Disentangling the relationship between economic development and environmental protection has attracted much attention from public administration scholars. While traditionally scholars approach the relationship from either a substitutive or a complementary perspective, we offer a nuanced perspective by examining how the target‐setting on economic growth shapes environmental performance. This article proposes an explanation for the impacts of gross domestic product growth targets on environmental performance based on a yardstick competition model, where the upper‐level governments use relative performance to create competition among lower‐level governments. We argue that a trade‐off exists between economic development and environmental performance; however, the substitutive relationship tends to transit to a complementary relationship when environmental performance is incorporated into the cadre evaluation system. Analyzing a panel dataset of economic targets and PM2.5 air pollution across Chinese cities from 2001 to 2010, we confirm the relationship between economic targets and environmental performance by highlighting local leaders' political incentives.

Using a detailed case study of house eviction in peri-urban China as well as original data from an online survey experiment, this article explores the opportunistic bargaining phenomenon in China in which citizens leverage the policy priorities of authorities with tactics that are not approved by the state to bargain for goals beyond those promised by the state. We find that opportunistic bargaining is widely accepted by Chinese citizens and that such an inclination is encouraged by successful precedents and clear signals of an opening through which to leverage government policy priorities; however, it is dampened by unclear signals and failed precedents. We also find that opportunistic bargainers tend to hold more negative perceptions of the current regime and are less likely to abide by state rules or social norms. The characteristics of opportunistic bargaining appear to be the opposite of the dominant “rightful resistance” framework.

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Using a mixed‐method approach, we explore how the Chinese government frames environmentally controversial projects as well as how citizens may react to the government's framing strategy. Through content analysis of state‐run media reports on paraxylene (a chemical product with many industrial implications, also known as PX) and waste incineration plants, we identify the government's most salient framing tactic as scientific greening—positively depicting such projects as technologically advanced, reliable, and green, often citing experts and scientific sources. Through a survey experiment among 280 college students, we test the effects of such positive frames as well as the negative frames that highlight environmental risks and the comprehensive frames that present both positive and negative information. We find that although the positive scientific‐greening frames can increase one's tolerance of proposed projects in general, they may also enhance their not‐in‐my‐backyard inclination as compared with the control group. Importantly, both the positive scientific‐greening frames and the negative frames reduce citizens' intent to engage in environmental protests. We also find that the negative frames are particularly influential for respondents who have low trust in government. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how framing affects environmental activism in China and elsewhere.