Official promotion incentives have been playing a vital role in Chinese economic development．This paper focuses on not only the effects of economic factors，non-economic factors and individual characteristics on the likelihood of promotion of local officials，but also the differences of relative importance of these factors across provincial top leaders and vice leaders． Using a turnover dataset of provincial top leaders and vice leaders of 31 provinces between 1978 and 2008，this paper argues that economic performances have a stronger impact on the likelihood of promotion of provincial vice leaders than that of top leaders，for which non-economic factors is more important．The empirical evidence shows that China has made greater progresses in the democratization of personnel control of junior officers than in that of senior officers since the reform and opening-up．