In China, the responsibility of protecting the environment lies largely with local governments. Within the framework of spatial econometrics, we investigate empirically the consequence of such an institutional setting. Using city-level data for China, the present study finds that city governments behave strategically in making spending decisions regarding environmental protection. This paper finds that a city government appears to cut its own spending as a response to the rise in environmental protection spending by its neighbors. Hence, environmental protection tends to be underprovided. As a result, we suggest that centralizing the environmental protection responsibility to a higher level of government would be beneficial in terms of controlling pollution in China.