Who Will Deliver Common Prosperity in China? A Look at Policy Instruments

This article examines how Xi Jinping’s common prosperity agenda has been translated into policy practice in China. Using the PKULaw database, we construct two original datasets: 194 common prosperity policies (CPPs), whose titles explicitly include “common prosperity,” and 10,180 common prosperity-linked policies (CPLPs), whose texts reference the term. Combining descriptive analysis, structural topic modeling, and dictionary-based keyword searches, we show that explicit CPP branding is limited and that it is highly concentrated in Zhejiang, the designated demonstration zone, with limited uptake elsewhere. Within the broader Xi-era CPLP corpus, the dominant themes are public service delivery and political signaling, while more ambitious redistributive, disciplinary, and regulatory domains are weakly represented or absent. These findings suggest that common prosperity in formal policy practice has been much narrower and more welfare administrative than its expansive political rhetoric implies, and they highlight the limits of a province-led approach to implementing an agenda that would require stronger central commitment and more substantial fiscal and regulatory support.