> In China, the central government decides what the goals are and how they are measured, and then the local governments carry out the implementation. Local officials who perform well against those measures get promoted; those who don’t are demoted.
China is very decentralized though, Beijing has the ultimate say but their attention span limited. So they maybe set targets, or step in when a huge scandal happens, but most localities are fairly far away from Beijing’s attention. While China doesn’t have America’s federalism, it basically has it by default to deal with its huge size. Every city has different rules, taxes, they have their own local champions, imagine if every big city in the USA had their own auto producer, for example. Hukou means china’s illegal immigration is mostly internal. If you become homeless in Beijing or Shanghai, they will just deport you to whatever village your hukou is in (well, free train/bus ticket at least, but you probably came to the big city because you couldn’t make it in your village in the first place).
China is very decentralized though, Beijing has the ultimate say but their attention span limited. So they maybe set targets, or step in when a huge scandal happens, but most localities are fairly far away from Beijing’s attention. While China doesn’t have America’s federalism, it basically has it by default to deal with its huge size. Every city has different rules, taxes, they have their own local champions, imagine if every big city in the USA had their own auto producer, for example. Hukou means china’s illegal immigration is mostly internal. If you become homeless in Beijing or Shanghai, they will just deport you to whatever village your hukou is in (well, free train/bus ticket at least, but you probably came to the big city because you couldn’t make it in your village in the first place).