Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint Environmental governance with 'Chinese characteristics' and citizenship participation in Nanjing M. Shen, C.P. Pow∗, Harvey Neo Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, 117570, Singapore 1. Introduction Faced with the negative externalities of rapid urbanization and industrialization since adopting market reforms in the early 1980s, China's pressing urban environmental problems have often captured global media attention. In recent years, amidst mounting public displeasure and the realization that these problems will eventually stymie social and economic progress, the Chinese government has embarked on a sweeping nation-wide regulatory and institutional change in an attempt to develop an advanced ‘ecological civilization’ with strong environmental governance. In essence, environmental governance in China is marked by two characteristics. First, given their political dominance, environmental governance directives are often promulgated in a top-down manner by the central government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Such top-down strategy can be evinced by how the Chinese government has increased environmental investments while establishing and improving a nation-wide legal environmental framework. In relation to a more robust legal environment framework, bureaucratic and institutional capacities have also been enhanced, with the aim of improving the quality and quantity of environmental agencies across different political scales, from the national to the provincial right down to the level of townships. A case in point here is the recent formation of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that replaces the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Arguably, this represents a positive step forward as the new ministry will now have the power to coordinate major environmental protection efforts (pollution emission, agricultural pollution, marine conservation, climate change, etc.) that were formerly tackled by separate ministries. Second, with growing awareness of environmental protection, China has also gradually placed environmental governance in the hands of the public, more so than before. There have been grassroots initiatives that, for example, encourage the public to conserve energy, participate in green commuting and reduce plastic bag usage. Nevertheless, according to the Chinese Public Environment and Resident Livelihood Index (2007), almost half of the people surveyed regarded themselves as playing insignificant roles in environmental protection, with only 13.7% thinking of themselves as playing ∗ important or somewhat important roles in protecting the environment (Liu, 2008). To sum up, the Chinese government has started to promote citizen participation in environmental governance in urban China in the face of such general apathy. Given these two developments (which are by no means unique to China, this paper is interested to unravel the evolving forms of citizenship participation and environmental governance in China. Even though the role of public participation has been extensively discussed in the Western literature, this paper provides a fine-grained analysis on the emergent form of environmental governance with ‘Chinese characteristics’ that will help shed critical light on the tensions between an erstwhile highly centralized political system that allows very little space for public involvement and a citizenry increasingly cognizant of their rights. Specifically, we are interested to address the following questions: Why does the state/government play a leading role in establishing and implementing regimes to resolve environmental issues in urban China? Why are effective environmental governance so difficult to forge in both Nanjing and more broadly in urban China and why is there still limited citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing? To address these questions, we will be drawing on the case study of Nanjing city to illustrate the contested nature of environmental governance and citizenship participation in contemporary urban China. Following this introduction, we will first sketch out the conceptual underpinnings on environmental governance and public participation before explicating the contested environmental governance regime in Nanjing. In so doing, we show how governance and public participation in environmental issues are mutually shaped by wider socio-political contexts, even as both are continuously evolving. Before proceeding further, a brief note on methodology is necessary. Interviews and surveys were deployed as the two main methods in this research. Interviews were semi-structured and conducted face-to-face with in-depth discussions between the researcher and respondents lasting approximately 30 min to an hour. To elucidate the nature of environmental governance regimes in Nanjing, we also conducted interviews with officials in the Nanjing Environmental Protection Bureau. To assess the level of public participation in environmental governance in Nanjing, we randomly sampled between 50 and 60 respondents in each of the six urban districts (Jianye; Gulou; Xiaguan; Xuanwu; Baixia Corresponding author. E-mail address: powcp@nus.edu.sg (C.P. Pow). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2018.12.003 Received 13 February 2017; Received in revised form 12 December 2018; Accepted 24 December 2018 0197-3975/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Please cite this article as: Shen, M., Habitat International, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2018.12.003 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. Fig. 1. The six urban districts (Jianye; Gulou; Xiaguan; Xuanwu; Baixia and Qinhuai) surveyed in Nanjing. 