The evolution of China’s rural water governance: water, techno-political development and state legitimacy

ABSTRACT

The article investigates the evolution of rural water governance in the People’s Republic of China through a historical review of its water governance transformations, including the ideology, institutions, and discourses. It is argued that the evolution of agricultural water management and rural drinking water development in China is inextricably linked to addressing political legitimacy. Rural water governance, is shown to be intertwined with state identity and citizenship formation, in order to produce and control hydrosocial territorial objects and subjects.

KEYWORDS:

• Water governance
• state legitimacy
• rural development
• hydrosocial territories governmentality
• China

1. Introduction

Water governance goes far beyond the control of water resources and is intricately related to state identity building, political legitimacy, national development strategies and the conduct of citizens (Menga 2015; Menga and Swyngedouw 2018; Moore 2014; Rogers et al. 2016). In China, for example, the mega water project of the Three Gorges Dam represents an illustrative modernity drive to inform national identity, economic development and political legitimacy (cf. Crow-Miller, Webber, and Rogers 2017; Pietz 2015; Webber 2012; Webber, Crow-Miller, and Rogers 2017). Also rural water governance, such as relating to agricultural water management and rural drinking water development, can be expected to be enmeshed with state identity politics, state political legitimacy and the formation of citizenship.

This paper contributes to the academic debate by examining this relation through a historical review and a detailed discussion of the (wished-for, State convenient) transformation of a Chinese water governance worldview, including its ideology, institutions, and discourses. Therewith, the paper responds to an invitation by the Journal of Peasant Studies, a decade ago, with a request for more insight in China’s water, peasant and politics debate (Magee 2013; Yeh 2013a). This debate on the politics of water and conservation in rural China entails a dynamic field of agrarian policies and practices, and a decade later we seek to present a comprehensive perspective of it. We show how the state has been governmentalizing hydrosocial territories, aiming to produce subjects in a diverse, vibrant and continuous process across diverse eras (e.g. Magee and McDonald 2006; Pietz 2010; Sheng and Webber 2019; Sheng and Han 2022; Sheng et al. 2022; Sheng, Cheng, and Wu 2023; Webber et al. 2021).

We argue that the way in which rural water governance in China has evolved is inextricably linked to resolving challenges to its political legitimacy. Based on historical analysis we distinguish three periods in the history of rural water policy and politics under the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These eras exhibit both distinct differences and consistent continuities. The first period (1947–1978) was characterized by engineered solutions to expand the irrigated area through mass campaigns, which work to consolidate the socialist state and to build political legitimacy. The second period, from the start of the introduction of the ‘household contract responsibility system’ (家庭联产承包责任制) land reform in 1979 to the early 2000s, witnesses the introduction of market mechanisms as part of a gradual reform process. In this period a decline in state investment and little local management resulted in a 10-year stagnation of irrigation development and degradation in rural public services. The third period which began in 2006 with the ‘building of a new socialist countryside’ (社会主义新农村建设) and the coordinated urban-rural development to address the ‘three rural problems’ (三农问题), is characterized by the ‘project system’ and a ‘two hands’ approach, with the goal of improving the state’s reputation and strengthening political legitimacy by increasing government investment in rural public services. These are not sharply delineated periods, but rather serve to analytically distinguish and connect major shifts in social-political and economic transformations.

In order to investigate the relationship between rural water governance and state political legitimacy, we unpack the hydrosocial territorialization and governmentalization by examining its different dimensions such as human-water relations discourses, institutional management, state-market relations, investment modalities embedded in the economic development strategies, state-rural society relations, and agriculture-industry relations. Methodologically, our historical analysis is based on examining a wide range of sources, including official speeches, official statements and state policy documents as well as academic literature. Our analysis in this paper focuses on rural water governance policy and policy changes through a ‘review from above’, without delving into the underlying on-the-ground implementation dynamics. In fact, the intention of the state does not always produce the actual result. Interactions between state and peasantry, for instance, frequently result in top-down water policies not proceeding in a coherent way. In an earlier paper (Xu et al. 2022), we investigate how the state uses rural drinking water and irrigation governance as governmentality schemes to make rural communities productive, shape convenient order and control them at once, however, people’s negotiation demonstrates that state water governmentality is an incomplete and continuous contested process. Some authors (among others, Burnham, Ma, and Zhu 2015; Clarke-Sather 2017; Mao et al. 2020; Pietz 2015; 2018; Rogers et al. 2016; Rogers and Wang 2020) have shed light on how China water governance intends to produce new hydro-social territories and subjects, as well as the reaction in local water practices. Based on these insights, we can further explore the dynamics between state and local people that influence the outcomes of water governance policies, overcoming the technocratic approach and examining the inherently political nature of conservation and natural resource governance, which are fundamental to rural politics in China (Magee 2013; Yeh 2013a).

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the construction of rural water infrastructure and its relationship to socialist state legitimacy. Section 3 examines rural water governance reform during the period of ‘opening up’ and economic reform. Section 4 examines the new era of rural water governance and its goals of promoting urban-rural public service equalization and consolidating state legitimacy. Finally, in Section 5, we conclude on the evolution of China's rural water governance policies as a complex, hybrid, non-binary state-market governmentality project that seeks to produce and control hydrosocial territorial objects and subjects (Table 1).

