Abstract:

This article contrasts and examines two distinct modes of personnel management practice in the Chinese bureaucracy: (1) the historical pattern of the separation of officials from local staff (guanli fentu); (2) the contemporary pattern of stratified mobility (cengji fenliu) among officials across levels of administrative jurisdiction. I argue that these two patterns, albeit distinct, have been rooted in the same institutional logic of governance in China, which is discussed and explicated in light of ‘the logic of the Chinese Empire’, especially in terms of the principal–agent problems associated with the scale of governance, the complementary roles of formal and informal institutions, and the shift between symbolic and substantive authority in central–local government relationships. The personnel management practices and the resulting mobility patterns have provided stable institutional bases for central-local government relationships, and they have set limits to the downward reach of the state and the upward reach of local interests, and helped shape distinctive institutional practices in governing China.

Key words: Separation of officials from local staff, stratified mobility, state governance, logic of the Empire