This article is authored by Liu Zhi, Research Fellow and Director of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, a member of the China Urban Hundred Forum. It was originally published in the June 2024 issue (Issue No. 203) of Twenty-First Century Bimonthly. Reprinted with the author’s authorization, with minor editorial revisions for this post. This article is reposted from the WeChat official account "China Urban Hundred Forum".

Urban regeneration refers to planned, organized renewal and redevelopment of dilapidated, outdated urban districts that can no longer meet urban development needs. As a core policy tool for advancing high-quality urban development, urban regeneration has rapidly become a new focal point for capital construction investment in China, characterised by a large volume of projects, massive capital outlays, fast implementation and nationwide coverage. Given the huge investment scale of many urban regeneration schemes and their heavy reliance on public funds, rigorous economic, fiscal and financial feasibility assessments are indispensable to optimise project design and provide credible scientific evidence for implementation decisions. Although local authorities have formulated detailed regulations on special urban regeneration planning, scheme formulation and approval, demolition compensation and land supply, uniform rules governing project feasibility studies and expert review have not yet been issued. Without rigorous feasibility appraisal, sound judgements cannot be made on whether large-scale investment projects genuinely satisfy actual or scientifically forecasted demand. Accelerating financing and construction of urban regeneration projects without such appraisal readily leads to inefficient or even wasteful investment, squandering public and private capital.

Urban regeneration falls under the category of capital construction. Widespread inefficient and unproductive capital construction projects have drawn extensive public attention in China. One scholar argues that massive government expenditure on low-yield, ineffective investment constitutes severe resource waste[1]. Avoiding such wasteful investment in future urban regeneration programmes forms the starting point of this paper’s analysis.

Capital construction is not only a pillar of national economic operation and growth, but also closely linked to Gross Domestic Product (GDP): capital construction investment forming fixed assets within a calendar year is statistically incorporated into that year’s GDP. As a result, capital construction investment has naturally become a tool for governments to pursue GDP growth performance. Capital construction draws investment from government bodies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms alike, with public and SOE capital dominating infrastructure spending. To unpack the institutional drivers behind unproductive and inefficient capital construction investment, this paper introduces the concept of "investment impulse", defined as local governments’ desire and behaviour to deploy public investment primarily to boost GDP growth metrics[2]. If investment impulse aligns perfectly with genuine investment demand, it will not generate inefficient project outcomes. In practice, however, investment impulse frequently diverges from real demand. Against the backdrop of urban regeneration emerging as a new capital construction hotspot, this paper addresses four core questions: How can we verify whether a planned urban regeneration investment project delivers sound economic returns? What share of urban regeneration investment stems from genuine regeneration demand, and what share derives from investment impulse? What institutional mechanisms generate investment impulse? How can resource waste triggered by investment impulse be mitigated?

Targeting the widespread absence of rigorous feasibility studies and national economic appraisal for contemporary urban regeneration projects, this paper analyses historical trends in China’s fixed asset investment, infrastructure spending, and government and SOE capital expenditure. It explores the root causes of unproductive, inefficient and over-investment in national capital construction, and proposes targeted policy remedies. This paper contends that local government investment impulse represents an unintended consequence of rapid subnational economic growth[3]. Recognising this dynamic enables policymakers to design safeguards against demand-disconnected investment impulse, curbing wasteful public expenditure and meeting the efficiency requirements of the high-quality development era.

China’s shift to an urban regeneration era follows a logical trajectory of urban development following the 1978 reform and opening-up. For decades, China’s urban spatial expansion relied on low-cost greenfield land development (incremental sprawl). Over time, building stock and public facilities within built-up urban areas have aged or suffered underutilisation, failing to support contemporary urban functional operations and growth. Urban regeneration restores or elevates the utility value of these underperforming land parcels to meet evolving spatial functional demands. Additionally, guided by the national high-quality development strategy, the central government has strengthened cultivated land and ecological space protection, imposing rigid urban construction land quotas to curb outward sprawl. The national territorial spatial planning system has been established to balance competing demands of urban expansion, farmland preservation and ecological protection, generating strong demand for redevelopment of inefficient built-up land. Urban regeneration initiatives are therefore driven by both genuine functional demand and national land use control policies.

