Policy implementation through organizational learning: The case of water pollution control in China's reforming socialist system

China suffers from a host of environmental problems which have worsened over the last decade and a half of reform. Although the Deng administration has increased attention to environmental protection--establishing an environmental protection legal, policy, and institutional infrastructure--the result has been only limited success. To understand why China's environment continues to deteriorate and what the prospects are for reversal of this trend, this dissertation examines the implementation of China's water pollution control policy between the 1970s and 1992.;Through over one hundred interviews predominantly with environmental protection officials in three Chinese cities and in Beijing, the study demonstrates that implementation is a process of organizational learning and adaptation, highly influenced by the policy setting and the particular ideology of that setting. In the Chinese case, the reform policy setting--with its heavy emphasis on economic growth--has posed serious challenges for the implementation of water pollution control policies.;The dissertation finds that over time the environmental protection apparatus has come to understand the origins of some of its implementation problems and to consciously adapt its policy implementation mechanisms and its institutional relationships to better function within China's reform setting. It has done this through institution building and environmental education aimed at increasing EPB authority as well as through the pragmatic adaptation of such existing policy mechanisms as the discharge fee system and the introduction of such new mechanisms as the permit system. In addition, the environmental protection apparatus has worked with the power brokers of the reforms to coordinate management of China's environment.;The dissertation finds that overwhelming Environmental Protection Bureaus have learned that, within China's reform climate, administrative mechanisms are more effective implementation devices than are economic incentive systems. It further demonstrates that the reform setting has influenced the environmental protection apparatus, causing it to unconsciously alter its behavior and its goals so as to better conform with the reform setting. In certain respects this conformity has aided the environmental cause. As a whole, however, the dissertation concludes that reform values are counter to environmental protection and truly sustainable development depends upon a change in these values.