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China's environmental crackdowns under Xi Jinping have led to a sweeping shutdown of private enterprises. To circumvent this, enterprises have developed different survival strategies including direct lobbying to government officials and indirect lobbying through business associations. Based on comparative case studies of environmental lobbying in Chinese cities, our research finds that larger enterprises, enjoying more economic leverage, tend to lobby directly using their own political connections to sway environmental enforcement. By contrast, smaller enterprises are excluded from these clientelist networks and have to lobby through business associations, the effectiveness of which hinges on the support of large enterprises. Therefore, we argue that although the Chinese government's increasingly stringent environmental policies have shrunk the lobbying (and living) space for private enterprises, the existence of environmental clientelism protects economically powerful and politically connected private enterprises but sacrifices the others in the implementation of environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's recent collective forest tenure reform is intended to clarify and certify forest rights, and thereby promote market circulation of forestland, encourage forestry production and safeguard conservation. Central policy statements prioritize parcelling tenure among households to promote efficient management. This study examines how participants experienced the programme in communities in north-west Yunnan. In the study area, rather than individualizing tenure, forestry agencies compelled communities to re-collectivize forests. Nonetheless, residents persist in using household forests despite restrictions. Local officials tacitly sanction these activities. In mountain hinterlands, forest tenure reform has been focused on “stabilizing” forests and communities. Rather than forcibly impose tenure designs, authorities perform what we call accommodative buffering. A set of formal institutions, rules and mappings enables projects like forest ecological compensation payments to go forward. However, state agents at local and higher levels tolerate informal practices that contain the trouble that poorly fitted formal institutions might cause. While potentially more resilient than by-the-book enforcement, these arrangements could leave residents vulnerable to political shifts that require a demonstration of policy adherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on findings from three years of site-intensive fieldwork at the local level, this article presents evidence to suggest that binary governance frameworks like centre–local relations are insufficient to understand certain local regulatory outcomes in contemporary China. I seek to specify a distinct type of local governance that has been emerging in recent years, which blurs existing binary concepts. It can be distinguished along two main dimensions: ostensible structure and modalities of governance. Two cases are analysed to illustrate the ways in which it impacts local regulatory outcomes. The analyses point to the need for expanding our portfolio of approaches to understanding local governance in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Decentralized environmental governance theory suggests that decentralization can produce better environmental performance mainly because lower-level governments are closer to the people and environmental issues and are considered more legitimate than the national government. However, China's decentralized system of environmental governance has been often regarded as a key factor in creating pollution problems rather than in solving them. To explain this puzzle, this article, using Blame Avoidance Behaviour in government theory as a theoretical framework, examines how blame avoidance behaviour shapes China's decentralized system of environmental governance from three perspectives: first, actors and the chain of blame shaped by the hierarchical power structure among environmental policymakers and implementers; second, the strategies of discursive domination and decentralization for blaming environmental problems on local officials; and lastly, the contextual factor of “hierarchical governmental trust.” Drawing on documentary discursive analysis and extensive fieldwork, this article suggests that the dysfunction of China's decentralized environmental governance structure may in fact be an outcome of a blame-shifting game between central and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent literature on environmental governance in China frequently ascribes blame for China's environmental problems to sub-national governments' lax environmental enforcement. Such research implicitly assumes that more central control would lead to better results but, as yet, the role of the centre in environmental governance remains underresearched. In the context of the current phase of recentralization, this article studies central and local interests, capacities and interactions across policy issues and government agencies. By “bringing the centre back” into the study of central–local relations in China, we examine both where such recentralization has in fact occurred and whether such recentralization efforts have improved environmental outcomes. We argue that centralization does not improve outcomes in every case. Further, central and local levels of governance are not as different as they might seem. Indeed, there are significant areas of overlapping interests and similar patterns of behaviour, both positive (enforcement) and negative (shirking), between central and local administrations. The results draw an empirically and theoretically rich picture of central–local relations that highlights the innate complexity of China's environmental governance patterns during the current phase of recentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The scholarly work on China's environmental regulations in the context of “central–local” relations is dominated by the preference for a centralized approach. This article examines a centrally imposed and executed verification programme of locally reported pollution data, a rare and sustained central effort to enforce an environmental policy, namely the national pollution reduction target system. The programme was established in 2007 to curtail perceived widespread data falsification and to enhance the quality of emission data, the basis for assessing local compliance with targets. Based on an analysis of official documents and interviews with environmental officials and industry representatives, this article found that the verification programme appears to have reduced the overreporting problem with emission data, enhanced local monitoring and enforcement capacity, and to a certain degree deterred violations due to the increased frequency of national and local inspections. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain. Verification is highly resource intensive, it has involved little external oversight and public participation, the central authority has exerted significant yet unchecked discretionary powers, and poor data quality has remained an issue. Over time, the verification programme appears to have turned into essentially a “numbers game.” All those challenges indicate that a centralized enforcement approach is arguably ineffective in addressing China's long-standing problem of weak environmental policy implementation. This study also sheds lights on the classical “principal-agent” theory in the study of public bureaucracy. Not only does the principal distrust the agent, which is the main concern of the theory, but the agent also distrusts the principal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the so-called “central State Owned Enterprise (SOE) problem” in China's environmental governance system, namely central SOEs' defiance of environmental regulation. We present evidence showing that, in the last decade, central SOEs have been the source of a large number of serious pollution incidents and have often failed to comply with environmental guidelines and regulations. Central SOEs in the electricity generation and oil and gas industries are particularly culpable, with six firms alone accounting for 62 per cent of all 2,370 reported violations (2004–2016). We argue that a combination of “central protectionism” of state-owned national champions and insufficient regulatory capacity in the environmental bureaucracy have provided state firms under central management with both incentives and opportunities to shirk on environmental regulations. Yet, while the institutions of central protectionism are deeply rooted, countervailing forces within the complex Chinese state are also gaining momentum. In spite of the considerable regulatory challenges, officials in the environment bureaucracy display increasing resolve and ingenuity in trying to strengthen their enforcement capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the world's two largest countries requires feasible governance pathways that integrate politics, policy and administration. Using examples of successful mitigation at the local level in China (Guangzhou) and India (Gujarat), this article identifies integrated governance solutions that work in both cases through different types of linkages. In China, it is mainly intra-governmental linkages, while in India it is mainly state–society linkages. In neither case do international negotiations concerning emissions targets have significant effects, while national frameworks have only marginal effects. Approaching the problem in this comparative manner helps to clarify how greenhouse gas governance operates in each country, the lessons for central–local environmental relations, and the implications for international assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the ‘greening’ of Hong Kong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on the afforestation of the colony's ‘barren’ mountainsides from the 1880s. To date, histories of Hong Kong have tended to focus on the colonial state's urban interventions, particularly on the draconian measures it took to ‘sanitize’ Chinese districts. In contrast, this article connects Hong Kong's urban development with the history of green space and the cultivation of ‘nature’. While the state sought to transform the ‘barren rock’ into a visible correlate of the colony's aspiring status as an imperial hub in Asia, the promotion of hygiene and health provided a further rationale for tree-planting. The article argues that colonial Hong Kong provides insights into the ‘tropicalization of modernity’ and the constitutive processes by which colonial power was naturalized and legitimated through planning practices that extended from the urban to the natural. A study of Hong Kong's afforestation underscores the importance of the natural environment as a ‘contact zone’ between colonial and ‘native’ cultures; it also reveals the extent to which the equation of a ‘green’ landscape with economic (re)production and colonial order, functioned as a critical trope for framing race and labour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Both supply- and demand-oriented solutions are important in cleaning up the electricity sector. However, their successful deployment calls for the removal of various barriers. This paper looks at China's electricity industry, one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, by relating the regulatory framework to the environmental dimension of sustainable electricity development. It develops an analytical framework by drawing upon the literature on the deployment of supply- and demand-side solutions, regulatory governance, and environmental policy integration. The paper finds that, in China's electricity sector, environmental considerations are subordinate to economic and development goals in policymaking and enforcement. Under the current regulatory framework, regulatory policies/instruments are not conducive to removing barriers to the effective deployment of the solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's relatively recent dramatic increase in