Since the Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2019 prioritised urban regeneration and stock housing upgrading, urban regeneration has been elevated to a national strategic priority, triggering enthusiastic uptake among local governments and substantial investment volumes. In 2023, 66,000 urban regeneration projects were implemented nationwide, with completed investment totalling RMB 2.6 trillion. An additional 50,000 old residential compounds are scheduled for renovation in 2024, alongside construction of complete community service systems and accelerated retrofitting of ageing urban gas, water supply, sewage and heating pipelines[4]. Based on 2023 national GDP of RMB 126 trillion and total fixed asset investment of RMB 50 trillion, urban regeneration investment accounts for 2% of national GDP and 5.2% of total fixed asset investment. Official nationwide aggregated statistics for urban regeneration projects remain unpublished, yet municipal policy documents and media coverage from megacities and super-large cities reveal three consistent characteristics: abundant project pipelines, rapid rollout and enormous capital outlays (see Table 1). The scale of national urban regeneration implementation is projected to expand further in the coming years.

Sources:

Urban regeneration projects are more complex than standard infrastructure schemes, covering extensive community areas and a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Individual projects frequently require investment of several hundred million or even tens of billions of RMB. Such large-scale developments ought to undergo meticulous planning, design, appraisal and review procedures, meeting national feasibility study standards for major public investment projects prior to financing and construction. Under normal timelines, two or more years of preparatory work and a minimum three-year construction phase are reasonable, even necessary, for large urban regeneration schemes. Urban village redevelopment involves multi-party negotiations with numerous property owners and tenants, rendering pre-implementation preparations far more complex and time-consuming, particularly settlement compensation bargaining. Negotiations can drag on indefinitely if holdout residents emerge. When local governments target rapid delivery of multiple public investment-heavy urban regeneration projects within a compressed timeframe, they inevitably face binding constraints on government staffing, material resources and fiscal capacity.

Some provincial governments, notably Guangdong, adopt a government-guided, market-operated model, engaging real estate developers as lead investors to design, negotiate, finance, deliver and manage urban regeneration schemes[5]. This framework reduces administrative workload for public agencies, while private firms conduct rigorous financial viability assessments driven by commercial profit motives. In practice, however, fully market-led end-to-end projects remain rare; most schemes involve direct public capital participation, particularly in primary land redevelopment and supporting infrastructure construction. Chongqing’s pilot urban regeneration projects carry a total investment of RMB 294.1 billion, with private capital accounting for approximately 60% (implying 40% public funding input)[6]. In Guangdong, which boasts the most marketised urban regeneration financing model nationwide, the "Three-Old" (old towns, old factories, old villages) redevelopment pilot attracted RMB 1.7 trillion in total investment between 2009 and 2019, with public sector contributions comprising 14% (RMB 240 billion)[7].

The Chinese central government has long mandated feasibility studies as a core precondition for public investment project approval. As early as 1987, the State Planning Commission issued the Interim Provisions on Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects, Methods for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects and Parameters for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects[8]. Revised editions were jointly released by the State Planning Commission and Ministry of Construction in 1993[9]. Drawing on twenty years of domestic feasibility study practice and international best practice, the State Development Planning Commission issued the Guidelines for Feasibility Studies of Investment Projects (Trial Version) in 2002[10]. Building on this framework, the National Development and Reform Commission released the General Outline for Compiling Feasibility Study Reports of Government Investment Projects (2023 Edition) in 2023[11]. In principle, all government investment project feasibility reports must comply with the General Outline, forming the primary documentary basis for administrative review and approval at all government tiers. The Outline mandates comprehensive construction and operation management planning, debt repayment capacity analysis and financial sustainability evaluation. For public investment projects generating substantial economic externalities, the Outline requires quantification of total resource consumption and economic contributions, cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis, and assessment of large-scale projects’ macroeconomic, industrial and regional spillover impacts to evaluate overall economic rationality.