Table 1. The transformation of rural governance in P.R.China

	Mao-era (1949-1978)	Reform-era(1979-2005)	‘New’ era(2005-today)
Perception of human – nature(water) relations	Transform nature and control water	Water resources are limited; Water is of value and has a price	Ecological civilization; Based on the carrying capacity of natural resources
Institutional management	People’s commune; production team	Village committee; Villagers’ team; Water user’s association; Private actors	Village committee; ‘One issue, one discussion’ mechanism Water user’s association; Private actors
Nature of state-market relations	Plan economy	Water pricing; Radical neoliberal property rights reform	‘Two hands’-approach; A state supported market resource allocation; Project system
Main investment sources	Intensive peasants’ labor contribution;	Local self-reliance; ‘Two labors’ mechanism	Project system
Main objective of investment in water works	Agricultural production – surplus capital to industry; Consolidation of socialist state	Objective unclear, resulting in a reduction of investment in agriculture and water service	Realize the equalization of public service between urban and rural; Consolidation of state legitimacy

2. Rural water infrastructure and the building of the socialist state (1949–1978)

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the government's primary task was to consolidate the socialist state and align the people to accept, trust, and support socialism through large-scale socialist transformation and planned economic construction. Its goal was to build productive forces and production relations in order to realize the modernization of a socialist country. Mao stated in his famous article ‘On Ten Major Relations’ (论十大关系) that agriculture would enable rapid capital accumulation for the development of industry as well as provide the means of living for rural people. Mao also promoted the idea that ‘water conservation is the lifeblood of agriculture’ (水利是农业的命脉). As a result, it was planned to transfer capital from agriculture to industry in order to build the socialist state. Farmland irrigation and rural water conservation played an important role in rural agricultural production and in strengthening the socialist state's political legitimacy. Irrigation construction was the frontier during the transition from individual smallholder economies to agricultural production cooperatives, and then to the people's communes. For example, in the late 1950s, bolstered by the urgency to realize utopian-flavored modernization, the ‘Great Leap-Forward’ movement in agriculture began from the ‘Great Leap-Forward in Water Conservancy’¹ (水利大跃进). This initiative resulted in an excessive focus on engineering construction and led to detrimental consequences such as overwatering and salinization disasters in the Hebei, Henan and Shandong provinces (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978) (see also Pietz 2010).

Mao’s views on nature and technology, combined with socialist education movements and people's commune institution management, dominated the development of farmland irrigation and rural water conservation during this period. Rural water management was taken as an entwined process of developing a new understanding of nature and transforming nature, of proving the superiority of proletarian dictatorship, and of self-transformation and correction from traditional peasants to socialist citizens. Together these contribute to the consolidation and legitimization of the new socialist state.

On the basis of Marxist historical materialism and its dialectical method, Mao developed his thoughts on nature and its relation to science and technology (Gao and Zhang 2009), including human-nature relations regarding water management. He claimed that humanity is the slave of nature, but that it can also be the master of nature (Selected Works of Mao Zedong 1986, 846, own translation). He emphasized that through production practice humans can understand and transform nature. Science and technology play an important role in this process, assisting humans in understanding, mastering, and transforming nature. Rather than abandoning the traditional philosophy of ‘human and heaven harmony’, Mao believed that humans could achieve ultimate freedom and harmony through knowledge of necessity and production practice to master nature (Selected Works of Mao Zedong 1986, 845, own translation). Mao’s idea includes the view of material production activities as an intermediary for the development and connection of man and nature: a process of direct integration of human activities with natural laws, and man and nature's unity (Gao and Zhang 2009).

People should use all of their will and energy to transform nature through production, according to the guidelines of this worldview. ‘Man can conquer nature’, ‘Battle the earth and the heavens’, and ‘Do not rely on the heavens for food’ were ideologically motivated slogans for people to build rural water control infrastructures. During this time, the government advocated for a ‘technological revolution’ (大搞技术革命) with the goal of training technicians and establishing rural water management colleges. Such a technocratic perspective is certainly not limited to mid-twentieth century China, but what is specific for China in this period is its political project of a ‘mass line’ (大众路线). As the government claims in the fight against nature, the masses of people can only be liberated by relying on themselves. The fundamental line of all work is the mass line: constructing socialist revolution can only be realized through mass movement. In terms of water conservation, proletarian approaches must mobilize hundreds of millions of people to control water on their own land in order to solve flood and drought disasters comprehensively. As a result, there is a focus on mass movement to widely implement small-scale water conservation projects, supplemented by large-scale state-coordinated projects where needed.

The ‘mass line’ in rural water management was viewed as the crucial dividing line between proletarian and bourgeois approaches. According to the highest level national annual water policy meeting in 1959,

… some people regard mass movement and water conservancy technology management as diametrically opposed; they believe that water conservation is a technical endeavor, and that they cannot take the lead in politics, let alone rely on mass movements, lest they ruin water conservation; but they fail to recognize that the benefit of mass movement lies in better solving technical problems, and the masses have mastered water conservation technology, allowing water conservation to grow rapidly on the basis of a larger population … All of this shows that only by taking political leadership and following the mass line can we better develop water conservancy technology. (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978, 65, own translation)

During this period, production practice and irrigation infrastructure construction were mostly carried out through large-scale labor mobilization and political campaigns (Crow-Miller, Webber, and Rogers 2017; Moore 2019; Shapiro 2001) under the institution of the people’s commune system, which had three levels: commune, brigade and production team.² The commune system, as the foundation of rural governmental administration, enabled direct state intervention in people's lives and control over rural society through measures such as political mobilization and mass campaigns (Zhou 2000). The investment in rural public services was largely organized through the mass mobilization of citizens’ intensive labor. According to official documents, ‘the masses are the mainstay, supplemented by the state’ (群众为主国家为辅) in order to build irrigation infrastructure and soil and water conservation works (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978, 263, own translation). The basic policy for rural water management was to rely on the masses and to be self-sufficient.