2. Governance and public participation and Qinhuai) in the city (see Fig. 1). In total, 330 respondents with approximately equal number of male (N = 169) and female respondents (N = 161) were randomly surveyed using a standard questionnaire (please refer to specific questions asked in Section 4). Respondents were also drawn from a range of age groups comprising those 19 years old and younger (N = 7); 20–39 years old (N = 226); 40–64 years old (N = 91) and above 65 years old (N = 6). Over 90% of the respondents were from the 20–39 and 40–64 age groups. The surveys were conducted in public spaces with high foot traffic such as outside main subway stations or busy road intersections that were likely to capture a representative cross-section of the population. 2.1. Deining governance Insofar as governance is often considered an indeterminate concept that defies simple definition, Van Kersbergen & Van Waarden, 2004, pp. 151–152) have highlighted some useful characteristics. First, governance is pluri-centric rather than unicentric; secondly, it privileges some actors (especially private economic actors) while disempowering others; thirdly, governance as a process often entails a series of accommodation, negotiation and cooperation. This paper further echoes Painter's (2000) definition of governance as involving a wide range of institutions and actors in the production and implementation of policy outcomes which also entails the collaboration and coordination within and between three dimensions: (1) state and sub-state institutions, (2) market-economy institutions (such as private companies), and (3) non2 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. Healey (1997) and Forester (2006), amongst others, research on public participation in China has gained traction over the recent years (see He, 2018; Li et al., 2017; Zhu, 2015), especially with public participation being enshrined in the Chinese planning laws since 2008. As Yu (2015) argues, for China's ecological modernization programme to succeed, it must facilitate “strong public participation”. Elsewhere, it has similarly been affirmed that public participation must be an indispensable component of environmental management and urban development, notwithstanding perennial debates over the ideal ways to actualize such public participation (see Hartmann, Fennnie, & Spit, 2018). According to China's Town and Country Planning Act (Article 26), before the submission of urban or rural plans for approval, planning authorities are required to publicly publish drafts of planning documents for at least 30 days and solicit for opinions from experts and the general public through appraisal conferences or hearings. When submitting plans for approval, planning authorities are also required to provide documentations of such public consultation and account for the adoption of relevant public opinions (See http://www.npc.gov.cn/ englishnpc/Law/2009-02/20/content_1471595.htm). Despite the promulgation of planning regulations mandating public participation, members of the public remain largely excluded from the crucial early stages when key decisions are being made even before the urban plans are being drawn up. Even worse, the public consultation exercise may be hijacked and manipulated to safeguard planning proposals that local lingdao (political leaders) oppose (Morrison & Xian, 2016, p. 209). In a recent article, He, Mol, and Lu (2016) in detailing the case study of the proposed Beijing-Shengyang railway project, highlight two features of public protests in China. First, the protests were nuanced in that many of the protestors were not fundamentally against the project per se but were unhappy with the secrecy in which the project details unraveled. Second, they argue that protests such as those seen in relation to the railway project are still uncommon. Their latter point is echoed by Sun, Zhu, and Chan (2016) who examine the scant use of public participation in environmental management in Shanghai. Both studies concluded that had there been more robust public participation at all phases of the decision-making process, the acceptance level of the eventual environmental outcome is likely to be higher. However, this conclusion is questioned in other studies. For example, Fors, Molin, Murphy, and Konijnendijk (2015) in their meta-review of existing studies on the relationship between public participation and the construction of urban parks, argue that it is unclear if increased public participation leads to parks which are necessarily accepted by the majority or, indeed, if the parks which are eventually built can be considered “good” parks to begin with. On the whole, while the incorporation of citizen participation in planning has received greater attention and is even strategically aligned with the Central Government's ‘people-oriented’ (yirenweiben) ideology, scholars have highlighted that public participation in practice is difficult to be fully achieved generally and especially so in China, given its peculiar political and cultural context. Arguably, the reason why public participation in urban-environment management in China has not taken root is not because the authorities are oblivious to the benefits of public participation. Rather, as Wu, Chang, Yilihamu, and Zhou (2017) suggest, the limited and sporadic public participation in urban China is due to “political reasons”. It is however all too easy for critics to consign the alleged futility of Chinese public participation into the black box of “political reasons”. As our study will show, the political imperative can oftentimes be overstated and it is important to detail how citizen participation