From state-led environmental management to hybrid governance: A county-level case study of Lake Fuxian, China

High-standard environmental protection in China has improved ecological conditions in many strategic regions, but it has also generated growing pressure on local development and social sustainability. Focusing on the Lake Fuxian basin in Chengjiang, this study examines the staged transformation of county-level ecological governance and explains why prolonged state-led environmental management has increasingly created pressures for a shift toward hybrid governance. Drawing on a longitudinal case study, ecological governance is shown to have evolved from an economy-dependent model shaped by economic logic to an authority-led model driven by administrative integration and high-standard regulation. Strong state intervention has been effective in improving water quality and strengthening institutional capacity, yet it has also produced fiscal strain, livelihood disruption, and heightened social tensions at the county level. Relocation, the transfer of rural land-use rights, industrial contraction, and the expansion of regulatory boundaries have improved ecological outcomes while weakening the social and economic foundations needed to sustain long-term governance. The county emerges as a policy-conversion arena where national ecological mandates, local development constraints, and community adaptation intersect. Under these conditions, hybrid governance is better understood not as a normative ideal, but as a practical response to the structural limits of prolonged administrative dominance. Greater attention to locality, trust rebuilding, and benefit-sharing mechanisms is essential for reducing the social costs of ecological transition and supporting more sustainable forms of county-level green transformation.