河湖长制十年:制度成效、结构性挑战与深化路径OA

The river and lake chief system represents a significant institutional innovation established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council,based on China's national conditions and designed to resolve long-standing challenges in river and lake management.Over the decade since its nationwide implementation in 2016,the system has evolved from a local initiative into a national policy,undergoing a historic transformation from having"chiefs in name"to having"chiefs in practice",and from water control alone to systematic governance.Over the past decade,the proportion of national surface-water monitoring sections with good or excellent water quality increased from 67.8%in 2016 to 91.4%in 2025.The main stems of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River have continuously maintained stable Grade II water quality along their entire courses for six and four consecutive years,respectively.The area of severely over-exploited groundwater zones had decreased by 88,300 km2 compared with 2015,a reduction of 51%.This paper argues that the system's core institutional logic lies in embedding responsibility for rivers and lakes protection within the political accountability system for leading Party and government officials,thus forming a model of"responsibility-embedded governance".The paper points out that the deeper transformation from having"chiefs in name and in practice"to achieving"strong and effective governance"still faces persistent structural challenges,including uneven grassroots implementation capacity,inter-departmental coordination improvement,and conflicts between the administrative fragmentation of river basins and integrated governance.The paper provides a comprehensive academic examination of the decade-long practice of the river and lake chief system from the perspectives of institutional evolution,institutional structure,systematic effectiveness,theoretical contributions,problem review,and future prospects,and proposes that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period,priority should be given to quasi-experimental evaluations of the net policy effects of the river and lake chief system,empirical accounting of the value realization of watershed ecological products,and quantitative research on the governance effectiveness of digital-twin river basins.