The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Famine – Expression of Concern

The Editors of the American Political Science Review would like to alert readers that the article “The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Famine” may contain errors, including inaccurate reporting of model specifications for some estimates in Tables 4 and 5 and incorrect compilation or calculation of indicators, that make the core findings unreliable. At the time of publication, APSR editorial policies did not require data sharing in a public repository, and according to the authors, the original data are unavailable. The nature of the errors and reliability of the findings are examined and discussed further in:

Kung, James Kai-Sing. 2014. “The Emperor Strikes Back: Political Status, Career Incentives and Grain Procurement during China’s Great Leap Famine.” Political Science Research and Methods 2 (2): 179–211, and

Yang, Dali L., Huayu Xu, and Ran Tao. 2014. “A Tragedy of the Nomenklatura? Career Incentives, Political Loyalty and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Forward.” Journal of Contemporary China 23 (89): 864-83.