Patterns of “Experimentation Point”: Evidence from People’s Daily’s 1992--2003 Reports on Policy Experimentation Point

Abstract

One defining characteristic of China’s policy innovation is the use of"experimentation points". However,due to the lack of adequate data and analysis tools,the existing literature has not yet provided a full picture of China’s policy experimentation points. We coded all the People’s Daily’s reports on policy experimentation points from 1992 to 2003 to study patterns that may appear. Variables included the time, policy areas, initiators and locations of experimentation points.Based on our findings,the pattern of policy experimentation points has been significantly influenced by China’s top- down political authority. Specifically,policy preferences of the central government affect the likelihood of a policy area to be chosen to conduct experiments. Furthermore, superior governments are more likely to initiate policy experimentation points and have the ability to install experimentation points in policy areas when necessary.