Governmentality within China's South-North Water Transfer Project: tournaments, markets and water pollution

ABSTRACT

The control of water pollution in China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is examined through the lens of promotion tournaments as Chinese governmentality to offer a special perspective on China's hydro-politics and Chinese manners of water pollution control. This paper characterizes the existing form of governmentality in the SNWTP, pointing to its problems and potential resolutions. The promotion tournament is a market system with authoritarian control, designed to reconcile the incentives of local officials and the central managers of the SNWTP. This governmentality embodies characteristics of China's authoritarian water management system: centralized personnel control combined with market-oriented promotion competitions. However, a clear conflict between the requirements of ecological modernization and the use of power in China's water management system leads to distorted behaviors among local officials, an important source of problems in China's water management system. Compared to promotion tournaments, payments for ecosystem services or eco-compensation are applications of neoliberal environmentalism that could overcome the shortcomings of tournaments, and become the most critical governmentality for water pollution control in the SNWTP.

KEYWORDS:

• South-North Water Transfer Project
• governmentality
• promotion tournament
• water pollution control
• neoliberal environmentalism

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (71774088, 71303123), Philosophy and Social Science Foundation for Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (2016SJB630014), Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province (JNHB-058); Qing Lan Project and Top-notch Academic Programs Project of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (TAPP); and by Australian Research Council (DP170104138).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jichuan Sheng holds a PhD the economics of technology, from Hohai University in Nanjing. His research interests cover the field of human aspects of environmental change, recently focussing on governance within the South-North Water Transfer Project, particularly with respect to pollution control.

Michael Webber is a geographer who in recent years has been writing about water management in China, particularly the use of infrastructure to manage water supply.

Xiao Han has just completed a PhD in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne, on the technopolitics of the Chinese water industry's overseas construction activities.

ORCID

Jichuan Sheng http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0199-3994

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [71774088, 71303123]; Philosophy and Social Science Foundation for Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province [2016SJB630014]; Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province [JNHB-058]; Qing Lan Project and Top-notch Academic Programs Project of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (TAPP); and by Australian Research Council [DP170104138].