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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1361187

Can China's ocean governance system improve the marine ecosystem? --Taking the "Bay Chief System" as an Example

Provisionally accepted
Yusheng Chen Yusheng Chen *Yongwei Zhou Yongwei Zhou Ye Ma Ye Ma Zhaofa Sun Zhaofa Sun Weili Yang Weili Yang
  • Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Marine ecosystem governance is an important component of the goal of developing a strong maritime nation, as well as an urgent need to ensure national maritime security. The "Bay Chief System"(BCS) is a novel policy concept with Chinese roots that seeks to improve the marine ecological environment. In this paper, we take the coastal cities in China as an example and use the panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2022 to analyze the impact of the Bay Chief System on the regional marine ecological environment by using a differences in-differences model. The baseline regression results reveal that the implementation of the Bay Chief System leads to a 0.122 percentage point improvement in marine ecosystems but it has yet to be linked to the River Chief System(RCS) to establish a systematic synergistic mechanism. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the implementation of the Bay Chief System is more effective in coastal cities with smaller populations, a heavier proportion of secondary industries, and a geographic location closer to the South. The analysis of the impact mechanism indicates that the Bay Chief System mitigates the adverse effects of near-shore resource development on the marine ecological environment by regulating the intensity of fishery and coastal tourism development. Additionally, it optimizes water quality by substantially reducing pollutants like chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (AN) in seawater, ultimately contributing to the protection of the marine ecological environment.Keywords: Bay Chief system; marine ecosystem; Differences-in-Differences construction of a modern socialist country -Report on the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) -Seekingalpha.com(

    Keywords: Bay Chief system, Marine ecosystem, Differences-in-differences, Policy evaluation, Ocean governance

    Received: 25 Dec 2023; Accepted: 19 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Zhou, Ma, Sun and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yusheng Chen, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.