ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that although the implementors' incentives and the tools and techniques available for pimping evaluations have remained the same, some of the assessment benchmarks have been changed during the last decade, and oriented towards more effective rural development. Since rural development is one of the core policy goals of the central leadership, BNSC exerts an influence on all the dimensions of evaluation, although to differing degrees. Target, project and cadre evaluation are part and parcel of the Chinese policy process. Individual cadre performance evaluation is still the most essential evaluation dimension, since it forms the basis of the personnel management and promotion system. Township governments are responsible for assessing the work of village cadres; they only assist the county governments during project evaluation. At the county level, the policy and project evaluation process was in most cases managed by the "Evaluation Office", which was the executive agency of the "target responsibility evaluation committee".
