The Impact Of Chinese Official Turnover On Air Quality

Before the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC),the Chinese political idea of "taking economic construction as the center" determined that the assessment mechanism for leading cadres was based on GDP,which made Chinese local officials vigorously develop the local economy and ignore environmental protection and governance,leading to deterioration of local air quality.After the 18 th National Congress of the CPC,the CPC central committee upgrades the construction of ecological civilization to a prominent position in the national strategy,which means that the Chinese political idea has changed,and ecological protection has become an important indicator for the assessment of leading cadres.Therefore,based on the change of Chinese political idea,this paper discusses the impact of local official turnover on local air quality and its influence mechanism under the influence of promotion incentives by combining theoretical and empirical research methods.In this paper,the mayor turnover information of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2015 to 2019 is used to match the daily AQI of cities.The results show that local official turnover will lead to the decline of local air quality,which is mainly caused by the responsibility gap period.It is also found that the heterogeneity of officials,including the arrival ages and sources of officials,will affect the length of responsibility gap period,thus affecting the local air quality.In addition,this paper also studies from the macro perspective of the Chinese political idea and finds that the higher the degree of implementation of the political idea,the lower the local air pollution during official turnover.The above research results not only clarify the impact mechanism of official turnover,but also provide a new perspective for analyzing the underlying causes of local air pollution,thus helping local governments effectively improve local air quality.