The quality of grassroots cadres is related to the advanced leadership of the Party and the legitimacy of government actions, which in turn affects the effectiveness of grassroots social governance. The threat of cadre stigma to the quality of grassroots cadres has reached a basic consensus in academic circles, so the "de-stigmatization" of grassroots cadres should become a common proposition for both practitioners and academics. The current discussion on the mechanism of cadres' stigmatization and its resolution strategy is mainly focused on the macro theory level, and the validity of this series of theories remains to be verified. Based on the two-stage matching data of 520 grassroots cadres and their direct supervisors, this paper concludes that cadre stigmatization can undermine the motivation of grassroots cadres in public service and affect their administrative performance. Positive cadre stigmatization strategies reduce the negative effect of cadre stigma on public service motivation, while negative cadre stigmatization strategies enhance this negative effect. This study enriches the study of the mechanism of cadre stigmatization from the perspective of stigmatization strategies, and thus strengthens the theoretical foundation of cadre stigmatization research. In addition, the results of this study have important practical implications for stigmatized grassroots cadres in terms of the choice of defusing strategies and enhancing their defusing ability.