风水作为中国古代的勘舆学说，深刻影响着约半数中国人的日常生活，甚至在倡导无神论的中国共产党官员中也屡禁不止。中央纪委最近的处罚记录显示，涉及迷信的违纪行为占到了去年处罚的最大份额。典型案例包括2014年安徽省淮南市委书记因认为一栋在建的五星级酒店破坏其风水而将其炸毁，以及2015年广东省一名官员强占村集体土地为其家族修建风水墓地。
波士顿大学的Justin Jihao Hong与中国人民大学的Yuheng Zhao最新发布的一项研究工作论文，揭示了官员迷信思维对经济发展的负面影响。该研究分析了2000年至2018年间任职的中国各城市市长，通过专业占星师评估市长出生年份对应的极凶方位，进而对比其辖下县域的经济表现。
研究结果显示，在控制其他变量后，位于市长不利风水方位的县域，其国内生产总值（GDP）平均比其他方位的县域低2.3%。这种负面影响源于市长减少了对这些地区的政策支持与项目投资，导致企业招工减少和人口外流。虽然在涉事市长离任约3年后当地经济通常能够追赶复苏，但该现象给中国整体经济造成的年均GDP损失高达0.1%。
Feng shui, China's ancient practice of geomancy, influences the beliefs of roughly half of the country's population and persists among Communist Party officials despite official bans on superstition. According to recent tally by the Wall Street Journal, offences related to superstition accounted for the largest share of punishments issued last year by the party's central disciplinary watchdog. High-profile cases include a party secretary in Anhui province who blew up a five-star hotel in 2014 for disrupting his feng shui, and a Guangdong official who seized village land in 2015 for family burial grounds.
A recent working paper by Justin Jihao Hong of Boston University and Yuheng Zhao of Renmin University of China quantitatively demonstrates the economic damage caused by superstitious leaders. Analyzing municipal mayors who served between 2000 and 2018, the researchers worked with professional astrologers to map each mayor's astrological profile and determine which subordinate counties aligned with their calculated inauspicious compass directions.
The findings reveal that counties situated in a mayor's unfavourable direction experienced an average 2.3% reduction in local GDP compared to counties in neutral or favourable directions. This drop resulted from reduced policy support and municipal investment, which cascaded into reduced corporate hiring and household migration. Although impacted counties typically recovered their economic momentum roughly three years after the mayor's departure, the aggregate distortion resulted in an annual loss of 0.1% to China's total GDP.
Source: China’s superstitious mayors
Subtitle: Supernatural beliefs lead to lower economic growth
Dateline: 8月 06, 2026 04:38 上午