Modern environmental governance first manifests as the governance of a standardized system. Currently, there are various types of norms in the field of environmental governance in China, including national laws, Party regulations, administrative normative documents, and Party normative documents, forming an operational model of "coexistence of multiple norms and governance of multiple orders". An important contribution of existing academic discussions is to recognize and attach great importance to the diverse normative phenomena in the field of ecological environment, and attempt to incorporate them into the ecological environment code that has been put on the legislative agenda. However, this research approach is relatively macro, abstract, and difficult to delve into cutting-edge issues such as environmental administrative law enforcement reform that have emerged in China’s environmental governance system. From a practical perspective, there have been conflicts and contradictions among the diverse normative system and the diverse order structure in China’s environmental governance system, which are particularly evident and prominent in the field of environmental administrative penalties. At present, the difficulties in exploring the environmental administrative penalty system in China mainly include: the chaotic practice of "exemption from punishment" in the field of ecological environment, the alienation of administrative penalties as a prerequisite for holding ecological environment damage compensation responsibility, and the misallocation of environmental law enforcement forces under the background of vertical management reform. From the perspective of multiple norms, using the genetic method analysis, it is found that the above practical difficulties all stem from the problem of no coordination of multiple norms caused by changes in non-state legal norms in modern environmental governance system, including the conflict between normative documents (administrative normative documents, Party normative documents), as well as the differences between Party policies and national laws. From a legal perspective, the series of problems and internal conflicts exposed in the current exploration of China’s environmental administrative penalty system cannot be simply addressed through a problem-countermeasure approach, but need to be elevated from reason-based to legal-based, revealing the general rules and universal contradictions contained therein (i.e. the interrelationships between multiple norms in the environmental governance system). In view of this, in the future, China should establish a theory and method based on the collaborative interaction of multiple norms, focus on improving the filing and review mechanism of relevant normative documents in the field of ecological environment, establish a sound coordination mechanism between Party policies and national laws in the field of ecological environment, and take advantage of the opportunity of the compilation of the ecological environment code to confirm the interrelationship rules of multiple norms, to enhance the modernization of China’s environmental governance system and governance capacity.