ABSTRACT
In contemporary Chinese politics, regional leaders are proteges and agents of the party-state regime whom the party continually rewards both financially and with sociopolitical privileges. As in many other meritocracies or authoritarian political systems found in world politics, the three most important parts of Chinese politics are the central government, the elites, and the people; the interactions among them have reframed and reshaped the regimes in different time periods. This chapter focuses on Chinese regional leaders' political mobility by tracking their career movements over the decades since the establishment of the PRC. It presents two of the most important findings that are: first, the center has adapted a much more normalized and institutionalized means of determining its regional elites' career futures; and second, while being part of the larger political elite in contemporary China, regional leaders have been treated significantly differently because of varying geopolitical and socioeconomic characteristics of regions.