can be cultivated in spite of it. In other words, is it possible for China to develop a kind of social environmentalism with “Chinese characteristics”? The latter question is echoed provocatively by Martens, 2006, p. 213) who points out that ‘if Chinese citizens maintain a different culturally and historically defined outlook on participation in political and social affairs, we should perhaps look for different forms and shapes of governmental organizations and individuals in the civil society. While these three dimensions are evident in China to varying degrees, they are far from the ideal state of being truly democratic if we are to take the latter to mean “every individual potentially affected by a decision should have an equal opportunity to affect the decision” (Warren, 2002, p. 678; see also; Dahl, 2006). In view of these three dimensions, the next section will now turn to examine the contours of environmental governance and planning in China. 2.2. Environmental governance and environmental planning Environmental governance is a form of governance over the living environs of a particular society to ensure the well-being of all living within that specific society. The politics of environmental governance is thus necessarily refracted through the normative politics of socialecological relations and broader societal transformation towards what is deemed as a ‘good’ ecological society. Critically aligned with the idea of governance is planning (though it has to be qualified that governance and planning are certainly not the same thing because, inter alia, the latter is just one aspect of environmental governance, as the ensuing discussion will illustrate). The literature on planning theory collectively identifies various ways public policies are made in different decisionmaking contexts and various approaches to planning, thus reflecting different underlying philosophies on how environmental problems can be defined, analyzed and resolved. Proponents of comprehensive planning for example, would argue that successful (environmental) governance is underpinned by a comprehensive analysis system, reasonable choice selection processes, and coordination between related jurisdictional agencies. From Faludi's 1973, (p. 4) view on ‘normative theories of planning’, the comprehensive planning approach should be classified as ‘normative political theory’ that is concerned with “how planners ought to proceed rationally”. Such an approach often valorizes the expertise of planners over the views of lay people. Nevertheless, drawbacks of this planning approach are conspicuous. First, the decision-making context of this approach is too idealized and grounded in ‘instrumental rationalism’ (Muller, 1992), serving mere technocratic and corporatist modes of governance; second, environmental problems are often resolved via the centralization of power and authority, downplaying the role/perspectives of the local and misaddressing their real needs. Alternatively, Healey (1997) has proposed a collaborative planning approach which is deemed much more efficacious, responsive, and politically viable in resolving environmental problems. Collaborative planning is a policy-driven approach, that promotes “new directions in governance which are more sensitive to the ‘consumers’ of public policy rather than the government ‘producers’ of policy” (Healey, 1997, p. 205). She also builds on the realization that knowledge and value of these ‘consumers’ of public policy are constituted through social, interactive processes comprising mediation, negotiation and consensus building. In this sense, in the collaborative planning approach, “public policy, and hence planning, are thus social processes through which ways of thinking, ways of valuing and ways of acting are actively constructed by participants” (Healey, 1997, p. 29). Collaborative planning – as a policy-driven form of environmental governance – transcends traditional emphases in planning theory on instrumental reason and scientific knowledge. It helps to better understand how people actually think and value in specific social context and how public policies are developed and implemented by means of participation in a more interactive process. However, this planning approach has been challenged by the neo-liberal mode of governance that has (re)affirmed instrumental economic rationality, relinquishing the hope of coordinating public policies in favour of leaving planning to market processes and elite decisions. It is in this context that we turn to the discussion on public participation in China. While the role of public participation has been extensively discussed in the Western literature drawing on seminal works by Arnstein (1969), 3 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. stating that ‘local people's governments at various levels shall be responsible for the environment quality of areas under their jurisdiction and take measures to improve the environment quality’. This was in response to the poor market allocation of environmental resources since China's economic reforms in 1978. Such views that the market has failed in environmental resource allocation has led to a dependence on the government as the key actor in managing the environment. In more practical terms, environmental spillover effects across regions also urgently required the state's macroscopic perspective to collaborate between different levels of governments to act efficiently and coordinate conflicts between regions. In this sense, it is understandable why a strong governmental presence in environmental governance remains an essential component and characteristic of China's environmental policy. At this juncture, it is first necessary to clarify