The Guidelines and 2023 General Outline align closely with international best practice, demonstrating that China possesses robust technical frameworks for feasibility appraisal of large public investment projects. Nevertheless, local authorities rarely enforce full compliance with national standards for feasibility and national economic evaluation, and independent, transparent external expert review mechanisms remain scarce. Local governments and industry stakeholders typically prioritise securing market financing and fiscal support over rigorous pre-investment appraisal. Pursuing financing without comprehensive economic assessment equates to raising capital for projects with unproven economic viability, rather than designing economically sound schemes to attract investment organically. Past capital construction practice featured reckless, rushed delivery with "construction and design proceeding simultaneously", and contemporary urban regeneration faces a pervasive bias prioritising financing over feasibility research. Industry discourse focuses heavily on financing innovation, while rigorous project economic analysis, fiscal impact assessment and risk evaluation are seldom conducted; public participation is largely absent from decision-making workflows, creating substantial risks of inefficient or wasteful project delivery.

While some large local public investment projects generate formal feasibility reports, these documents predominantly focus on technical design and financial cost accounting, lacking rigorous national economic appraisal and comprehensive risk assessment. Economic appraisal (national economic evaluation) differs fundamentally from financial appraisal: economic evaluation measures a project’s total resource costs and aggregate economic benefits from the perspective of the entire national economy, calculating whether the initiative generates net societal economic gains or reasonable aggregate returns. Financial appraisal evaluates costs, revenues and net profitability exclusively from the individual investor’s standpoint. A public investment project that passes financial appraisal yet fails national economic appraisal delivers benefits only to the implementing entity without generating net societal value, and should not proceed unless justified by overriding public interest imperatives.

Chinese governments have long pursued an investment-driven growth paradigm, deploying massive public infrastructure and urban construction investment to expand aggregate fixed asset formation and lift GDP growth rates. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis triggered the first round of proactive fiscal stimulus, channelling large-scale public investment into cross-regional and urban infrastructure to counteract economic slowdown. Following the September 2008 global financial crisis and rapid domestic growth deceleration, the central government rolled out ten major stimulus measures to expand domestic demand and stabilise growth, injecting RMB 4 trillion in investment by late 2010, concentrated in infrastructure, urban land development and real estate construction. The national urban regeneration initiative launched in 2019 represents a continuation of this investment-driven growth framework, emerging as a core stimulus tool amid sluggish macroeconomic conditions. With a downturn in the real estate sector, widespread housing oversupply and saturated demand for traditional infrastructure, urban regeneration has become the new frontier for capital construction investment.

Statistical data confirms the tangible scale of China’s investment-driven growth model. Between 2000 and 2020, China recorded the world’s highest ratio of gross fixed asset investment to GDP (see Figure 1); post-2009, this metric exceeded 40%, far outstripping elevated levels recorded in India and the Republic of Korea, and vastly surpassing the global average of approximately 25%. Data from 2012 to 2020 shows combined government and SOE investment accounted for over 40% of total national fixed asset investment (Figure 2), with government investment alone representing 10–17% of total fixed asset investment, equivalent to 4.2–7.1% of national GDP. By comparison, average government investment across OECD member states stood at 3.4% of GDP in 2021[12]. Beyond explicit investment-led growth policy, three additional structural factors drive this trend: investment demand generated by rapid domestic economic expansion, a persistently low consumption-to-GDP ratio, and a gradual decline in net exports as a share of national output.

From an efficiency perspective, the sustainability and productivity of China’s extremely high fixed asset, government and SOE investment ratios remain open to question. While widespread inefficient and unproductive public investment is widely acknowledged[13], comprehensive quantitative data measuring the total volume of wasteful public capital expenditure remains unavailable. This paper addresses the issue via three lines of analysis: first, international empirical evidence on infrastructure investment’s growth stimulus effects; second, the rationality of China’s infrastructure investment scale; third, whether China’s physical infrastructure stock indicators lead international peers. Analysis concentrates on infrastructure investment for two reasons: abundant empirical scholarship exists on infrastructure’s economic impacts, and public capital expenditure over the past two decades has overwhelmingly targeted infrastructure, alongside substantial SOE infrastructure outlays. As national urban regeneration strategy has only been in place for five years, insufficient longitudinal data exists to rigorously evaluate its aggregate investment efficiency at this stage.

