From “Compliance Imaginaries” to “Governance Failure”: Evidence Practices in the “Ascending Dragon” Environmental Controversy

The “Ascending Dragon” fireworks performance held in Tibet in 2025 was initially framed through filing procedures as authorized and environmentally controllable. After images circulated widely on social media, it became a public controversy over scorched alpine meadows and regulatory failure. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article treats compliance as an evidentiary accomplishment and asks how compliance evidence is assembled, contested, and institutionally re-stabilized. Based on desk ethnography and process tracing of administrative and regulatory documents, corporate statements, news reports, and platform materials, this study traces evidentiary trajectories before and after the incident. The analysis shows that administrative classification, spatial boundary work, and documentary closure produced a compliant appearance while leaving key measurements and responsibility chains institutionally invisible. In the controversy, platform-based adversarial evidence reordered authority and prompted re-evidencing through investigation and accountability, revealing how procedural compliance can coexist with governance failure.