Besides reorganizing production practices, collective remolding of human nature through ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought’ and practices of self-criticism were aimed at transforming people’s minds. Campaigns for ideological (thought) remolding were organized in rural areas. The central government issued the ‘Instructions on a large-scale socialist education for all rural population’ and ‘Instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on launching a socialist and communist education campaign in rural areas this winter and next spring’ in 1957 and 1958, respectively. Education disciplined peasants in rural water conservation construction campaigns by criticizing individualism and ‘selfish departmentalism’, that is, attitudes of those concerned only with their own unit with no intention to contribute labor to other communes. It necessitated the peasants’ selfless labor dedication to the construction of water works not only within their commune but also across communes. Education demonstrated the correctness of the country’s fundamental policies, and socialism was the only path to the common development and prosperity of workers and peasants. It essentially came down to an ideologized debate between the paths of socialism or capitalism. Not only was nature transformed through intensive labor contribution and campaigns, but socialist and communist citizens were also (meant to be) produced (Crow-Miller, Webber, and Rogers 2017; Shapiro 2001).

Despite the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, by the end of 1976, 78,000 water reservoirs had been built, and 6,500 medium and large irrigated regions had been developed; the irrigated area had reached 70 million mu (∼4.7 million ha), up from 24 million mu (∼1.6 million ha) in 1949 (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978, 62, 637). These irrigation infrastructures laid the groundwork for future rural water management. The nation-wide campaigns of ‘In Agriculture, Learn from Dazhai’ (农业学大寨, the model agricultural production brigade) were a typical example of how the commune would need to mobilize peasants to terrace rocky hillsides, fill in gullies, and bring irrigation water from distant rivers through highly coordinated labor. Mao’s earth-changing conquest and transformation of water was characterized by an infrastructure-driven perspective, a utopian urgency vision, and a mass line. It resulted in both a significant increase in agricultural output and a persistently negative legacy of techno-engineering methods, specifically the emphasis on the construction of engineered projects to supply water: ‘the quantity of projects was valued more than the actual effectiveness of those projects’(重数量轻实效) (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978, 520). Looking back at this period, the 1960s official documents concluded that the problem lay in an overemphasis on infrastructure construction coupled with a lack of attention to management structures (重建设, 轻管理) (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1958-1978). This has remained a challenge in subsequent periods of rural water governance.

Throughout the Mao era, ideological determination was repeatedly translated into policy and action. Rural water management developed in this period in the PRC is both an embodiment of the socialist production mode and a critical means of consolidating the socialist state’s legitimacy. The water infrastructure construction campaigns effectively facilitated governmentalization not only by transforming territories but also by strengthening the socialist ideology, reinforcing the superiority of the socialist regime, and seeking to produce socialist citizens.

3. Reform and the rural crisis

Economic reform (beginning in 1979) revitalized the economy, partly by implementing the ‘household contract responsibility system’, a land reform that restored the household as the unit for decision-making and accounting in rural areas. The reform not only resulted in a shift in production relations, but also in discourses about ‘emancipating the mind’ (re-minding people, by changing the idea that socialism would be incompatible with a market economy) and about ‘crossing the river by feeling for stones’ (learning how to do something through trial and error). The perception of water, the institutional structure of water management, and the discourse of China’s water governance all changed in this period. Through local experiments and pilot projects, the state advocated that water governance should adapt to principles of the market economy by focusing on economic benefits and applying the law of value/price, a typical ‘gradualist’ reform process (Brunnermeier, Sockin, and Xiong 2017; Garcia 2011; Heilmann 2008a; 2008b; Moore and Yu 2020).

The most visible changes in the perceptions of the relationship between humans and water are that (1) water is increasingly seen as a commodity; and (2) water is recognized as a limited resource. These transformations were carried out gradually. The national water conservancy annual meeting in 1984 addressed the fact that water had a value and potentially a price (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1979-1987). The first step in water reform was to ‘strengthen business management while focusing on economic benefits’ (加强经营管理, 讲究经济效益). The policy aimed to increase the value of water and generate profit through economic activities, such as fish farming, tourism, and so on. Another step was the introduction of water pricing. To guide the collection of water fees, the state issued the ‘Measures for verification, collection, and management of water charges for water conservancy projects’, in 1985. For the first time, the 1988 Water Law incorporated ‘diversified development of water resources’, ‘water saving’, and a ‘water-extraction permit system’ into national law.

Aside from the economic reforms that introduced water pricing, technological innovation also played a role. Deng Xiaoping envisioned science and technology as the primary production force during the reform era. High-efficiency water-saving irrigation technology and science were also emphasized in the 1988 water law. The Water Resource Ministry issued the strategy ‘rejuvenating water governance through science and education’ in 1995 (科教兴水). Science was expected to rigorously spur water technology (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1993-1997).

