Another somewhat popular or not so popular opinion is that China reports gdp numbers lower than what they actually have. I don't know what to believe but putting it out there for discussion.
(1) rotations are most often exactly one of the periods on which goals and evaluations occur (that is, understating growth that at least meets the goal never is expected to help you by making it more likely you can plausibly claim to meet a growth goal the next period), and
(2) the rotating top-level officials have some other structursl disincentive to form a class identity and class norms (stack ranking where the top slice promotes into a national administration group and the bottom slice is demoted out of regional leadership, while the middle group remains, for instance, would do this, since everyone would have a strong incentive to make everyone else's results relatively worse; OTOH, this incentivizes an opposite kind of misreporting, so it's not really a solution.)
Oh you mean like "play by the rules, have a nice life for you and your family" versus "capital punishment for you, and movement restriction and asset seizure for your family"?
If it's perceived to be applied in a spotty manner, according to shifting whims of the leadership as to issues of concern, and with favoritism that can see the guilty free and the innocent punished, then, no, that just incentivizes currying favor and trying to influence the leadership perception that drive where enforcement is and isn't focussed.
Having travelled to China a few times over the past two decades, I have witnessed the economic growth with my own eyes and it is quite real. That of course does not mean that any number coming out of China is real and that there are not big inbalances whoes correction is overdue.