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Studying political mobility outcomes under China's cadre management system provides critical insight into how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) functions as well as the composition of the Party elite. The nomenklatura system is a key mechanism that the centre uses to exercise control over the leading officials within the CCP and government bureaucracies.1It also governs the top leaders of China's largest and most strategically important state-owned enterprises (SOEs).2Top executive positions in the core state-owned companies, officially designated as "important backbone state-owned companies" (zhongyao gugan guoyou qiye[...]), belong to the central nomenklatura list managed directly by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.3Specifically, these top executive positions are: Party committee secretary (dangwei shuji[...]), general manager (zongjingli[...]) or president (zongcai[...]), and chair of the board of directors (dongshizhang[...]), if one exists. Although core central state-owned company leaders are not civil servants (gongwuyuan[...]), they possess the equivalent rank of a vice-minister (fubuji[...]).4
Scholarship posits that there is a "revolving door" through which central SOE leaders rotate routinely between state-owned industry and successively higher-ranked positions in the Party-state.5I evaluate this phenomenon by analysing an original biographical dataset for all core central SOE leaders serving between 2003 and 2012 during the Hu Jintao[...]administration. In contrast to the existing literature, I find that the majority of those who left their posts ended their careers, entering retirement directly. Of those who continued their political careers, virtually all advanced through lateral transfers (pingji diaodong[...]) along three pathways with little overlap: top executive postings at other core central state-owned firms; government or Party provincial leadership positions; or leadership roles in government or Party organs at the central level. I also consider the underlying aims and the implicit hierarchy of these three career pathways as well as the attributes of those officials who followed these routes.
As more than 90 per cent of the core central state-owned company executives who advanced politically during the Hu Jintao administration were appointed to positions of equivalent formal administrative rank, this paper highlights the importance of lateral transfer....