New Exploration of China Bay Water Governance: Traceability, Deconstruction, and Evaluation of Bay Chief System Policy

Given the complexity of bay water ecological environment governance, the bay chief system is a pilot policy carried out by the state as an innovative exploration to establish a new model and systematically solve related marine problems. By exploring the evolution path of policies related to environmental governance, this study demonstrates the theoretical logic between environmental policies such as the bay and river chief systems and comprehensively deconstructs the institutional framework of the bay chief system from the aspects of organizational structure, key tasks, and accountability mechanism. In addition, this study evaluates the implementation effect of the bay chief system based on the differences-in-differences method. Results show that: (i) As an institutional innovation of regional environmental governance, the implementation path of the bay chief system has undergone a bottom-top evolution. (ii) The institutional framework of the bay chief system has changed and promoted the original environmental governance model, providing an important manifestation of the modernization of China’s water pollution prevention and curing capacity. (iii) Empirically, the pilot cities of the bay chief system promote economic growth while reducing pollutant emissions, and achieve a win–win situation between emission reduction and growth. This conclusion remains valid after many robustness tests. In the future, further efforts are necessary to enhance the policy effect of the bay chief system according to local conditions and boost sustainable marine development.