What Makes the Stringent Policy? Shifting bureaucratic incentives and blame-avoiding in China's war on COVID-19

In the war on the COVID-19 pandemic, China is famous for resorting to top-down, stringent measures to cut off the outbreaks, and it proves to be successful in eliminating infections. Officials have insisted ultra-strict COVID-zero strategy, at the great expense of the local economic prosperity and social welfare. Why would China show a great preference for this costly method of pandemic control? And one more nuanced puzzle is that the use of stringent policies varies between the regions. Why some of them are more inclined to employ coercive capacities? By studying the provincial policy stringency of dealing with the Delta variants throughout 2021, I argue that the application of stringent policy not only hinges on the infection risk but is also a strategy for bureaucrats to avoid blame. It offers a solution to the principal-agent problem and is an unexpected result of the incentive structure of China. When the weak institutions could not hold the bureaucrats accountable, the leaders showed a pattern different from credit-claiming - with less promotion possibility, they use more high-profile enforcement campaigns to enhance oversight over bureaucrats to increase the credibility of the punishment - and thus minimize risks. I illustrate it using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) Data and the original data on Chinese provincial leader cadres. This finding uncovers the new relationship between bureaucrats' incentives and policy implementation in China. It shows that when the institution is weak, it is effective to make it up with campaigns to shape the motivation, but the cost is high.