How do local officials in China initiate and sustain policy experiments within a bureaucratic system that often obstructs innovation? This article examines local policy experimentation through the lens of bureaucratic power networks, identifying three key challenges: agenda-setting challenges related to superiors, coordination challenges involving peers and implementation challenges concerning subordinates. When formal power networks fail, entrepreneurial officials develop informal interpersonal networks, positioning themselves as “uninvited advisors” to superiors, “rhetorical allies” to peers and “supportive mentors” to subordinates. Using the case of “police–business cooperation” in Shanghai, the study reveals how the committee on comprehensive management of public security mobilized property management companies to maintain social stability. This article contributes to research on policy experimentation by situating experiments within bureaucratic power dynamics and highlighting the role of informal networks in overcoming institutional barriers. It also reveals the mechanisms by which the Party assigns social control tasks to commercial entities.

Some cadres receive promotions, whereas others do not. This study explores the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) personnel control over the central state-owned enterprise (SOE) leaders from the Hu era to the Xi era. An analysis of the résumés and careers of SOE leaders reveals that the CCP has established a dual-track system to manage enterprises with different functions. This system employs two types of incentives: promotion incentives for leaders of eldest-son enterprises associated with national security, and salary incentives for leaders of other enterprises. Through the dual-track system, the CCP aims to influence the career trajectories of SOE leaders and address conflicts of interest in the principal-agent relationship. This study also investigates the individual characteristics of SOE leaders, including their political qualifications, professional qualifications and ages. The results indicate a tendency towards specialization and institutionalization in central-enterprise leaders, even during the Xi era.

Departing from simplistic portrayals of Chinese environmental governance as authoritarian, this study identifies a hybrid policy style that combines authoritarian environmentalism with policy experimentation, as evidenced in national park policy. A detailed examination of the North-East China Tiger and Leopard National Park shows that this hybrid increasingly tilts towards authoritarianism during implementation. To explain this dynamic, the study moves beyond the prevailing central–local lens and employs the tiao–kuai model, which captures the power relations among top leaders, central departments (tiao), and local governments (kuai). The analysis reveals that organizational interests centred on conservation have led central departments to expand their authority, marginalize local governments and narrow the space for experimentation, thereby suppressing community development demands. Even when top leaders intervene from above, the entrenched power structure of tiao and kuai still limits the effectiveness of corrective measures. The study contends that a hybrid policy style, supported by balanced power relations between tiao and kuai, is essential for reconciling conservation with development through environmental policy experimentation.