After this stage, public employees' paths diverge, and individuals can be rotated through and out of all three tracks (the civil service, state-owned enterprises, and social organizations). An official might start out working on economic policy and then move to a job dealing with political or social issues. He or she could go from a traditional government position to a managerial role in a state-owned enterprise or a university. In many cases, the Organization Department will also send a large number of promising officials abroad to learn best practices around the world. The likes of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the National University of Singapore regularly host Chinese officials in their training programs.

Over time, the most successful workers are promoted again, to what are known as the fu ju and ju levels, at which point a typical assignment is to manage districts with populations in the millions or companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. To get a sense of how rigorous the selection process is, in 2012, there were 900,000 officials at the fu ke and ke levels and 600,000 at the fu chu and chu levels. There were only 40,000 at the fu ju and ju levels.

After the ju level, a very talented few move up several more ranks and eventually make it to the party's Central Committee. The entire process could take two to three decades, and most of those who make it to the top have had managerial experience in just about every sector of Chinese society. Indeed, of the 25 Politburo members before the 18th Party Congress, 19 had run provinces larger than most countries in the world and ministries with budgets higher than that of the average nation's government. A person with Barack Obama's pre-presidential professional experience would not even be the manager of a small county in China's system.

Xi's career path is illustrative. Over the course of 30 years, Xi rose from being a fu ke level deputy county chief in a poor village to party secretary of Shanghai and a member of the Politburo. By the time he made it to the top, Xi had already managed areas with total populations of over 150 million and combined GDPs of more than $1.5 trillion. His career demonstrates that meritocracy drives Chinese politics and that those who end up leading the country have proven records.

INNOVATE OR STAGNATE

China's centralized meritocracy also fosters government entrepreneurship. The practice of conducting top-down policy experiments in select locales and expanding the successful ones nationwide is well documented. The best-known example is Deng's creation of "special economic zones" in the 1980s. The first such zone was in Shenzhen. The district was encouraged to operate under market principles rather than the dictates of central planners. Shenzhen's economy grew rapidly, which prompted the central government to replicate the program in the cities of Zhuhai and Shantou, in Guangdong Province; Xiamen, in Fujian Province; and throughout Hainan Province.

There are also thousands of policy experiments that rise up from the local level. The competitive government job market gives capable local officials incentives to take risks and differentiate themselves from the pack. Among the 2,326 party representatives who attended the 18th Party Congress, one such standout was Qiu He, who is vice party secretary of Yunnan Province. At the congress, Qiu was selected as an alternate member of the Central Committee, putting the 55-year-old maverick near the top of the nation's political establishment. Qiu is the ultimate political entrepreneur. Born into poverty in rural China, Qiu watched two of his eight siblings die of childhood illness and malnutrition. After taking the national college entrance exam, China's great equalizer, he was able to attend university. When he entered the work force, he held several low-level civil service jobs before being appointed party secretary of Shuyang County, in northern Jiangsu Province, in the 1990s. With a peasant population of 1.7 million and an annual per capita GDP of only $250 (less than one-fifth the national average), Shuyang was one of the poorest rural areas in the country. The county also suffered from the worst crime rate in the region and endemic government corruption.

Qiu carried out a broad range of risky and controversial policy experiments that, if they failed, would have sunk his political career. His first focus was Shuyang's floundering economy. In 1997, Qiu initiated a mandatory municipal bond purchase program. The policy required every county resident to purchase bonds to fund much-needed infrastructure development. The genius of the plan was twofold. First, he could not have raised the funds through taxes because, at his level, he had no taxation authority. Second, the mandatory bond program offered the citizens of Shuyang something taxes would not have: yes, they were required to buy the bonds, but they eventually got their money back, with interest. Qiu also assigned quotas to almost every county government official for attracting commercial investments. To support their efforts, in addition to building up the area's infrastructure, Qiu offered favorable tax rates and cheap land concessions to businesses. In just a few years, thousands of private enterprises sprang up and transformed a dormant, centrally planned rural community into a vibrant market economy.