Governance rescaling and neoliberalization of China’s water governance: The case of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between rescaling and the neoliberalization of water governance in the South–North Water Transfer Project. It demonstrates that the Chinese government has selectively adopted some neoliberal tools while rejecting others and dismissing the ideology of neoliberalism. These elements of neoliberalism are sometimes associated with the rescaling of water governance upward, downward, outward and inward. Rescaling has evolved expediently rather than through planned design, reflecting both the exigencies of practical problems and the legacies of bureaucratic power struggles. Market-friendly reforms enable more actors to bring environmental interests into state and market institutions, to form a closed network with policy-makers. The distinctive conflict between the actual existing selective neoliberalization and official discourses of anti-neoliberalization reflect the particularities of neoliberalization in China’s hydro-politics.