Green industrial policy (GIP) has re-emerged as a primary tool for decarbonization, yet its efficacy is frequently undermined by information asymmetries and rent-seeking. How do authoritarian regimes mitigate these principal-agent problems in the absence of democratic oversight? This paper investigates the political economy of Electric Vehicle (EV) subsidies in China. I construct a novel dataset combining municipal-level subsidy allocations with firm-level innovation metrics from 2015 to 2022 to examine the tension between central mandates and local implementation. This paper reveals that local protectionism significantly distorts subsidy allocation, as local officials favor inefficient "local champions" over market leaders to secure regional tax bases. However, this paper identified a corrective mechanism of "tournament-based accountability," where periodic central inspections and updated promotion criteria realign local incentives with national innovation goals. These findings challenge the static view of authoritarian environmentalism, demonstrating that while local state corporatism generates inefficiencies, the central state retains the capacity to curb rent-seeking through bureaucratic competition. The study contributes to the literature on the political economy of green transitions by unpacking the specific institutional dynamics that determine the success of industrial policy in non-democratic settings.