The Pie: An Economics Podcast Laboratories of Autocracy: What Happens When China Shuts Down Its Policy Experiments
Feb 17, 2026
Shaoda Wang, an assistant professor at University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy who studies Chinese policymaking with large-scale text data. He discusses how local governments once drove most policy innovation, the 2013 shift toward top-down control, how that changed local behavior from experimenting to copying, and the trade-offs between centralization and local fit.
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China Functioned As A Policy Laboratory
- China operated as a vibrant policy laboratory despite political centralization, with local governments originating most policies.
- Shaoda Wang finds local experimentation diffused horizontally and vertically before 2013, creating bottom-up innovation that scaled to the center.
Local Governments Drove Most Policy Creation
- Local governments produced about 82% of policies over two decades, driven by fiscal decentralization and promotion incentives.
- Shaoda Wang was surprised quantitatively by how much policy creation was bottom-up given China's political image.
Incentives Flipped Toward Top Down Compliance
- Around 2013 the incentive structure flipped: promotion rewarded top-down compliance rather than originating policies.
- Shaoda Wang ties this shift to Xi Jinping's centralization push and the slogan that 'government orders never leave Zhongnanhai.'
