The Chinese economy is transitioning from high-speed development to high-quality development, and water environmental governance is a key factor promoting economic transformation. Due to low returns and high investment in China’s water environmental governance, the PPP (public–private-partnership) model is often adopted. However, the PPP model has historically faced challenges adapting to local conditions in China, leading to social risks in the PPP projects of water environmental governance. To reduce these risks, this paper takes a vulnerability perspective, employing the system dynamics simulation method to explore the dynamic evolution process of social risks in the PPP projects of water environmental governance. The main results show the following: (1) the external manifestations of social risks during the construction and operation periods vary significantly, exhibiting notable fluctuations; (2) during the construction period, there is a surge in social risks followed by a returns to lower than normal levels, then a gradual upward trend; during the operation period, social risks initially decrease to a lower level before gradually increasing; and (3) city class, relevant legal systems, and resource reserves emerge as critical factors influencing vulnerability and social risks. The higher the city class, the lower the project vulnerability; the soundness of the legal system for PPP projects can effectively reduce vulnerability and social risks; sufficient resource reserves can reduce social risks. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes several suggestions aiming to reduce the vulnerability and social risks in PPP projects, optimize the process of water environmental governance, and further promote the sustainable development of water environmental governance and the high-quality economy of China.

Rural water pollution control has become an important part of China’s water environment management. By analyzing the influencing factors of rural water environment management performance, establishing the evaluation index system, applying the structural equation model, this paper makes a comprehensive evaluation of rural water environment management through second-order confirmatory factor analysis, model path diagram drawing and data calculation. According to the effect of the strength of the factors to make effective control, the rural water environment management system will be improved.

On the basis of analyzing the internal investment driving forces, external investment attraction and investment binding force of Chinese enterprises investing in hydropower projects in Southeast Asian countries, We use SEM to verify and revise the conceptual model of the relationship between dynamic factors and the behavior of Chinese enterprises investing in hydropower projects in Southeast Asian countries and the interaction of latent variables. Then we obtain the path and path coefficient of the interaction between the dynamic factor and the investment behavior, so as to verify the overall structural relationship of the Chinese enterprises' investment in the hydropower projects in the Southeast Asian countries.