what is meant by ‘environmental governance regime’ in China. According to the Environment and Development Research Center of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2004, p. 338), this refers to ‘a government management system consisting of related government agencies and its affiliated institutions (shiye danwei) that are relevant to environmental protection. The system is operated by these organizations in certain ways to reach the objectives of environmental protection’. Thirty years after China's economic reform, it has also been actively reshaping its environmental regimes. Environmental governance regimes in Nanjing and urban China more broadly are divided into two categories: horizontal cooperation regime and vertical accountability regime among related government agencies (see also Li, 2008; Shapiro, 2016). Even though current environmental governance regimes in Nanjing allow for good environmental protection (at least on paper), we will tease out some problems and flaws of these contested regimes in Nanjing which potentially impede the development progress of good environmental governance. At the outset, it has to be noted that the distribution of power and authority amongst government agencies and their environmental responsibilities are often highly uneven. Professional environmental protection resources are overly centralized in the Ministry of Ministry of Environmental Protection (now replaced by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment) while local environmental protection bureaus (especially at municipal and district or county levels) in Nanjing lack executive power to contribute to environmental protection industries because of their confined political space that prevent their voices from being heard (Fig. 2). In China, the central government has jurisdiction over provincial, municipal and district or county-level governments. This unidirectional management mode allows MOEP to issue a command or an instruction directly to environmental protection bureaus (EPBs) at lower levels. However, in reality, because local EPBs are reliant on local governments “for virtually all their support, including their budgets, career advancement, number of personnel, and resources such as cars, office public participation from those commonly found in the West’. To this end, scholars have highlighted such ‘public participation with Chinese characteristics’ that embeds public participation discussion within specific Chinese cultural-historical milieu, including works that aim to bring a Chinese-inflected understanding to popular western concepts such as deliberative citizenship and governance (see He, 2018). More importantly, would such a development deliver improved environmental outcomes compared to the existing state-society relationships and “authoritarian environmentalism”? To be sure, this is a rhetorical question as it has been asserted that authoritarian environmentalism in China tends to lead to unsustainable forms of topdown governance strategy that often overlook public concerns and local interests although it has also been argued that environmental governance in China is characterized not only by national policy but also complex central-local relations and local politics (see Lo, 2015). Nonetheless, such authoritarian environmentalism, even if it merely morphs into a weak form of social environmentalism, inflected with “Chinese characteristics”, is likely to lead to a different kind of society where life is above and beyond direct state and economic control, shaped by voluntary and private arrangements between individuals and groups (Held, 1995). As detailed earlier, the place of individuals and groups in civil society was seldom taken seriously in China. Indeed, many members of civil society must lobby state authorities to get more public rights and has long suffered from a lack of legitimization. It is important to remember that the civil society is never separate from the state; and individual and collective activities in civil society can only function through a comprehensive legal framework provided by the national or local state. To this extent, as Shapiro (2016: 115) points out, citizen's groups in China are ‘classic illustrations of the Gramscian arguments that civil society is often penetrated by the state as a way of manipulating culture so as to gain consent for government rule.’ In contemporary environmental politics, participatory environmental governance that draws on actors beyond the regulatory governing institutions has become a key concern (Kim, Halligan, Cho, Oh, & Eikenberry, 2005). This agenda advocates a kind of participatory democracy which requires a radically new form of equality of access for individuals and groups in civil society to participate meaningfully in various arenas of politics. The next section will now turn to examine whether such an approach to environmental governance can take root in China. 3. Contested environmental governance regime in Nanjing In contrast to Western environmental governance regimes, the Chinese state across various scales has long played a leading role in establishing and implementing environmental regulations in China (Pow & Neo, 2014). As early as in 1979, the 16th Article of Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China was passed, Fig. 2. Uneven distribution of power and authority in environmental governance in Nanjing. 