At the same time, the global trend of neoliberal water governance (see, e.g. Bakker 2003; 2005; Boelens, Hoogesteger, and Baud 2015; Harris and Roa-García 2013; Veldwisch 2007; Veldwisch and Mollinga 2013; Veldwisch, Bolding, and Wester 2009) also started to have an impact in China. The first World Bank irrigation loan project was launched in China in 1995. The Zhanghe irrigation district in Hubei Province was chosen as the pilot area. The next radical step in water reform was to reconceptualize that water was a commodity, which was addressed in the 1997 National Water Conservancy Meeting. The meeting urged local provinces to ‘be bold in practice and to emancipate the mind’ (大胆实践, 解放思想) in order to implement water governance reform through property rights reforms and a participatory approach through the formation of water users’ associations. As pilots, many provinces implemented small-scale rural water management and irrigation property rights reform on a much larger scale. The Lüliang (吕梁) experience, a pilot project in Shanxi Province, was explained at the national ‘Auction of Four Abandons’ Usage Right Communication Meeting (全国拍卖四荒使用权交流会) in 1997. It said that ‘Selling (auction) is better than contracting; selling is a breakthrough and a leap forward’ (卖比包好, 卖是突破,卖是飞跃). The National Rural Water Conservancy Meeting held in 2000, urged provinces that were still hesitant to clarify the property rights of small-scale irrigation and water management systems through auction, contract, leasing, and joint stock or joint cooperative, saying ‘no reform, no breakthrough’.

Through participation and the organization of water users associations, irrigation districts were expected to carry out institutional management reform and agricultural irrigation water price reform. In 2002, the Chinese government amended the 1998 Water Law to include a water usage rights strategy and the goal of ‘building a water-saving society’. The same year, the ‘Opinions on the Implementation of Water Conservancy Management System Reform’ (水利工程管理体制改革实施意见) was announced, a policy to promote property rights reform and water users’ associations. In order to guide small-scale water conservation and irrigation management reform, the Ministry of Water Resources issued a guideline titled ‘Opinions on the Implementation of Small-scale Water Conservancy Project Management System Reform’ (关于小型农田水利管理体制改革的实施意见) in 2003, which provided opinions on property rights reform through auction, contract, leasing, and so on. In 2005, the No. 1 Central Document³ emphasized the acceleration of rural small-scale water infrastructure property rights reform and the reform of the grassroots cooperative organization system. Property rights reform in this period was dramatic and unaccompanied by constraints. The majority of the auctioned and contracted small-scale irrigation and water conservation services became ineffective in the years that followed.

With the advancement of reform, water management institutions had to adapt. In contrast to the people’s commune era, when rural water management was organized under a three-level system, the local commune administration restored the previously existing township government. The most obvious change in state-rural relations was the villagers’ autonomy system. The villagers’ autonomous committees replaced the brigade. This autonomous self-government organization was meant to provide production coordination and management of public services and affairs in the village (Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committees of the People’s Republic of China 1998). The villagers’ team therefore took over the production team. The coordination of irrigation service was primarily the responsibility of the villagers’ committee and villagers’ team. However, due to the new complexity of decentralized land and collective water management, and lack of maintenance funds, many collectively owned water conservation and irrigation facilities collapsed or were purposefully destroyed or stolen in the 1980s (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1979-1987, 605).

During the reform period, the investment mechanism also changed. The central government reduced agricultural investment, particularly in rural infrastructure such as irrigation. It placed investment and maintenance primarily at the local level. One method for sustaining the development of water management systems was the business activities (综合经营) of water. It aimed to change the nature of public institutions in the water management sectors into self-sustaining businesses (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1979-1987, 606). The government advocated for a variety of investment strategies, including (international) loans. However, total investment in water conservation in 1994 remained lower than in 1980. Chinese academics have described it as a ‘10-year stagnation in the development of farmland water conservation and irrigation’ (e.g. Wang and Hu 2011). The reduction in irrigated land areas and the deterioration of the irrigation systems harmed agricultural production.

From the end of the 1980s, the government called for peasant labor mobilization in response to such challenges. The 1990 national farmland water conservancy and irrigation meeting stated that water conservation was dependent on both the state and the peasant; state investment was primarily directed toward the governance of large rivers and large projects, whereas small-scale irrigation should be dependent on the local units and peasant labor mobilization. The government believed it was crucial to mobilize the 400 million labor force in the countryside (Report Documents of Previous National Water Conservancy Conferences 1988-1992). Many provinces issued the peasant labor mobilization of 10–20 working days. The central government officially implemented the ‘two labor’ (两工)⁴ system in 1991 (State Council 1991), requiring peasants to provide obligatory labor contributions for water conservation and irrigation maintenance. While the ‘two labor’ system provided free labor investment, it did not address the lack of funds and management staff, nor did it consider the migration of rural laborers to cities. Furthermore, the 1994 fiscal and taxation system reform – ‘Tax Sharing Scheme’ – boosted state revenue while causing a financial crisis in local governments (Chen 2008). Local water conservation and irrigation responsibilities have not been adjusted accordingly, while financial power has been centralized, allowing a vacuum of financial investment and an increasing burden on peasants. During this time, the condition of irrigation infrastructure steadily deteriorated. Diverse factors, such as a decrease in agricultural production and rural household income, labor migrations, tax burdens, and resistance or non-conformity practices (see, Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022), all contributed to the end of the collective irrigation era. The villagers’ committee was unable to collect irrigation fees and to mobilize enough labor to maintain irrigation services.

When the new millennium arrived, numerous collective irrigation systems were replaced by individual household-based irrigation technologies. The elimination of agriculture taxes and fees, piloted in 2002 and implemented in 2006, hastened this process. The township shifted away from local agricultural production toward other sources of revenue. In comparison to the period when peasants were taxed and charged in various ways by the town and village collectives, villagers’ committees gradually abandoned their role in public affairs. The basic irrigation unit-villagers’ teams were officially canceled. The committees were primarily responsible for government supervision and their ties to the peasants were loosening. Academically, such a breakdown in the relationship between rural citizens and the local government, including villagers’ committees, has been referred to as the ‘Suspension Regime’ (Zhou 2006). In many places, peasants were responsible for providing water services on their own. This process resulted in ‘an individualized (or privatized or household-based) supply mode of public goods’ (Zhao 2011, 64, own translation), which increased agriculture production risks.

