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Explora: Environment
and Resource The development of the river chief in Nantong and Huzhou

divisions in the departments and other units responsible its jurisdiction, not the lake pollution crisis that drove the
for water management, Huzhou officials wrote their design of the Wuxi river chief system.
documentation to specify that the municipal river chief However, rather than learning from the experience of
department must take the lead in the overall coordination municipalities that were facing similar water course issues,
of the river chief system and be responsible for: (i) the Nantong officials chose to copy much of the provincial
development of the work program and annual plan for policy, despite the implicit understanding that they could
Huzhou, (ii) assist the river chief in performing their
guidance function of lower-level river chiefs, including adapt the model to local needs or, as reported, “Our
their coordination and supervision of the municipal and policy learning is mainly about the policy texts of the
lower level activities, and (iii) to help the municipal river higher authorities. The higher authorities have also held
chief perform their routine work. some training meetings on the river chief system that we
attended” (W, interview, 6 January 2020).
By setting out these specific responsibilities of river
chiefs, not only did Huzhou move beyond the model We want to highlight that the primary reason for this
developed in Wuxi, but it also established the expectations adherence to the provincial guidelines reflects the desire
and conditions needed for the different levels of river for local officials to use the river chief to gain enhanced
chiefs to perform their duties under the coordination legitimacy in the eyes of provincial leaders (allow Nantong
and guidance of the river chief office. Further showing to be seen as “good municipality”) and gain performance
Huzhou’s efforts to learn from others was the decision to related “points” in the belief that this would help
develop a more targeted and operable assessment scheme promotional prospects. In this, Nantong officials might not
based on a scoring system that measures standards at the be completely to blame for their adherence to systematic
municipal leading department and the river chief system outlooks that led them to follow Jiangsu, given the nature
of the county. of the Chinese bureaucracy and its reward and punishment
mechanism.
In summary, in developing the river chief system,
Huzhou officials examined a range of different models Failing to engage in hard learning was compounded
and then actively engaged in a learning process that led by the fact that much of Wuxi’s success was not reflected
them to implement a range of policy adjustments that were in the policy texts associated with their river chief but
based on retaining the core of the original (Wuxi) policy, resulted from tacit knowledge among local agents as to
but which combined this core with other municipal river what was needed to address a crisis. In fact, according to
chief models to better address their local needs (for specific the interviews with the office staff of the river chief system
details see: “Implementation Plan of Establishing the River in Nantong, their cognition of the river chief system
Chief System in Huzhou 2013;” “Implementation Opinions remained at the level of the river chief being responsible
on Deepening the River Chief System 2014”). As such, the for water control (Director F, interview, 8 October 2019).
transfer Huzhou undertook falls into the assortment side
of the transfer continuum offered in Figure 1. As a result of not engaging with this tacit knowledge,
Nantong officials failed to incorporate critical design
4. Discussion elements that made Wuxi’s river chief system work. By
focusing only on the defined policy objectives, principles,
4.1. Situational differences, learning deficiencies, and main directions, Jiangsu and Nantong officials engaged
and policy failures in Nantong in what is often referred to as incomplete (and, in many

Nantong has a relatively flat terrain with a water system ways, uninformed) transfer. As a result, rather than focusing
characterized by a complex network of rivers and ditches on the operational logic of the river chief, administrators
roughly bound by the Tongyang Canal and Rutai Canal, in Nantong focused on daily management issues. This led
which falls within two river basins, the Huaihe, which covers them to design a management model that neglected internal
an area of more than 2,200 km in the north and the Yangtze, and cross-departmental cooperation, which underpinned
2
that covers an area of more than 5,700 km in the south. In Wuxi’s river chief system (Y, interview, 8 October 2019).
2
this, the Yangtze River coastline in the territory is 166 km, Putting it more succinctly, an administrator in the Water
with a surface area that extends southeast in a trumpet shape. 4 Resources Bureau of Nantong noted, “Many of the contents
This shows the difficulty of watershed governance in reported today are long-term river management.there is not
Nantong lies in the complexity of the river system within much about the river chief system. It is not clear what the
responsibilities of the river chief are, what the current river
4 Nantong Historical Records Network. http://www.ntszw.gov. chief has done, and what problems he has solved” (Director
cn/?c=index&a=show&id=2460, (accessed 08/04/2022). 53 C, interview, 14 September 2019).

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2025) 7 doi: 10.36922/EER025110018