AMA on Baiguan.substack.com

I have recently started a newsletter, BAiGUAN.substack.com, that leverage my firm's big data and AI capability to provide unbiased, native, rational, and fact-based analysis on China's business, finance and economy. In the welcome letter to our new readers, I often asked readers what they would like us to write about China.

In one email that came from an Aussie friend who ran a consumer business there, the reader asked some interesting questions that I thought may be worth sharing on LinkedIn:

I’m interested in the mechanics of economic progress and its relationship to promotion of those responsible for governance.

I’m also interested in what promotes strength in local community and how this relates to families, the marriage and the birth rates and the mental and emotional health of children.

I’m very interested in housing and its affordability and how this relates to urban planning. To what extent do planners promote mixed uses rather than zoning to separate these uses.

My short response:

1) for each level of leadership in the government, there are, literally, score cards?to measure their performance, lower level cadres (county) are measured by economic development and other more day-to-day metrics (income, employment rate etc), higher level cadre (city, provincial) are measured by more strategic metrics similar to what national leadership asked for. Typically the score card has tends of line items, and weight were assigned to different line items, e.g GDP could be 30% of the scores in some area a few years ago. Weighs will change from time to time, for example, GDP's weight is reduced and the weight of ecosystem health has increased. Cadres then will analyze the score cards to see how they can rank at the top of their peers. This would be a tangible measurement of promotion. Other than this, promotion also depends on intangible political cycle, relationship with more senior supervisors, age of cadre etc.?

2) As far as I know, policy focusing on community building is not yet a national focus, but there are reports of local experiments for revitalizing rural area and urban area, new life-sytle, rural reform etc, which looked into the problem of aging community, migrant worker returning to village, welfare system for rural population etc. all of which involvement looking into community building. Scholars like 陆铭 researched on that. Some scholars also hold?the view that Chinese government has not yet focused on civil society (note many foreign civil society were dissolved in the past few years) which is key to a vibrant local community, but I noticed in the recent reform state agencies that emphasis building up of civil society organization which is a sign that the central government is thinking of revitalizing local governing power to help build up communities.?

3) this is a very specific question that is worth looking into, we may look into that in the future and write on it, thanks for the note!?