Rethinking Environmental Bureaucracies in River Chiefs System (RCS) in China: A Critical Literature Study

Efforts to understand the political complexities of water governance must include critical hierarchical or bureaucratical perspectives. The River Chiefs System, China’s national mechanism which has evolved from local attempts, values more political control than governance efficiency. Water governance, which is regarded as a political task, is allocated from river chiefs at higher levels to lower levels. The River Chiefs System stipulates that local river chiefs fully mobilize and integrate various technical and administrative forces to achieve environmental goals. However, the strengthening of local authority enables local river chiefs to combat or eliminate state power. Although public involvement in the River Chiefs System is encouraged to some extent, “government-dependent” public participation hardly ensures real public involvement and supervision.