Trade-off between economic development and environmental governance in China: An analysis based on the effect of river chief system

The conflict between economic growth and environmental pollution has become a considerable bottleneck to China's future development. In the context of the promotion tournament, the Chinese Central Government incorporated the responsibility of water environment governance into the assessment and promotion system of local officials and implemented the river chief system (RCS). The RCS is an important measure to rebalance local economic development and environmental governance. However, two critical questions need to be addressed due to the path dependence of the “economic growth first” strategy and the complexity of cross-border watershed governance. Specifically, whether the RCS improved water environment as effectively as the economic responsibility system promoted economic growth, and whether local governments in China found a balance between economic development and environmental governance. This study aims to address these questions by investigating the policy impact of River Chief System (RCS). The results show that the RCS has heterogeneous effects on different pollutants, namely, an improvement in NpH value and NH3-N but a deterioration in COD and DO. We found opposite conclusions when using provincial monitoring data in Jiangsu province, which provides empirical evidence of cosmetic pollution governance by local governments. Our conclusions imply that the implementation of the RCS is not as effective as the government claimed. Moreover, we did not observe the trade-off between economic development and environmental governance for local governments. Local economic development is still in preference to environmental governance. We recommend improving the mechanism of the long-term implementation and dynamic evaluation of the RCS, highlighting the independence of evaluation authorities, and introducing third-party evaluation and public supervision systems.