Environmental slogans and action: The rhetoric of local government work reports in China

In recent years, due to degrading environmental conditions and increasing public environmental awareness, governments at all levels in China are paying more attention to environmental issues, at least in political discourses and as indicated using slogans in the Chinese context. In this paper, we analyzed discourses on environmental protection in approximately 600 government work reports from 30 provinces in China from 1998 to 2017 and further examined whether environmental slogans have been “translated” into substantial environmental investment. The results showed that local governments reinforced political discourses on environmental protection after 2006 when environmental indicators were first incorporated into the cadre evaluation system. However, there was no significant correlation between the environmental discourses in documents and financial environmental investment in practice. Further analysis found that the tone of environmental discourses in government work reports was positively correlated with environmental investment, and this result was particularly significant in pollution-intensive regions; the investment tended to focus on industrial waste gas governance. This empirical study contributes to the knowledge of political discourses and policy implementation related to China's local environmental governance.