Abstract：The relationship between local governments and the public in the process of local water resource governance is an important component of social construction of China. Local governments mainly depend on local gentries to implement and manage water affairs since the Ming and Qing Dynasty. Today，the government plays the main role in regulating watercourses. The internal and outsourcing administrative subcontracting and the twofold configurations including the topdown and bottomup approaches are preserved or inherited in today’s water resource management， for example， river chief system. But the public participation， the collaboration of government departments and the collaboration of local governments in river chief system are achieved by the administrative subcontracting. Thus， it is an important issue to promote the active collaboration of local governments， enterprises and the public in local water resource governance.