First, extensive international empirical research examines infrastructure investment’s growth multiplier effects. A comprehensive meta-study concludes that infrastructure investment exerts a positive overall impact on economic growth, with magnitudes varying substantially across national contexts; the growth dividend is larger for developing economies than advanced industrialised nations. Infrastructure’s economic performance also depends critically on utilisation efficiency. Every infrastructure project carries unique characteristics, and its economic viability is shaped by geographic location, target market profile and design suitability; aggregate national-level panel analysis cannot explain underperformance or unproductive outcomes for individual schemes. The study also synthesises recent empirical work on short-term fiscal multipliers of infrastructure investment, yielding counterintuitive results: even where infrastructure delivers long-term growth benefits, its short-run stimulative impact is muted. Two factors constrain short-run multipliers: lengthy construction timelines delaying operational returns, and crowding-out effects whereby public infrastructure spending displaces private capital expenditure. Governments across the globe deploy infrastructure stimulus during recessions to generate low-skill construction employment and mitigate unemployment, yet aggregate macroeconomic stimulus effects remain modest; by the time infrastructure assets become fully operational, the economic downturn has typically abated[14].

Second, empirical analysis addressing the rationality of China’s infrastructure investment scale draws on panel data from 83 countries with comprehensive infrastructure sector statistics, including China. Findings demonstrate that infrastructure investment’s GDP share rises then falls as per capita income grows, and increases in tandem with accelerated economic expansion[15]. This logic is intuitive: low-income economies possess minimal existing infrastructure stock, requiring massive new capital expenditure to support growth; middle-income nations accumulate substantial infrastructure assets, gradually reducing demand for additional capacity; fast-growing economies demand higher infrastructure investment ratios to match rapid output expansion. For decades prior to China’s 2013 shift to a "new normal" growth phase, national GDP maintained an average annual growth rate of 9.9%, creating a prima facie justification for high infrastructure investment ratios relative to international benchmarks. Nevertheless, China-focused micro-level empirical studies identify evidence of localised over-investment in infrastructure. One provincial panel analysis found infrastructure investment deficient across most Chinese provinces in 1997, yet widespread over-investment emerged across western provinces by 2008[16]. A 2009 study detected over-investment signals in national fixed asset expenditure driven by expansionary fiscal policy[17], while further research identifies excessive infrastructure expansion relative to output growth between 2003 and 2016[18].

Third, international comparative analysis of China’s physical infrastructure hardware metrics yields mixed conclusions. Cross-country historical panel research finds China’s stock of core public infrastructure broadly commensurate with its national income level[19]. A separate study comparing highway and high-speed rail networks across China, the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Republic of Korea and India notes China’s elevated highway share of total road mileage, though not an unparalleled global outlier; its dominant feature is a vastly higher proportion of high-speed rail within total national rail track length relative to all comparator nations[20]. China’s urban rail transit network has also expanded exponentially over the past two decades, aligned with rapid urbanisation, megacity formation and high-density compact urban spatial structures that require high-capacity rapid transit systems.

Synthesising these three strands of research yields a balanced preliminary judgement. Cross-country aggregate data provides partial justification for China’s high infrastructure investment ratios during its transition from low to upper-middle income status amid rapid GDP expansion, and national core infrastructure stocks generally match the country’s level of economic development, delivering tangible growth dividends. Yet provincial-level empirical work identifies pockets of over-investment, indicating diminishing marginal returns on new infrastructure capital expenditure. Aggregate macroeconomic statistics cannot capture micro-level instances of inefficient, unproductive or excessive investment; the systemic rationality observable at the national scale does not negate subnational wasteful capital allocation.

