Flood management is a complex issue in Chinese cities that exhibit high populations and have undergone rapid urbanization. Urban flood management (UFM) approaches can be used to mitigate urban flood risk. To address urban issues of poor water quality and urban surface flooding, the Sponge City Program (SCP) was initiated in 2013 in China. The SCP aims to provide an opportunity for Chinese cities to improve their current UFM practices. This study looks at Guiyang (a pilot sponge city located in SW China) as a case study to identify the challenges and opportunities of UFM in China. Guiyang is a valley city surrounded by a hilly landscape. Using interview records and flood data, we illustrate that the primary type of flood in Guiyang is fluvial rather than surface water flooding. In Guiyang, the current function and targets of the SCP have yet to engage with the catchment level flood management, instead mainly focusing on the site-specific context (i.e., community level). Catchment flood management planning (CFMP) and natural flood management (NFM) both address this problem and may be a more suitable approach to manage flood discharge from the upper and middle catchments in Guiyang. In addition, it is suggested that a mixed option combining “hard” infrastructure (e.g., reservoirs and floodwalls) with “soft” flood management measures (e.g., improving people awareness and participation) may improve urban flood resilience in Chinese cities.

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Environmental justice has drew worldwide attention since the 1982 protest in USA to against duping toxic waste. In the globalization era, worldwide scholars and environmental activists are actively engaged in related studies and social movements. However, these researches and movements usually ignore the influences of local contexts on local environmental justice configurations, including related researches in China. Whilst, evidences have been provided that different forms of capital from contexts, such as economic, social, political, natural capital and cultural capital, will affect the local concept of environmental justice. That is to say environmental justice should have different discourse from what has been researched in western countries in different contexts. Thus, this research will discuss the common ground of environmental justice study framework and promote the new conceptual framework "environmental justice capital" for having a better understanding environmental justice in contexts. Additionally, the framework of "environmental justice capital" will be put in Chinese contexts as an preliminary discussion to get an initial image of environmental justice in China.

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