The reform era began with the removal of Mao-era elites from leadership positions on a scale theretofore unseen in the People's Republic of China. Rather than depending on incentives to mobilize Mao-era cadres to support Reform and Opening, the new reform leadership brought in younger, better educated pro-reform elites. This article thus proposes a Personnel Model, in which the Communist Party brings in sympathetic cadres to implement major shifts in the Party line. Furthermore, personnel changes were first imposed on the military, then on the civilian apparatus. We show the large scale and rapid implementation of these reforms in 1982–1984 using an original database of over 60,000 cadres drawn from Organizational Histories.

Using examples from village reconstruction programmes in rural China, we show that local cadres often prioritize project visibility over publicized policy goals. While central policies and the academic literature emphasized land reclamation or rural welfare, local cadres – and the projects they designed – tended instead to focus on projecting an image of urban, wealthy villagers. Where such image-driven behaviour is most deleterious to villagers, it can evince opposition. We observe that some areas avoid conflict by making these projects voluntary or adjusting projects to local conditions. However, we provide a case study of a village with strong village leadership, showing that contrary to recent claims that village cadres are increasingly impotent, some maintain the authority to override widespread objections from villagers.