Inefficient, unproductive and excessive capital construction investment represent persistent structural flaws in China’s development model, yet such outlays generate positive numerical contributions to local GDP metrics. A brief explanation of GDP accounting methodology is therefore necessary. Per National Bureau of Statistics definitions, GDP measures the total final output produced by all resident institutional units within a country or region over a defined period. Three accounting approaches are deployed: production, income and expenditure, with the expenditure method most relevant to this analysis. The expenditure approach calculates total annual or quarterly output from the perspective of final demand for goods and services, expressed via the formula[21]:GDP = Final Consumption Expenditure + Gross Capital Formation + Net Exports of Goods and Services

Final consumption expenditure captures the value of goods and services purchased by end-users. Gross capital formation represents net investment in capital assets (predominantly fixed assets including infrastructure, factories, equipment and vehicles) over a given period, calculated as total capital investment less depreciation and physical wear and tear. Net exports reflect external demand for Chinese goods and services. These three components are widely termed the "three growth engines" of GDP. Governments possess limited levers to manipulate consumption and net exports, yet can directly deploy fiscal resources and public debt to fund capital construction, while steering SOE capital expenditure in the same sector. Ceteris paribus, larger capital construction investment generates greater fixed asset formation and higher GDP. Capital construction obeys diminishing marginal returns: as investment volume rises, marginal economic yields decline. Low-return investment delivers minimal or zero growth contributions. In theory, eliminating wasteful investment would enable governments to reduce taxation, expand household consumption, improve living standards and ultimately raise total GDP.

The concept of "investment impulse" explains the institutional roots of China’s persistently elevated fixed asset investment-to-GDP ratio illustrated in Figure 1. All institutional frameworks generate predictable and unintended incentive structures that shape actor behaviour and aggregate outcomes. Applying this analytical lens, this paper examines six interlocking institutional features of China’s reform-era governance system: hierarchical government administration, official performance evaluation, the tax-sharing system, the land transfer revenue regime, government budget and debt management rules, and state-owned enterprises. The combined structure of these mechanisms creates the unintended incentive of investment impulse, driving corresponding actor behaviour and aggregate developmental outcomes.

China operates a hierarchical administrative system where subnational leading cadres are appointed by higher-tier governments, whose performance is assessed against centrally defined quantitative metrics. The central government establishes national political, social, economic and environmental development strategies and plans, cascading implementation targets down through multi-level government tiers. This top-down governance architecture ensures national development priorities are translated into local action. For decades, advancing economic growth has been the primary mandate of all government tiers, with GDP serving as the core quantitative metric of economic performance.

What incentives does this hierarchical system create for local officials? Academic scholarship has extensively analysed the link between cadre performance and promotion. One prominent thesis advances the "promotion tournament" framework, arguing that officials delivering superior economic results face higher odds of upward career advancement[22]. Other scholars contest this model, presenting empirical evidence that factional networks and personal working relationships between local and central cadres exert a stronger influence on promotion prospects than quantitative economic performance metrics[23]. A third line of reasoning posits that local officials prioritise infrastructure and urban construction investment not merely to boost performance metrics, but to create large-scale rent-seeking opportunities for entrenched interest groups[24].

This paper proposes a more nuanced framework of official incentives. First, local leading cadres generally seek to deliver tangible policy achievements during their tenure, an intrinsic motivation to satisfy formal performance evaluation criteria. Second, contemporary civil servants build their careers around periodic performance assessments. Amid fierce promotion competition, weighed against performance benchmarks, factional alignment and other career factors, local officials’ baseline priority is to avoid underperformance on mandated GDP growth and other evaluation targets, with supplementary efforts to outperform baseline requirements. This dynamic has delivered substantial aggregate growth benefits for China’s economy, yet carries attendant risks and trade-offs.

Within this incentive framework, the tax-sharing system, land transfer revenue regime, local government debt financing and SOE investment all constitute readily deployable tools for local cadres to meet centrally mandated GDP growth targets. The tax-sharing system has been in place since 1994, operating within a unitary state structure where tax types, brackets and rates are exclusively set by the central government, granting subnational authorities virtually no independent tax legislative power. China’s tax structure remains dominated by indirect taxation; despite repeated policy pledges to raise the share of direct taxation, meaningful structural reform has not materialised. A low direct tax share diminishes public incentives to monitor local government budgets, expenditure and debt, leaving public investment decisions largely insulated from societal oversight. Additionally, all land transfer revenue accrues to local governments, statutorily earmarked for urban capital construction, with minimal binding oversight of budgetary allocation or debt issuance decisions. This grants local authorities substantial operational latitude to ramp up public capital construction spending to hit GDP growth targets.

