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<p>Official communication conveys regime priorities, but we know less about how elites use routine reporting to signal upward and how this shapes authoritarian issue politics. Using 71,460 official public-activity news releases (2016–2022) for the General Secretary, the Premier, provincial party secretaries, and governors, we build a shared issue agenda with a topic model and estimate distributed-lag panel models of responsiveness. Provincial leaders’ issue shares track shifts in the General Secretary’s attention far more than the Premier’s, even after accounting for baseline differences and common shocks. Alignment is strongest on issues closely associated with the General Secretary. Heterogeneity is mainly institutional: party secretaries respond more than governors. Observable factional proximity is linked to at most small, inconsistent differences within offices. Routine public-activity reporting thus serves as an upward-facing signaling channel and clarifies how agenda control operates in a centralized authoritarian system.</p>

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Aligning Agendas in Public-Activity Reports: Provincial Leaders and Central Signals in China, 2016–2022

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月16日

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  • Yang Yan,
  • Zhusong Yang

摘要

Official communication conveys regime priorities, but we know less about how elites use routine reporting to signal upward and how this shapes authoritarian issue politics. Using 71,460 official public-activity news releases (2016–2022) for the General Secretary, the Premier, provincial party secretaries, and governors, we build a shared issue agenda with a topic model and estimate distributed-lag panel models of responsiveness. Provincial leaders’ issue shares track shifts in the General Secretary’s attention far more than the Premier’s, even after accounting for baseline differences and common shocks. Alignment is strongest on issues closely associated with the General Secretary. Heterogeneity is mainly institutional: party secretaries respond more than governors. Observable factional proximity is linked to at most small, inconsistent differences within offices. Routine public-activity reporting thus serves as an upward-facing signaling channel and clarifies how agenda control operates in a centralized authoritarian system.