To address this situation, the government advocated, on the one hand, to follow the international trend of institutional arrangement by prescribing the organization of water users associations (WUA) – the globally advocated ‘participatory method’. In 2005, the ‘Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of Farmers’ Water User Associations’ (关于加强农户用水协会建设的意见) was issued to encourage peasants to organize WUA as the primary management body in rural water management. The No. 1 Central Document from 2007 claimed to further promote WUA and participatory management in rural water governance. On the other, following the repeal of the agricultural tax, the central government established a new mechanism known as ‘one issue, one discussion’ (一事一议) (State Council 2007) for villages to raise funds and labor input for local water conservation maintenance. Unlike ‘two labor’, which was highly forced, ‘one issue, one discussion’ is founded on the principles of ‘voluntary participation and democratic decision-making’. However, such a non-mandatory mechanism did not work well in rural areas (He and Guo 2010). When translated into policy and practice, not all participatory approaches are necessarily consistent with the desired outcomes (Cleaver 1999); this occurred in China as well. Scholarships discussed the reasons why WUAs were ineffective in China, such as a lack of democratic participation, a lack of financial transparency, a lack of maintenance funds, a lack of relevant legal support, and so on (see, Wang 2013; Wang and Wang 2014; Zhang et al. 2003), exploring the ‘implementation barriers’ and an insufficiently ‘enabling environment’ for ‘success’ (Veldwisch and Mollinga 2013, 759)

In contrast to the Mao era, which installed a socialist planned economy, China gradually implemented the transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented economy (though not fully fledged) in the ensuing 30 years of reform. Economic reforms in China have significantly raised living standards, allowing the government to gain legitimacy through economic progress. However, economic growth has resulted in a slew of new social tensions, such as rural-urban disparities, environmental and water pollution, increases in peasant burdens, and so on. Protests, petitions, and collective resistance from peasants already emerged earlier and peaked at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s (Li, Liu, and O’ Brien 2012; Li and O’brien 2006). China’s performance in government, both in terms of legitimacy and public trust, was severely hampered. Tiejun Wen (1996) coined ‘three rural problems’ to describe the difficulties faced by agriculture, rural society and peasants. The agriculture problem would center on the imperative to modernize and industrialize agricultural practices. The rural society problem would reflect the existing disparities in economic and cultural development between urban and rural areas. The peasant problem would address the multifaceted challenges faced by the large rural population, such as increasing the income levels, alleviating the burdensome conditions, and improving the overall cultural qualities for rural life. All three problems were directly related to rural development and the stability of the country. The concept was accepted by the government and the media. The ‘three rural problems’ were included in central government documents beginning in 2000. Irrigation deterioration, water pollution, drinking water problems, and diverse sorts of resistance were all linked to the crisis of these ‘three rural problems’.

4. The new era of rural water governance – urban-rural public service equalization

To fight the ‘three rural problems’ and the imbalanced development between urban and rural areas, in 2006, China’s National People’s Congress officially promulgated ‘Building a new socialist countryside’ and the ‘Coordinated urban-rural development strategies’. These two initiatives implied new approaches to rural development that aimed to integrate the development of cities and countryside, both economically and socially (No.1 Central Document 2006). Where agricultural production had supported industrialization in the Mao-era, the central government now deemed it necessary to invest more in rural areas. In the initiatives, the Irrigation Infrastructure Construction Project and the Rural Drinking Water Safety Project (RDWSP) occupied the crucial positions to respond to water challenges, to support socioeconomic development, and eventually to consolidate the legitimacy of the state by providing socially beneficial public goods (Teng and Wang 2021; Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022). From the 1990s, the government had addressed that providing drinking water in rural area should be treated as a political issue, which entails that providing rural water links to the stability and legitimacy of society and state. The RDWSP (2005-2015) and the RDWSP Upgrading Project (2016-2020) state that they aim to provide safe drinking water to the rural residents and ‘bring all the people to the well-off society’ by 2020. In his article to introduce the achievement of rural drinking water projects, the Deputy Minister of Water Resources, gave an example of people who had faced drinking water problems in remote areas of Sichuan allegedly thanking the Party-state for bringing ‘happiness water’ (Tian 2022). Water is now often presented in direct association with happiness and safety, reflecting the state’s objective to consolidate its legitimacy through water provision. However, the reliability and accessibility of government-provided drinking water remained limited (Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022).

Since the turn of the century, a clear shift in China’s perspective on water has been embedded in a broader shift in development thinking. In contrast to the reform period's emphasis on economic growth, President Hu Jintao began to propose a paradigm of comprehensive social development philosophy, namely the ‘Theory of Scientific Development’. Aside from economic growth, Hu's thinking emphasized socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable development, with a focus on urban-rural integration and harmony between humans and nature. As a starting point, in 2007, the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China established Ecological Civilization as a new mission. It aims to construct a resource-saving and environmentally friendly society, taking into account the capacity of resources and the environment, focusing on long-term development (China Daily 31 October, 2007).

