ABSTRACT
The selection of leaders----national, intennediary, and local--is perhaps the most obvious political function. Change in the ways cadres were chosen, during subperiods of China's refonns, reflects the disparate views of the state's top elite in these transitional decades. It also reflects the increasing pool of educated talent that state refonners could try to recruit for service. The signals that the government sent to new and potential young cadres were mixed throughout the refonns, both because of pendular swings in national politics and because the availability of qualified candidates emerging from China's educational system was uneven over time. The main message, however, was that some people who had university training could be promoted rapidly. The most important governmental refonn in China was the massive 1980s recruitment of young and educated people into high posts.
