Restructuring China’s Water Environment Management System: A Social Network Perspective

Abstract

Despite restructuring in institutions related to environmental protection, the multi-sectorial decentralized water management system of China continued to be widely criticized. To identify the problems in China’s water management system and the direction of future reform, this article implemented social network analysis. From multiple perspectives (covering efficiency analysis, condensation analysis, and network centrality analysis), we quantitatively analyzed the structural change of the super-ministry reform of water environment management in China. We found that the 2018 super ministry reform of the system made the aggregation and central enhancement of China’s water management network, hence the power of water environmental management is more concentrated in the core department. However, the function overlap still exists after the reform. Some key issues of water resources management are absent from the responsibility of the core management department. Therefore, the cohesion and management effectiveness of the overall management network need to be further improved. Finally, we summarized several practical implications for future water management system reform, and the kernel is to achieve integrated management of water resource and water environment.