4 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. Table 1 Internal functional conflicts of related government agencies in Nanjing. Internal functional conflicts of related government agencies in Nanjing Organization Environmental Management Functions Economic Management Functions Finance Administration Bureau Examination and approval of financial services related with environmental projects Urban Planning Bureau Forestry Bureau Water Resource Bureau Provision of infrastructure for environmental protection Management on forest conservation, planting and protection on biodiversity Control on soil erosion, quality of ground water, and watershed management Meteorological Bureau Land and Resource Bureau Weather forecasting and monitoring of air quality Management on mineral and marine resources, land reconversion, and land property right management Nanjing Environmental Protection Bureau and Transportation Bureau jointly take charge of controlling vehicle pollution, while the implementation work belongs to Public Security Bureau Monitoring on drinking water quality and relevant epidemic diseases Research on advanced environmental science and technology; coordination among different environmental research plans in a city Transportation Bureau Public Health Bureau Science and Technology Bureau Capital examination and approval and funds transfer Urban planning and design Forest development Water conservancy construction and water resource development Provision of meteorological information Land use planning and examination and approval on certain lands Vehicle driver training and tests on vehicles Tests on water equipment Different kinds of technological development senior official from the Publicity and Education Center of NEPB explains: buildings, and employee housing” (Economy, 2004, p. 108), they tend to yield to the pressures from the local governments. Additionally, while local EPBs may request for resources to help enforce existing environmental laws and regulations, few can actually get any support from MOEP until serious environmental incidents have occurred. As Shapiro (2016, 61) observes: ‘competing and overlapping bureaucracies plague every level of administration, and the lines of authority from the ‘center’ in Beijing to the localities are often weak.’ Insofar as vertical accountability is concerned, there are unbalanced distributions in the authoritative rights of the related government agencies and their environmental responsibilities (see Neo & Pow, 2015 for an example of the tensions in economic policy between local and central governments). On the one hand, professional environmental protection resources are overly centralized in the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MOEP) and on the other hand, local environmental protection bureaus (especially at municipal and district or county levels) in Nanjing lack executive power to manage environmental issues because of their confined political space that prevent their voices from being heard or taken seriously.or instance, during day to day environmental protection work, local EPBs often found it difficult to know whether to strictly follow environmental protection rules or to yield to the pressure from local governments who are seeking economic development at the expense of the local environment protection. Under most circumstances, local EPBs will make some concessions because the leaders of these organizations are afraid of losing their jobs or having their budget cut by local governments. As Wong (2005, 43) argues, the fragmented vertical system of environmental governance in China ‘often creates conflicts of interest, as local environmental protection bureaus (EPS) face significant difficulties in strictly enforcing environmental regulations, due to pressures from local authorities to prioritize economic development.’ In our interviews with local environmental protection bureau officials, interviewees mentioned that the Nanjing environmental protection authorities (huanbao xitong), including the NEPB at municipal level as well as district and county-level EPBs, have difficulties in carrying out environmental protection work due to dual pressures from both the National Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Nanjing Municipal Government (NMG). According to our respondents, some local governmental officials from the district-level EPBs are being put in an awkward position as they often resorted to notifying the Ministry of Environmental Protection of local environmental infringements anonymously. In terms of horizontal accountability, an effective regime has been difficult to forge in Nanjing due to three factors. Firstly, the position of Nanjing Environmental Protection Bureau (NEPB) is still low among all government agencies in Nanjing and thus lacks the capabilities to coordinate with other organizations to resolve environmental issues. As a “NEPB is a marginalized agency among all components of Nanjing Municipal Government, as it does not contribute any GDP to the government … It has no rights to punish these construction sites as the right to rectification is given to construction and urban planning agencies by the NMG. Therefore, legally, the NEPB cannot govern and rule these areas of dust pollution.” Secondly, ‘selfish departmentalism’ – a term coined by Howell (2004) to describe one of China's governance pathologies refers to how government agencies shirk responsibilities, jockey for power and wrangle with each other – over environmental governance is also prevalent in Nanjing. Thirdly, internal functional conflicts within related government agencies (see also Fan, 2010) have also brought about much institutional stress on the formation of horizontal cooperation regime in environmental governance in Nanjing Specifically, these internal functional conflicts often cause related agencies to be selective in the tasks they are willing to perform and prioritize economic management functions rather than environmental management functions (Table 1). Under China's administrative system, financial incentives to perform economic management functions far outweigh those of the environmental management functions in the various government agencies. In fact, administrative nonfeasance (a phrase that refers to the deliberate neglect of performing environmental management functions by government agencies) is exacerbated by selfish departmentalism which leads to the further break down in environmental governance in practice. 