Abstract: To ensure grain security, it is not only necessary to protect farmers' enthusiasm to grow grain, but also to stimulate local governments' enthusiasm to stabilize grain production. The significant achievements in grain production in China cannot be achieved without the implementation by local governments and key officials. Ensuring that the central and local governments share the same goals in grain governance through official incentives is an important aspect of policy implementation, but little research has focused on it. Based on the promotion tournament theory, this paper makes use of the panel data of 31 provinces from 2003 to 2019 to construct an official promotion model. Then it analyzes the paths to improve the motivation of local governments to stabilize grain production from the perspective of official incentives and examines whether grain production performance is one of the elements of official promotion. The findings show that grain production performance is conducive to official promotion in the grain-producing regions. In contrast, it is not significant for the promotion of officials in the grain production and marketing balance areas, the main marketing areas and the full samples. This conclusion is verified by the robustness test and the endogeneity test. It is confirmed that in the main grain-producing regions, a channel has been established for local officials to be promoted through stabilizing grain production, and the promotion tournament is an important mechanism to stabilize grain production. In the future, we should optimize the provincial governor responsibility system for grain security, improve the incentive accuracy and pertinence of officials in ensuring grain security, strengthen the use of local grain security assessment results, improve the incentive intensity of grain security officials, enhance the sense of responsibility for stabilizing grain production of the local Party and government officials, and implement the same responsibilities of the Party and government officials in grain security .

Key words: grain production, official promotion, promotion tournament, provincial governor responsibility system for grain security