Why do so many corrupt officials rise up in the Chinese official hierarchy in the first place? This paper addresses this question by looking at corruption in the cadre recruitment system as a source of the problem. It attempts to show that despite meaningful reforms to improve cadre recruitment, especially through greater input and supervision from below, these reforms have not succeeded in fundamentally reshaping cadre incentives in the direction of accountability towards the below. Rather, the reforms have in many ways exacerbated incentives for opportunism and maneuvering on the part of individual officials. In explaining the new problems and failures in personnel matters, the paper places blame on incentive and structural distortions in the recruitment while also taking into consideration the realities of China's vast local variance that combine to affect enforcement and incentives for compliance.
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