One of the enduring puzzles about China is how a country of its size is actually governed. We often talk about “Beijing” as though it were a single actor with a coherent strategy, but behind every policy announcement lies an immense bureaucracy, competing incentives, negotiations across different levels of government, and millions of officials whose decisions ultimately determine whether central directives succeed or fail.

Understanding China’s political economy therefore requires us to understand the people and institutions that make it work: how officials are recruited, what incentives shape their careers, and how local governments negotiate, adapt, and sometimes reshape national priorities.

These questions have become even more important under Xi Jinping, whose tenure has been marked by a drive toward greater Party discipline and centralisation, even as China's economic success continues to depend heavily on local initiative and experimentation.

My guest for this conversation is Xiao Ma, Associate Professor of Political Science at Peking University, and a faculty associate at Peking University Research Center for Contemporary China. Xiao’s work challenges some of the conventional ways we think about the Chinese state. Rather than viewing bureaucratic promotion simply through the lens of meritocracy or patronage, he argues that officials compete for political attention. And instead of seeing central-local relations as a straightforward hierarchy in which Beijing issues orders and local governments implement them, he offers a framework of localised bargaining.

In this conversation, we explore how China’s bureaucracy actually functions, what motivates officials, how local governments bargain with the center, and what these dynamics tell us about the strengths—and perhaps the limits—of China’s development model.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.