In the face of severe resource constraints, environmental pollution, and ecosystem degradation, in 2012, the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, made a strategic decision to vigorously promote the construction of what it discursively framed as ecological civilization. It drew a grand blueprint for this framework for a long period of time in the future. This endeavor aimed to encourage people to establish the ecological civilization concept of respecting nature, adapting to nature, and protecting nature; to integrate ecological civilization into all aspects of economic, political, cultural, and social development. One of the key focuses of ecological civilization construction is water. President Xi Jinping ordered special reports on water security strategy issues, and delivered the so-called ‘3.14’ speech (March 14, 2014), establishing the new era water governance guideline. It is summarized with 16 characters (十六字方针), namely: ‘priority on water-saving’ (节水优先), spatial equilibrium (空间均衡), systematic governance (系统治理), and the combined efforts of state and the market, that is, ‘two hands’⁵ (两手发力). The guideline emphasizes the need for man and nature to coexist in harmony. Its objective lies in transitioning from a mindset of conquering nature to one that focuses on modifying human behavior and rectifying improper actions (2014 Speech, own translation). Xi also said: ‘In the past, we took water as an unlimited resource and took it as a free resource; we only focused on economic growth and didn’t notice water is an ecological factor; water resource, water ecology and water environment have a limited capacity to sustain economic development’ (2014 Speech, own translation). The new era guideline claims that people should not only consider how to use water resources, but also adjust their behavior and take nature and ecology into account when making plans. Official discourse now advocated that the harmony between humans and water is an important component of the overall harmony between humans and nature. Good water governance is a component of ecological civilization and a means of ‘fostering a community of life for man and nature’. Technically, demand-side management of water should replace the supply-side management, by water saving and ‘basing demand on the capacity of water’.

Despite a clear discursive transformation of human-nature relations, the construction of a modern state in China continues to rely heavily on the modern technology imaginary (Clarke-Sather 2012; Cook 2005; Yeh 2013b). The water management field is still dominated by a technocratic approach (Crow-Miller, Webber, and Rogers 2017). From Mao to the present, techno-scientific rationality and the ‘engineering as panacea mentality’ (Chen 2011) have influenced most decisions (Sigley 2006; Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022). Pietz (2010) also notes that China's water governance model, influenced by its hydraulic engineering paradigm, experiences shifts between centralization and decentralization, traditional mass mobilization and modernizing institutions, and in-country self-reliance and external inputs, all of which contribute to its socio-environmental and territorial impacts. At the moment, China aims to give equal attention to construction and management, but in practice, the lack of effective management is a barrier to water management reform (Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022). ‘The last kilometer’ was debated academically in rural water governance and also introduced in official language to emphasize the importance of effective use of fiscal input and local water management.

During this transition, the water users associations and villagers’ committees continue to serve as the institutional base of water management in the community. Many rural water projects, such as drinking water safety projects and high-efficiency irrigation projects, must be managed by local WUAs (if they exist) or village committees. However, there are also clear changes in the institutional set-up during the new era, for instance, the ‘project system’ and the ‘two hands’ approach. From 2005, the state started to increase the financial input for rural public services, especially for water infrastructure, with the goal of ‘solving historical debts in rural water construction’ (补齐历史欠账). In 2011, the state issued the No. 1 Central Document ‘Decision from the CPC Central Committee and State Council on Accelerating the Development of Water Conservancy Reform’ (中共中央国务院关于加快水利改革发展的决定), aiming to double annual investment compared to 2010 over the next ten years. In this process, ‘Fiscal transfer payments’ took the form of ‘projects’ with the fund that requires application from villages, towns, and counties. One illustrative example is the RDWSP from 2005-2015. Village committees could apply for the rural drinking water safety project to ensure drinking water provisions and protection (Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022). Another example is the ‘Small-scale Farmland Water Conservancy Key-County Construction Project’ (小型农田水利重点县建设项目) in the irrigation sector, promulgated in 2009. Formally, it would allow for a bottom-up application method, and competition in the selection of key counties. The government would guarantee most financial input, while private funds would account for around 10% of total investment (Ministry of Water Resources 2016). In the past decade, total water conservancy construction has reached 6.66 trillion Yuan (∼945 billion USD), five times greater than the investment made in the preceding ten years (China Daily 15 November, 2022). The Ministry of Water Resources stated at the 2022 press conference on the effectiveness of water conservancy infrastructure design and construction that water conservation investment amounted over 1 trillion Yuan (∼150 billion USD) in 2022, a 44% increase from 2021; that rural water supply projects received a record-breaking investment of over 100 billion Yuan (∼16 billion USD) and that 87% of the households in rural areas would now have tap water.

In rural public service, the ‘project system’ has evolved into an important mechanism for the development of rural public services. Local governments rely heavily on the massive infusion of funding from the state. The government calls for equal attention to construction and management, particularly for small-scale irrigation and water conservation projects, in order to reverse the situation in which neither the government and the collective, nor the people can effectively manage water. However, despite the large infusion of funds from the government into rural areas, the supply of public services in rural areas has not increased in proportion to the state's increased investment (He 2012). According to some scholars, the project system influenced state-rural society relations by involving village cadres as the lowest level of administrative government (He 2019), resulting in a significant shift in their role in grassroots governance (Meyer-Clement 2020). In fact, the project system as ‘technocracy’ approach (Qu, Zhou, and Ying 2009) aims to scientifically manage social development and governance. When implementing state investments, village cadres are expected to follow strict procedures and standards, giving them less autonomy in grassroots governance (He 2019). With access to central funds for rural public service investment, village cadres no longer needed to mobilize the grassroots, and as a result, the village's public or collective nature began to fade. According to research, the abolition of agriculture taxes and ‘Fiscal transfer payments’ which intended to strengthen state’s control in rural area, resulted in a paradox of increasing state governance legitimacy and declining village autonomous level governance capability (He 2012; Li and Gui 2018). As a result, ‘the last kilometer’ seeking effective water management to sustain the running of local water projects remains a major challenge for the government, both now and in the future.

