Abstract: Effective environmental governance is inseparable from the scientific choice and application of environmental policy tools. Based on the logic of sample selection， framework construction， text unit coding and data analysis， content analysis was applied to study the 43 environmental policy texts issued by the Chinese central government since the reform and opening up with the purpose of revealing the Chinese governments' choice of environmental governance tools. The research results showed that there existed such problems as the overuse of coercive policy tools， uneven use of government administrative bodies， and inefficient use of economic policies and voluntary policy tools in China's environmental governance. Some optimization paths were then advocated including the less use of mandatory policy tools， the emphasis of economic and voluntary policy tools， the enhanced participation of citizens and third-party organizations， and the improvement of use mechanisms for policy tools.

Key words: environmental governance, content analysis method, mandatory policy tools, voluntary policy tools