River Chief System and Water Pollution Prevention

Liaoning Province was the first provincial administrative region in China to implement the River Chief System at the provincial level in 2008. Based on the nearly 1000 water quality data of the 2006-2012 water quality automatic monitoring weekly report, this paper analyzes the effect of the River Chief System in Liaoning Province on water pollution prevention and control based on the double differential (DID) method. The empirical results show that the overall V-class compliance rate of the water quality section of the Liaohe River Basin increased significantly during 2008-2012. In 2008 alone, in the Liaohe River Basin, the V-class compliance rate was significantly increased by 9.3 percentage points compared to the Haihe River Basin. Moreover, the implementation of the River Chief System in Liaoning Province will bring greater water quality improvement to the Liaohe River Basin in the long run. From 2006 to 2012, in the Liaohe River Basin, the proportion of the V-type water quality requirements in the section was increased by 19.3 percentage points compared to the Haihe River Basin.