Sustainable Transition with Chinese Characteristics: Rethinking Target- and Indicator-Based Governance

China has increasingly been perfecting its brand of administrative rationalism to deal with varieties of environmental issues. This is mediated mainly via environmental targets and indicators with which the central authorities are evaluating environmental performance of local agents. The conventional wisdom suggests a great promise in this “scientific” and “rational” approach—at least in China, given the vertical authoritarian structure of its political economy. This article critically reviews this thesis. Recent findings show that notwithstanding the attention given to China’s cadre evaluation system and its associated indicator-based governance, whether or not this form of governance is effective remains inconclusive. On the one hand, output-oriented or output-driven policy areas have seen significant strides. On the other hand, fundamental transformations in economic restructuring, upgrading, and transition have been much more difficult to achieve with the indicator-based framework. This article points to a number of theoretical and empirical questions about China’s path towards a green, low-carbon economy should it continues to singularly rely on bureaucratic controls via indicators and metrics. A serious debate about indicator-based governance is sorely missing, and it may be fruitful to re-visit and re-think our conventional wisdoms.