As was mentioned, from 2014, the ‘16 characters’ guideline has become an important direction in water governance planning. Part of it is how the 13th 5-year Water Conservancy Plan seeks to materialize the ‘two hands’ discourse by balancing ‘water as a commons’ and ‘water as a commodity’ through the coordination between state and market. Compared with the blind trust in market to solve all problems in the 1990s, the ‘two hands’ approach implies that the government bears the majority of the responsibility for water governance. The government should develop grand designs and long-term plans for water conservation and transfer, water use, and pollution control. At the same time, it aims to fully exploit the market's ‘invisible hand’ and make the market the driving force for efficient water resource allocation (National Water Conservancy Planning, 11th and 13th 2007, 2016). How to adjust the relations between government and market and prevent the ‘failure of market or the failure of government’ (Li, Beresford, and Song 2011), is according to China’s officialdom the key issue of water governance in new era.

Some important government initiatives illustrate the efforts to strengthen entwined state and market responsibilities in rural water governance. First, the central government issued many designs and regulations to guide the water reform. The Outline of National Agricultural Water Saving 2012-2020 was issued by the General Office of the State Council, in order to advance State order and sovereign control in peasant areas. The Ministry of Water Resources completed the compilation of the national irrigation development master plan, the national pastoral water conservation development plan, and the annual implementation plan of each key irrigation and water conservation project. The Council of State issued Regulations on Farmland Water Conservancy in 2016 to establish legal standards for the management of rural irrigation projects. A system of chief executives’ accountability was developed to ensure implementation, particularly for small-scale farmland water conservation and irrigation projects and RDWSP. The ‘River-chief system’ was promoted in 2016 to make the local administrative chiefs responsible for the rivers and lakes under their jurisdiction.

Simultaneously, water price reform, transferable water rights affirmation, water market management, and private property rights reform are institutionally further promoted and discursively defended in order to allocate and use water resources efficiently (cf. Baumann 2022; Boelens and Vos 2012; Jiang et al. 2020). As we have shown, changing languages of water rights valuation (Duarte-Abadía, Boelens, and Buitrago 2021; Fletcher 2017; Rocha López et al. 2019) are deployed to legitimize every new effort to install new water governance. In contrast to previous market maneuvers, the government is now more active in encouraging and assisting the market to assume some of its responsibilities in water allocation. For example, the water market is actively cultivated and developed in order to commercialize and commoditize water by seeking to install the standardized (presumably open and transparent) water market rules and market access criteria. The government is also speeding up the construction of the (tradable, private) water rights system, as well as the establishment of water resource confirmation and transaction systems. In fact, in the year of 2000, the Minister of Water Resources had already addressed a discussion on water rights and the water market, emphasizing the importance of using economic means to achieve the optimal allocation of water resources (Wang et al. 2020). Following from that, some pilot water rights transfer projects were implemented, such as the first case of Yiwu water rights transfer project in 2005. In 2014, seven provinces and autonomous regions were chosen from across the country to investigate various forms of water rights trading. The Ministry of Water Resources issued the Provisional Measures on Administration of Water Rights Trading in 2016 and established China Water Exchange in Beijing to guide water rights trading and provide consultation, evaluation, and other services to facilitate water trading practices. In accordance with neoliberal mainstays, a ‘clearer market-oriented mechanism for determining water prices’ is being developed. The comprehensive reform of agricultural water prices and water price systems for extra use in the industrial and service sectors, as well as urban residents’ domestic water use, is being implemented gradually.

So far, despite the state’s intention and maneuvers, water-rights transfer has been limited to a few pilot projects (Sun et al. 2016), and company-to-company transactions and transfers among individual peasants are uncommon (Wang et al. 2020). Furthermore, in comparison to the pilot project of water pricing reform in urban areas, the pilot project of water pricing reform in agriculture has been less successful (Moore and Yu 2020).

Our findings support what Jiang et al. (2020) argued, that while it is too early to discern a neat, complementary balance and cooperation between state and market, the ‘two hands’ approach does represent new evidence to debate the state-market relations as non-binary constructions. More research on China’s water governance, for instance, through the lens of China’s water governmentality schemes, will shed new light on Karl Polanyi’s classic observations in The Great Transformation (1944, 31), that producing neoliberal regimes requires strong state support (Zhang 2013); that, as neoliberal founding father Friedrich Hayek (1944) well knew, neoliberalism does not result from a voluntary, spontaneous process but from the support of a forceful or even coercive State that installs and defends the legal-institutional order to make the market function. China’s evolving water governance shows how the state functionalizes the market and, at once, how the market is supposed to strengthen the state, in terms of legitimacy, control and productivity. China’s evolving strategy of hydrosocial territorialization (Boelens et al. 2016; Crow-Miller, Webber, and Rogers 2017; Rogers et al. 2016; Rogers and Wang 2020) complexly entwines modes of sovereign, neoliberal and disciplinary governmentality (Fletcher 2017; Hommes et al. 2020; Valladares and Boelens 2019), to make rural communities productive, shape convenient order and control them at once. In officially clear but practically messy ways with hybrid ontologies and disputed truth claims (Boelens et al. 2022; Mills-Novoa et al. 2020; Whaley 2022; Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch 2022), these state-market ‘two hands’ governmentalities produce new hydro-territorial objects and water user subjects – through always contested efforts that simultaneously seek to subjectify and subject.

