Objectives This article aims to investigate how local leaders’ promotion is governed by the central state's concerns of maintaining political legitimacy in China. Methods We offer a theoretical framework regarding how to understand the statistical association between economic performance and local leaders’ promotion in China. The empirical work is based on Probit models that were applied on a panel of data covering local leaders of 335 cities between 1999 and 2009. Results Our research confirms that a better record of relative local economic growth significantly boosts the promotion probability of the city‐level party secretary. However, the importance of economic work will significantly decrease if the cadres have strong open signals of their competence. Conclusions The findings in this article suggest that there exists a performance‐based screening scheme for selecting political elites in China. Portraying the positive image of political elites by the “tags” of their capacity in fostering economic development helps to boost both regime legitimacy and political authoritativeness in the Chinese‐style authoritative political regime.