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As the world’s largest urban area in both size and population, the rapid development of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) during past three decades has been accompanied by worsening water problems. This paper examines the water-economy nexus of the PRD from the perspectives of both water use and water quality between 1999 and 2015, with a Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index decomposition model as well as an Environmental Kuznets Curve model, in order to assess the sustainable transition of the area. The results show that in this period, while the water dependency of economic development went down by a significant extent, the efficiency gains did not prevail over problems caused by economic scale expansion. However, at the city level, the 2008 financial crisis stimulated an economic transformation of the main economies from being scale-dominated to being efficiency-dominated. From 2009 to 2015, the sewage decreases driven by water dependency of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan outweighed the sewage increases driven by economic scale. While sewage discharge increased, the river water quality of the PRD kept improving. We found an inverted “U”-shaped relationship between GDP per capita and water quality of the PRD, with GDP per capita = ¥14,228.27 as the inflection point for river water quality. Once dubbed the “factory floor” of the world, the PRD has moved into a less environmentally impactful phase of development, with more expenditure on environmental protection and policy reform. However, given the huge and ever-increasing economic and population scales, ensuring a sufficient and safe water supply through industrial recycling and public education, along with even further pollution abatement, will be particularly important.

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PurposeThe purpose of the research is to identify the factors contributing to the formation of high-level strategic thinking ability (STA) of Chinese grassroots cadres.Design/methodology/approachThrough in-depth interviews with 20 Chinese grassroots cadres with high-level STA and grounded theory method, this research explores the contributive factors for the formation of the grassroots cadres' STA from a dynamic and long-term perspective.FindingsThe formation of STA is an accumulative process based on the interaction between external factors, including wide space for activities, adequate supporting resources, demonstration of role model, and inflection point and internal drivers, including strong sense of self-actualization, high sense of responsibility, thinking enhancement skills, diverse knowledge and high openness. Moreover, the external factors play a more important role in shaping STA in the early growth stage of the grassroots cadres, while in the late stage the internal factors tend to dominate.Practical implicationsThe study advises to offer more professional training on STA and take STA as an important factor for Chinese grassroots cadres to compete in a complex socio-political environment in the long term.Originality/value(1) This paper investigates into the STA of Chinese grassroots cadres, which are largely ignored in current literature; (2) different from the extant studies which studies the static influencing factors of STA, such as demographic variables, personal traits and organizational characteristics, this paper focuses on the dynamic and long-term factors during the growth of the cadres.

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