4. Unpacking citizen participation in urban environmental governance With a fragmented governance structure highlighted in the preceding discussion, how does citizenship participation fare in Nanjing? Generally, citizen participation in environmental governance in urban China can be understood in two ways through approaches to participation and motivations behind participation. Approaches to citizen participation can be categorized as either direct or indirect citizen participation, while the motivations behind participation comprise either active or passive citizen participation. Direct citizen participation refers to acts whereby citizens as individuals directly involve themselves in related environmental governance activities within which they can freely express their ideas, wishes and suggestions. Direct citizen participation covers a variety of specific participatory approaches such as voting, participating in a public hearing, sending a petition, participating in administrative litigation, among others. On the other hand, indirect citizen participation 5 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. is a participation process in which citizens as individuals take part in different sorts of environmental governance activities through indirect channels. Such indirect channels include participation via education and research institutes, citizen participation via their work units, citizen participation via Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) or via the mass media. Active citizen participation means that citizens are able to carry out positive actions in environmental protection work. This includes offering comments and suggestions to governments to address relevant environmental governance issues, volunteering in environmental governance activities, reporting illegal actions that are against environmental protection laws or selecting a green lifestyle. We argue that active citizen participation is a higher-level form of participation than passive citizen participation where citizens are driven by external forces to participate in environmental governance. Examples of passive participation include situations where polluters are coerced to accept redress from the government on pollutants they have produced and feel compelled to take the necessary actions towards environmental governance under pressure from the media and public. In the same vein, passive citizen participation includes urban habitants, who for fear of being charged exorbitant fines, discard rubbish at designated places. Some argue that passive citizen participation can also be seen as ‘illinformed citizen participation’ (Tian, 2005) since the citizens might not be fully cognizant of why they are compelled to act in a certain manner. The making of a passive citizen is in part due to the opaqueness in which governments conduct their business where residents have few opportunities to participate meaningfully in the environmental governance process. They are compelled to act in a purportedly environmentally friendly manner by government directives. Hence, passive citizen participation is limited in facilitating effective citizen participation in environmental governance. Fig. 3. Citizens' opinion on the most important factor in environmental governance in Nanjing (In response to survey question: What do you think are the three most important forces in environmental governance?). 4.1. Limitations of citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing Fig. 4. Degree of citizen's awareness of environmental governance in Nanjing (In response to survey question: What do you think is the level of the awareness of people around you towards environmental protection in Nanjing?). Even as Chinese citizens and in particular the urban middle-class are increasingly more vocal in environmental issues as demonstrated in several high profile cases such as the public protest against the construction of a magnetic levitation rail in Shanghai's Minhang district in 2008 and the 2012 protest by Ningbo residents over the proposed expansion of a petrochemical plant in the Zhenhai district (see Miao, 2016; Wasserstrom, 2008), the surveys we conducted in Nanjing suggested that the overall level of citizen participation in Nanjing is still fairly low and there remains some issues that merit further discussion below. On the whole, our findings echo Shapiro’s (2016: 143) assessment that while citizen participation has evolved dramatically in China since the mid-1990s especially with advent of the internet, the sort of ‘environmental activism with Chinese characteristics’ that relies on tacit and sometimes precarious alliance between sympathetic governmental officials, civil society and the general public remains circumscribed and have ‘thus far yield only limited success’. In our survey, we found that citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing demonstrates an ‘over-dependence on the government’ (Fig. 3). 