Abstract:

Advancing both the promotion and demotion of leading cadres is a key priority in deepening the reform of the cadre and personnel system. Since the beginning of the New Era， the Party Central Committee has explicitly clarified its political stance on advancing the mechanism for leading cadres to be promoted and demoted in the form of intra-Party laws and regulations. It has also made vigorous efforts to resolve the practical dilemma of “easy promotion but hard demotion” for leading cadres. Based on ahistorical review and practical observations， this study proposes a three-dimensional framework for analyzing the promotion and demotion of leading cadres： the logic of career needs， the logic of personnel management， and the logic of social evaluation. Resistance to advancing reform mainly stems from path dependence in personnel management and stereotypical perceptions in social evaluations. To break the dilemma of “easy promotion but hard demotion” for leading cadres， it is essential to put the cause first， to build a dynamically adaptive mechanism for cadre mobility， to improve the precision of promoting qualified cadres， to reduce resistance to demoting incompetent cadres， and to realize the alignment between individual cadres and the development of the cause.

Key words: cadre incentives, dynamic adaptation, promotion and demotion of leading cadres, cadre and personnel system