Within this ecosystem, a large cohort of state-owned enterprises operating across capital construction sectors act as primary vehicles for local government public investment intervention. Local authorities own an array of SOEs including urban investment groups, metro operating companies, municipal construction corporations, regional commercial banks and state-owned real estate developers to deliver public projects. Central SOEs also actively pursue strategic partnerships with local governments via Public-Private Partnership (PPP) frameworks, financing municipal infrastructure and land development schemes. All national and local state-owned banks prioritise lending to local governments, as all parties fall under state ownership and share a core mandate to drive economic expansion, with weak financial and fiscal hard budget constraints. Under this operating model, pre-investment feasibility studies for public projects are frequently superficial, and local governments maintain inadequate fiscal provisions for contingent liabilities and expenditure obligations arising from PPP schemes[25]. This institutional machinery functions as a local growth machine, whose operational logic explains the genesis of local government investment impulse.

China’s rapid economic expansion and urbanisation have generated genuine demand for massive infrastructure and urban construction investment, much of which is delivered via public capital expenditure. The persistently high public investment-to-GDP ratio therefore carries partial grounding in real developmental demand. This paper identifies investment impulse as a second, powerful countervailing driver. While the elevated aggregate scale of public investment over the past two decades partially reflects demand pressures of a high-growth economic phase, micro-level wasteful, unproductive and localised over-investment represents an undeniable empirical reality.

As fixed asset stock accumulates, the focus of public capital construction investment has shifted sequentially from basic infrastructure to high-end infrastructure, from infrastructure to real estate, and from greenfield urban land development to urban regeneration. Where urban regeneration projects are driven purely by investment impulse without rigorous national economic viability appraisal, they face substantial delivery failure risks and waste national resources, contradicting the national high-quality development agenda. The central government has acknowledged the challenge of inefficient investment. The 2024 Government Work Report mandates: "Rationally expand the scope of sectors eligible for local government special bond financing and their use as project capital, tilting quota allocation toward regions with fully prepared projects and high investment efficiency. Coordinate utilisation of all funding streams to prevent inefficient and unproductive investment. Deepen reform of the investment approval system..."

Robust project-level viability appraisal constitutes the primary frontline safeguard against wasteful investment. In the long run, systemic policy reforms are required to establish permanent institutional safeguards against unproductive public capital expenditure, with clear reform priorities as follows:

These reform agendas, particularly direct tax and fiscal institutional restructuring, will require extended implementation timelines, yet policy action must commence immediately to avert severe cumulative economic costs stemming from delayed reform.