245 out of 330 survey participants (74%) consider that the government is the most important driving force in environmental governance in Nanjing, while only 15% and 3% of the respondents hold that the most powerful driving force is from citizens and NGOs. This result corroborates with earlier national level survey that reported an ‘exceptionally strong governmental reliance attitude’ amongst Chinse respondents which reflects the ‘top-down’ and ‘government-led’ nature of environmental management in China (Wong, 2005). In addition, inference from our surveys indicate that although Nanjing citizens possess a certain level of environmental protection awareness and willingness (Figs. 4 and 5), such awareness and willingness are to some extent divorced from their practical everyday life Fig. 5. Citizens' willingness to participate in environmental governance in Nanjing (In response to survey question: How willing are you to be involved and participate in environmental governance in Nanjing?). and behaviors. For example, only 55 survey participants (17%) have participated in related environmental governance activities in the recent six months in Nanjing, and up to 90 of them (close to 27%) have never participated in environmental governance activity in Nanjing before (Fig. 6). The scope and depth of citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing also appears to be limited. Of the 240 survey participants with previous citizen participation experiences, 220 respondents (92%) chose to participate through their individual 6 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. Fig. 8. Most citizens in Nanjing tend to participate in environmental governance activities in an indirect and passive way. (In response to survey question: How did you participate in most environmental governance activities in Nanjing, actively or passively?). Fig. 6. Citizens' level of participation in environmental governance in Nanjing (In response to survey question: Have you taken part in any activities about environmental governance during the last 6 months in Nanjing?). Although citizen participation has been encouraged in environmental governance practices in Nanjing recently, the overall effect of citizen participation in Nanjing is far from satisfactory. The vast majority (84%) claim that the overall effectiveness of citizen participation in Nanjing's environmental governance is “Somewhat Effective”, with only 11% responding that it is “Effective”. To be sure, this observation is not particular to Nanjing alone as research elsewhere in China have also shown that the overall effectiveness of citizen participation in environmental governance processes are also far from satisfactory (see for example Boland & Zhu, 2012; He, 2018; Tang & Zhao, 2008). 5. Discussion: citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing Fig. 7. Citizens in Nanjing tend to participate in partial environmental governance activities related to own self-interests after environmental problems had occurred. (In response to survey question: Did you mainly take participation in environmental governance in Nanjing when environmental issues had happened already?). In general, citizens rely on the government for directions and there is limited inherent driving force in the citizen participation process. Moreover, the legal framework is not well established for citizens to participate in environmental governance activities. This is further exacerbated by the fragmented nature of governance structure as highlighted in the preceding discussions where environmental state agencies plagued by ‘selfish departmentalism’ (Howell, 2004) are unable to coordinate effectively to offer a unified and coherent framework that citizens can rely on. In addition, there is also a potential mismatch and conflict when active citizen participation may be seen as undermining the authority of the Chinese government. Arguably, it is such political anxiety that has seen the emergence of a ‘government-led citizen participation’ (akin to passive participation highlighted earlier) in environmental governance in urban China. Even though such ‘environmental activism with Chinese characteristics’ (Shapiro, 2016) that relies on the tacit and somewhat fragile alliance between state and citizens have expanded the political spaces to some extent, the limitations of ‘government-led citizen participation’ can be seen in two main ways. First, the limitation is manifested occasionally as a contradiction between higher-level and lower-level governments, with the former concentrating on large-scale public interests to promote citizen participation and the latter concerning with its own interests, thus resisting citizen participation processes. Second, as our respondents pointed out, when economic and political interests are at stake, the deeds of government officials often do not match up to their words. . Some Chinese governments merely stress the importance of citizen participation in both official documents and political rhetoric. Due to the limitation arising from ‘governmentled citizen participation’, citizens in urban China are usually only able to get limited access to information that governments have filtered and selected for them. In fact, this limitation is the most fundamental factor that perpetuates indirect and passive citizen participation in environmental governance in urban China. Apart from the fact that ‘government-led citizen participation’ mode has to some extent dampened citizens' enthusiasm for participating in behaviors rather than getting involved in the environmental legislative, administrative decision-making and supervision processes. Moreover, most citizens in Nanjing not only tend to participate in environmental governance activities only after environmental issues have occurred rather than engaging in environmental protection actions in advance; they are also more prone to be involved in self-interested environmental governance activities within their neighborhoods rather than taking part in activities