After the President Left My Town: Chinese State Leaders’ Domestic Visits Impact on Local Government Performance

Domestic visits (in Chinese 视察、考察、调研) are one of the commonest routine work for political leaders both in the democratic and authoritarian regimes. In this article, we argue that for central authorities, in addition to public presidency in democracy, those domestic visits are one of the most important way to regulate local government’s performance in authoritarian regimes. Based on 9 members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee domestic visits from 2009 to 2012 in China and a longitudinal survey of national level residents conducted by DRC（国务院发展研究中心）, we estimate those domestic visits’ impact on local government performance by using difference in difference method. And we have three main findings. Firstly, we find that for Jintao Hu, the General Secretary, his domestic visits could significantly promote residents’ evaluation of local government administrative efficiency, and after taking selection bias into consideration, this positive effect is still robust. Secondly, after adjustment of covariates balance, this positive effect is valid for all 9 members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Finally, we also find this positive effect only exists for one year, which means when the present incumbent of leaders lose power, those effects will disappear,and we define this phenomenon as Ren Zou Cha Liang Effect(人走茶凉). On the basic of our empirical findings, those state leaders’ domestic visits provide us new vision to recognize Chinese central-local relation. Be regarded as embedded formal institution, we argue that central authorities could use their visits to access to political stability and economic development.