims to reinforce hierarchical accountability and limit the scope for symbolic compliance. 

The oversight is also strengthened through integration with broader mechanisms such as inspections, audits and anti-corruption investigations. By linking the campaign to these systems, distortions such as data falsification, formalism and vanity projects are treated as systemic governance failures, which have become primary rationale behind Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. Moreover, publicizing disciplinary cases involving officials with distorted views regarding performance further demonstrate that such deviations are subject to political sanctions. For instance, Linyi County in Shandong was recently called out for misappropriating funds given under agricultural training base program to build recreational facilities. Cases like these are identified as being detached from practical needs and reflective of distorted performance incentives. Such criticism highlights growing central concern over wasteful expenditure, particularly in the context of rising fiscal pressures and local government debt.

At the operational level, enforcement is structured around the framework of “learning, checking and rectifying” (学查改). This approach replaces target-driven evaluation with continuous problem identification and correction, requiring officials to compile problem lists and implement time-bound solutions. In provinces like Anhui, authorities have institutionalised project-based rectification by integrating discipline inspection, supervision and auditing across sectors such as farmland construction and rural asset management. This approach targets “petty corruption” (微腐败) in livelihood areas by recovering misallocated funds and strengthening oversight of grassroots projects, thereby linking performance directly to problem resolution and public welfare outcomes. While this tighter supervision may improve policy coherence, it could also discourage local level policy experimentation. Officials operating under increasingly stringent political and disciplinary scrutiny may become more reluctant to take initiative, preferring procedural compliance over policy innovation.

Implications for Local Governance 

The redefinition of performance has significant implications for local governance, particularly in terms of how incentives and accountability are structured. By discouraging short-termism and promoting outcomes recognised by the people, the campaign seeks to reshape governance targets of local officials, who have historically been driven by visible, quantifiable achievements. This recalibration shifts policy priorities towards long-term welfare outcomes and more cautious investment, particularly in sectors prone to duplication and excess.  As these standards for ‘correct view of performance’ become embedded in cadre assessment systems, local officials are expected to be incentivised to prioritise outcomes that “stand the test of practice, the people and history.” This will strengthen a cautious and hierarchical administrative environment, particularly in sectors where fiscal vulnerability is high. Similarly, the integration of limited public feedback mechanisms suggests that citizen perception will play a more visible—if controlled—role in assessing governance outcomes. This could improve responsiveness in specific areas of service delivery, while remaining bounded within a Party-led framework of accountability. 

Additionally, the campaign strengthens vertical accountability within the Party-state. The deployment of central guidance groups and integration with disciplinary mechanisms reduces local discretion, ensuring tighter alignment with national priorities. Besides, it introduces a controlled expansion of societal oversight. Through “open-door education,” local governments are required to collect citizen input via consultations, complaint systems and grassroots engagement exercises, as seen in regions such as Chongqing and Hainan. This embeds public feedback into performance evaluation, linking governance outcomes more directly to citizen perception, and creating a limited but structured form of participatory accountability. Beyond institutional adjustments, the campaign also reshapes how officials conceptualise governance. By linking performance to ideological principles such as serving the people and scientific decision-making, it blurs the boundary between administrative effectiveness and political conformity. In effect, the campaign signals a transition from evaluating officials primarily on their ability to generate growth towards assessing their capacity to faithfully implement centrally defined priorities. Evaluation thus becomes contingent not only on policy outcomes but also on adherence to Party-defined norms. 

However, the effectiveness of these reforms remains uncertain. A persistent risk is the emergence of strategic compliance, where officials adapt to revised metrics without fundamentally altering behaviour. As with earlier evaluation systems, this could produce new forms of performative governance—such as superficial consultation or selectively reported welfare gains—rather than substantive improvements. These developments suggest a deliberate rebalancing of China’s governance model as it shifts away from competitive growth-driven evaluation towards centrally guided, norm-based administration. While this enhances policy coherence, it also underscores an enduring tension between central control, limited public participation and local adaptability. Thus, the long-term trajectory of the campaign will depend on whether it incentivises substantive improvements or generates new forms of performative compliance. Nonetheless, the campaign marks a decisive turn towards a more calibrated, centrally managed model of governance designed to reinforce CPC’s political legitimacy in a slower-growth, planning-intensive phase of development.    

Image Credit: Baidu