at a larger scale which may not be directly relevant to them. In this sense, citizen participation in environmental governance in Nanjing reveals two salient features with respondents participating only at the very end when environmental problems have already occurred and respondents participating mostly out of self-interest and on a small scale (Fig. 7). Arguably, this kind of citizen participation exerts very limited influence on the formulation of public policies, thus leading to less impact on many of the decision-making and implementation processes of projects. Through our survey, we also gathered that Nanjing citizens’ participation in the environmental governance process is largely restricted to indirect and passive processes of citizen participation. Many of the Nanjing citizens with previous participation experiences join relevant environmental governance activities through various indirect channels such as schools, workplaces, environmental NGOs (this channel however is seldom used in Nanjing) together with the mass media. 183 citizens believe that their participation fall into the category of indirect citizen participation. Furthermore, due to a lack of self-motivation and enthusiasm, 187 out of 330 participants (56%), including 90 survey participants who have never participated in any environmental governance activities before, can be classified as, at best, passive participants (Fig. 8). 7 Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx M. Shen et al. further refine and improve on the Environmental Information Disclosure System; 3) remain committed to work of publicity and education on environmental protection issues; and finally 4) optimize citizens' participative approaches in ways that are consonant with existing socio-political norms of the Chinese polity. Arguably, it is only through such measures that China's continuous efforts to balance environmental protection and sustain urban economic development can be bolstered over time. the environmental governance process, some citizens do not involve themselves actively and directly in environmental governance activities due to preservation of self-interest. For example, when encountering environmental transgressions, most Chinese citizens will still adhere to their general belief that people should mind their own business as long as their own personal interests are not compromised. Against a background of fast-paced economic development in China, self-interest can make citizens more prone to participation only when environmental issues directly impact their immediate surroundings and interests. Although China has already stressed the significance of citizen participation in Environmental Protection Law and has also clarified principles of citizen participation in other laws and regulations (such as Law of the People's Republic of China on Urban and Rural Planning), these laws and regulations are often too abstract to be understood. In particular, detailed information of citizen participation (e.g. the contexts, the types, and the extent to which citizens can participate) is not specified in these legal documents. Lacking concrete guidelines and regulations, many citizens are uncertain what course of action to take. Consequently, their enthusiasm for continuous participation and efforts to rope others into related environmental governance activities would gradually diminish. Without a clearer legal framework (exacerbated by a fragmented governance system), citizen participation will continue to be a mere formality with limited positive effects on the urban environmental governance process. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2018.12.003. References Arnstein, S. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation’. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(4), 216–224. Boland, A., & Zhu, J. (2012). ‘Public participation in China's green communities: Mobilizing memories and structuring incentives'. Geoforum, 43(1), 147–157. Dahl, R. (2006). On political equality. New Haven: Yale University Press. Economy, E. C. (2004). The river runs black: The environmental challenge to China's future. 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Through an empirical analysis of the contested horizontal and vertical cooperation in Nanjing, we have highlighted how top-down approaches in environmental governance in China must contend with 1) the subordinate positionality of local Environmental Protection Bureau, 2) selfish departmentalism, and 3) internal functional conflicts within all relevant government agencies in environmental governance at the city level (as in the case of Nanjing). As for citizen participation, our surveys showed how such ‘environmentalism with Chinese characteristics’ that relies on tacit and precarious alliance between state officials and civil society and the general public remains circumscribed as citizen participation is being led primarily by the government with limited scope of bottom-up citizen participation in urban environmental governance. While much of the literature have emphasized (and celebrated) the importance of decentralizing governance (Gouldson et al, 2008; Mol & Carter, 2006; Sharpiro, 2016) and involving the public/civil society in planning (He, 2018; Li, Pan, Wu, & Shan, 2017; Zhu, 2015), our paper further highlights the fundamental challenges in realizing this goal in contemporary China. Indeed, given the socio-political context of China, we suggest that the Chinese state/government will remain as a crucial force in the environmental governance process for the foreseeable future notwithstanding the fragmented environmental governance regimes in China. 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