[1] Wang Xiaolu, "Large Volumes of Government Investment Channeled into Inefficient, Unproductive Projects, Generating Severe Waste", Tencent News, 6 July 2023.[2] The concept of "investment impulse" bears partial similarity yet distinct differences from János Kornai’s theory of "investment hunger" describing expansionary investment behaviour under socialist shortage economies with soft budget constraints. Investment hunger refers to firms’ willingness to expand capital expenditure without fear of financial risk in short supply economies. See János Kornai, Growth, Shortage and Efficiency, translated by Pan Yingli (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2013). This paper acknowledges that Chinese SOEs also operate under soft budget constraints potentially generating investment hunger-driven expansion, yet this dynamic falls outside the scope of analysis here.[3] The concept of "unintended consequence" originates from political economist Albert O. Hirschman, describing unforeseen outcomes generated by public policy intervention. See Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perverse Politics, Futile Politics, Jeopardizing Politics, translated by Wang Min (Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2012), p.19.[4] Ni Hong, Minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Press Conference Remarks on Livelihood Issues at the Second Session of the 14th National People’s Congress, 9 March 2024, mohurd.gov.cn.[5][7] Zhi Liu et al., "Urban Regeneration under National Land Use Control: Guangdong’s ‘Three-Old’ Redevelopment Programme", The China Quarterly, October 2023, pp.1–16, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741023001455.[6] "Total Investment of RMB 155.6 Billion! Chongqing Releases 52 Public-Private Partnership Projects", 18 January 2024, cq.gov.cn.[8] State Planning Commission, Circular Issuing Methods and Parameters for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects (Jibiao [1987] No.1359); State Planning Commission, Methods and Parameters for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects (Beijing: China Planning Press, 1987).[9] State Planning Commission & Ministry of Construction, Circular Issuing Revised Methods and Parameters for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects (Jitouzi [1993] No.530); State Planning Commission & Ministry of Construction, Methods and Parameters for Economic Evaluation of Construction Projects (Beijing: China Planning Press, 1993).[10] General Office of the State Development Planning Commission, Circular on Publishing the Trial Version of the Guidelines for Feasibility Studies of Investment Projects (Jiban Touzi [2002] No.15); Editorial Group, Guidelines for Feasibility Studies of Investment Projects (Beijing: China Electric Power Press, 2002).[11] National Development and Reform Commission, Circular Issuing the General Outline for Compiling Feasibility Study Reports of Government Investment Projects and Supporting Explanatory Notes (Fagai Touzi Gui [2023] No.304); National Development and Reform Commission, General Outline for Compiling Feasibility Study Reports of Government Investment Projects (2023 Edition), www.ndrc.gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/ghxwj/202304/P020230407401908422756.pdf.[12] OECD, "Government Investment Spending", Government at a Glance 2023 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023), www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3d5c5d31-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3d5c5d31-en.[13] Extensive domestic media coverage documents inefficient and unproductive capital construction investment, which this paper does not recount at length. The 2024 Government Work Report’s explicit mandate to prevent wasteful investment confirms the prevalence of this challenge. See 2024 Government Work Report – Delivered 5 March 2024 at the Second Session of the 14th National People’s Congress, gov.cn. No further citations provided for this reference.[14] Gregory K. Ingram & Zhi Liu, "Infrastructure Stocks and Macroeconomic Performance across Countries", in José A. Gómez-Ibáñez & Zhi Liu (eds.), Infrastructure Economics and Policy: International Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2022), pp.39–55.[15] Gregory K. Ingram, Zhi Liu & Karin L. Brandt, "Metropolitan Infrastructure and Capital Finance", in Roy W. Bahl, Johannes F. Linn & Deborah L. Wetzel (eds.), Financing Metropolitan Governments in Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2013), pp.339–365.[16] Hao Shi & Shaoqing Huang, "How Much Infrastructure Is Too Much? A New Approach and Evidence from China", World Development, Vol.56, April 2014, pp.272–286.[17] Duo Qin & Haiyan Song, "Sources of Investment Inefficiency: The Case of Fixed-asset Investment in China", Journal of Development Economics, Vol.90, Issue 1, 2009, pp.94–105.[18] Emin M. Dinlersoz & Zhe Fu, "Infrastructure Investment and Growth in China: A Quantitative Assessment", Journal of Development Economics, Vol.158, September 2022, Article 102916.[19] Zhi Liu & Xiuying Liu, "Is China’s Infrastructure Development Experience Unique?", Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Vol.21, Issue 3, 2022, pp.323–340.[20] Liu Xiuying & Liu Zhi, "Is China an Infrastructure Construction Powerhouse?", 7 March 2022, Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, https://plc.pku.edu.cn/info/1140/2158.htm.[21] "What is Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?", 1 January 2023, National Bureau of Statistics of China, www.stats.gov.cn/zs/tjws/tjzb/202301/t20230101_1903699.html.[22] Zhou Li’an, "The Promotion Tournament Hypothesis: Literature Review and Research Agenda", Journal of Economic Management, Issue 1, 2022, pp.1–34.[23] Su Fubing & Tao Ran, Meritocracy or Patronage? Political Foundation of China’s Economic Transition(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).[24] Tao Ran, "The Formation, Evolution and Regulatory Landscape of China’s Growth Model", Twenty-First Century Bimonthly, February 2023, pp.4–28.[25] Liu Zhi, "Economic Appraisal Challenges for Urban Regeneration Investment Projects", Journal of Human Settlements in West China, Issue 1, 2024, pp.8–13.