5. Conclusion

We can see from the hydrosocial and technopolitical evolution described above that China’s rural water governance underwent a multidimensional transformation: ideological, institutional, and disciplinary. This process embodied both global and local experience.

First, there is a clear ideological worldview transformation of human-nature relations, from Mao’s conquering nature, the reform attempt to see water as limited and with a value, to the new era’s ecological civilization. During this process, rural water management institutions were exposed to state-dominated campaigns implemented through the commune’s system; to the international experience with participatory methods of water users’ associations; and to the ‘two labors’ and ‘one issue, one discussion’ for local institutional adjustment. The new era’s ‘project system’ and its ‘two hands’ approach seek to combine state and market in steering productive and efficient water governance. The parallels in the last two eras with what happened elsewhere in the world are worth further investigations but it goes beyond the scope of this paper.

Second, while post-Mao rural water governance differs significantly from that of the Mao era, there is a clear technocratic and engineering legacy influencing the management of water conservation and irrigation projects up to today. Despite the government's efforts on equal attention to infrastructure construction and water management, building local effective water management remains a challenge in rural areas – in governmental terms, to solve the ‘last kilometer’ problem.

Third, as we argue in the paper, rural water governance is inextricably linked to state political legitimacy construction. Rural water conservation and irrigation infrastructure construction were closely linked to boosting agricultural production during the Mao era, in order to foster rapid socialist industrialization. Meanwhile, mass campaigns and intensive labor contributions helped establish the legitimacy of the new socialist state and fostered the subjetivization of socialist/communist rural citizens. The reform era intended to increase economic growth as the primary means of acquiring state political legitimacy; however, economic growth resulted in steep urban-rural inequality and deep rural crisis, severely undermining the legitimacy of the state and the stability of society. In the new era, the government now aims to provide large investments in farmland water conservation, irrigation projects, and drinking water projects through ‘fiscal payment transfer’ projects to equalize urban-rural public service and consolidate political legitimacy.

Finally, though the state apparatus aims to install new modes of subjectifying and subjecting water users as combined state-servants and market-clients by deploying new, hybrid governmentalities in water governance, rural community and peasant reality is stubborn. Policy outcomes and the process of hydrosocial territorialization are not just based on top-down or disciplinary design but embedded in local contexts, contingencies and power relations, and negotiated through people's daily practices. Questions about everyday politics must be answered in order to examine how top-designed policies as in China are mediated and implemented by people in their daily lives. How do the local, diverse and often divergent water user families and collectives deal with desk-based water policies and inconvenient governmentality schemes? More empirical research is needed to comprehend how water governance schemes are adopted, resisted, neglected, ensembled and/or transformed at the local and grassroots levels.

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our appreciation to Jan Douwe van der Ploeg for his insightful comments on the manuscript. Additionally, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their meticulous review and constructive feedback, which have contributed significantly to the refinement of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qinhong Xu

Qinhong Xu is a Ph.D. researcher at the Water Resources Management Group of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University. She employs multiple theoretical frameworks, such as governmentality, social construction of technology, hydrosocial territories, and social imaginaries, to examine the politics of water in rural China.

Rutgerd Boelens

Rutgerd Boelens is Professor Water Governance and Social Justice at Wageningen University and Professor Political Ecology of Water with CEDLA at University of Amsterdam; His expertise lies in political ecology, water rights, legal pluralism, cultural politics, governmentality, and social mobilization.

Gert Jan Veldwisch

Gert Jan Veldwisch is Associate Professor Water, Society and Technology with the Water Resources Management Group of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University. His research encompasses a range of subjects including the politics of design processes, farmer-led irrigation development, water grabbing, agrarian change and wastewater utilization in agriculture.

Notes

1 In China’s rural water policy, two official terminologies prevail: ‘water conservancy’ is a broad notion to cover all the water infrastructures (ports, rivers, etc.), the large facilities and their management; and ‘farmland irrigation and water conservation’ refers to agriculture in rural areas, involving both large-scale irrigated areas and infrastructures, rainwater harvesting facilities (soil and water conservation), and small-scale irrigation. In this paper we use ‘rural water management’ to refer to the latter, and sometimes link back to the official terminology.

2 Commune replaced xiang (town) and the brigade replaced cun (village) from 1958-1978. The production team, a unit with less than 170 people, was the base of production activities. A brigade might have several production teams.

3 The No. 1 Central Document originally refers to the first document issued annually by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council of the People's Republic of China. Since most of the No. 1 documents focus on rural agricultural issues, it has become a common term for the government showing how it attaches importance to key rural issues.

4 The ‘two labor’ (lianggong 两工) was issued as the main investment channels for rural water conservation, through the ‘Regulations Governing the Administration of Cost Borne and Services Provided by Peasants’ in 1991. The ‘two labor’ was the service that the peasants should bear, which was counted by days. One is the ‘compulsory labor’ which was used for flood fighting, road building, afforesting or school upgrading. Rural labor should contribute 5–10 days to this service. The other one is the ‘accumulated labor’, which was used for rural water conservancy construction and afforesting. Labor contribution should be 10–20 days. The ‘two labor’ was an indication of self-reliance on rural public service.

5 ‘Two hands’ is a metaphor of the roles of market as the ‘invisible hand’ and the state as the ‘visible hand’ in water governance.