Riding the catch-up cycle: how market maturity shapes local provision of ICT contracting in China

Although governments frequently employ public procurement to advance local economic development, buy-local objectives may conflict with the competition principle that underlies modern procurement systems. This tension may vary with market maturity, which shapes both supplier capability and catch-up incentives. Drawing on the catch-up cycle perspective and analyzing 42,974 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects that were launched from 2016 to 2022, we find a stage-dependent, N-shaped relationship between market maturity and local provision. In the low- and high-maturity markets, lower ICT market maturity is associated with lower local provision, suggesting that contract allocations are driven predominantly by supplier capability. A key deviation appears in mid-maturity markets, where less mature regions allocate more ICT contracts locally. This mid-regime bump in local provision is consistent with catch-up urgency, as governments use ICT procurement to support local industrial development once basic supplier capability has emerged. These findings show that contracting behavior changes across the catch-up cycle, and call for stage-sensitive procurement oversight.