Normativity Versus Strategy in Public Reporting: The Bureaucratic Writing Under Performance Failure

Public reporting is the cornerstone of government performance disclosure. Yet reporting is inherently shaped by two competing pressures: a normative demand for transparency and accountability, and a strategic incentive to manage perception and avoid blame. This study examines how Chinese local governments navigate this tension when failing to meet announced GDP growth targets. Using 1,614 municipal reports from 269 cities (2013–2018), we identify the writing features that ­distinguish underperforming reports from goal-met ones. Underperforming governments emphasize accountability and external risks, while downplaying performance data and references to higher-level leadership. Although cities combine these features in various ways, the underperforming group as a whole exhibits a more systematic narrative structure than the goal-met group, suggesting that performance failure tightens, rather than loosens, bureaucratic writing conventions. These findings offer insights into bureaucratic writing in China and provide a framework for analyzing performance reporting in other institutional settings.