Abstract: Intensive regional competition for investment attraction and economic development has been one of the most salient features of China's economic miracle in the past decades. As one of mainstream analytical approaches to analyzing Chinese local governments and bureaucrats, the promotion tournament theory has attracted increasing attention from international and domestic scholars, and greatly enhanced the research frontiers about bureaucratic incentives, government behavior, and the China's economy. This article provides a comprehensive review of theoretical and empirical studies along this line of research, assesses their contributions to understanding the institutional logic of China's reforms and opening policies and economic development, and clarifies some common misunderstandings and confusions about this approach. This article also evaluates the limitations and problems of the existing literature and suggests future directions of research.