Environmental Statecraft, Fragmented Authoritarianism, and Technocratic Governance: The Structure and Agency of China's Local Environmental Politics

Local environmental politics in China is often said to be dominated by state-controlled modes of multi-level governance. However, top-down governance is embedded within and transformed by local politics, adding complexity to governance practices and environmental outcomes. This article draws on the case of Hengqin's Tianmu River to provide a context-rich and theoretically nuanced account of how local environmental politics emerge through the interplay of structure and agency. We explain how the local government co-opted the environmental impact assessment process to expedite a flagship development project and restructured the public-participation mechanisms embedded in the river chief system into a technocratic governance approach. These findings complicate narratives of China's environmental governance—local governments are not simply implementers of top-down strategies (which themselves are inconsistent). Rather, local political-technocratic dynamics continually contest and reshape top-down initiatives, bending them to context-specific realities.