forest area has been hailed domestically and globally as one of the world's few environmental success stories, but significant problems remain in China's reforestation efforts. We describe the challenges that China still faces if it is to meet its laudable – but sometimes contradictory – goals for its forest sector: improving rural livelihoods, sustaining and restoring ecosystem services, and increasing output of the forest product-dependent manufacturing and construction sectors. We do so while pointing out the unintended consequences of implementing these policy goals: overstatement of the quantity and quality of the forest recovery, domestic human and ecological costs of the reforestation, and externalization of China's continually growing demand for timber and forest products in the form of increased imports from vulnerable forests in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rare earth elements (REE) captured a startled world's attention during the 2010 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands crisis, when it appeared that China withheld access to them during its border dispute with Japan. China asserts that its sovereign right to environmental regulation and national production quotas is unassailable. However, China's trade measures appear to be inconsistent with WTO rules, as well as with environmental protection and conservation, since they incentivize illegal mining and smuggling practices. In an upcoming case (DS431), the United States, the European Union, Japan and 16 third parties will argue before the WTO that China's trade measures on rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum constitute discriminatory behaviour and are illegal. This raises the question of whether China is inappropriately using the environment as a defence against allegations that its rare earth trade policies are in violation of its WTO obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's national leaders see restructuring and diversification away from resource-based, energy intensive industries as central goals in the coming years. On the basis of extensive fieldwork in China between 2010 and 2012, we suggest that the high turnover of leading cadres at the local level may hinder state-led greening growth initiatives. Frequent cadre turnover is intended primarily to keep local Party secretaries and mayors on the move in order to promote the implementation of central directives. While rotation does seem to aid implementation by reducing coordination problems, there are also significant downsides to local leaders changing office every three to four years. Officials with short time horizons are likely to choose the path of least resistance in selecting quick, low-quality approaches to the implementation of environmental policies. We conclude that the perverse effects of local officials’ short time horizons give reason to doubt the more optimistic claims about the advantages of China's model of environmental authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of this symposium, this article reviews social science research in the emerging field of environment and health in China, with a particular focus on the impacts of pollution. It begins with a discussion of the particular nature of China's environment-related health problems, distinguishing the different challenges presented by diseases of poverty, affluence and transition. It then reviews recent developments in policy and civil society with regard to environment and health, and the extent to which work in the social sciences has advanced our knowledge of these and of state–society interactions. The article concludes with some reflections on the need for and challenges of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper compares the key arguments of ecological modernization theory (EMT) with the reality of recent environmental reform in China. Based on data gathered from a survey and in-depth interviews with executives from Hong Kong-based enterprises operating in Guangdong province, we examine the changing roles of government, market, and civil society actors in the reform process, focusing on various types of pressures these actors have exerted on business enterprises. Compatible with Mol's (2006) conjectures, ecological concerns have gradually gained a foothold in existing political, economic, and to a lesser extent, social institutions. Yet, the relevant actors and their patterns of interactions differ from what EMT generalizes from Western European experiences. Specifically, local governments are assuming a more formalized relationship with firms in regulatory enforcement. Among market actors, organizational buyers along the supply chain have exerted more noticeable pressures on manufacturing firms than industrial associations and individual consumers. Civil society, while remaining less of an institutionalized actor in the environmental policy process, appears to pose a perceptible threat to at least some firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental degradation in China, intensified by open-door reforms and industrialization, has been increasing at an alarming scale. Domestically, environmental governance has been poor, often due to institutional constraints and lack of “good practices.” However, recently there have been studies on how the “foreign factor” might have profound positive effects on capacity building in China and how international actors could lead to the successful introduction of good environmental governance. In this article, we present a study of a successful case: the World Bank Global Environmental Facility Cixi Wetlands project in Ningbo, China. The article examines the following: (a) the unique local context enabling the diffusion of international norms; (b) the factors which contribute to the World Bank's leverage role in restructuring local project governance; and (c) the changes in local environmental governance arising from the Bank's involvement. By evaluating this project, the article will demonstrate how the World Bank managed to introduce and socialize local actors into project-specific policy dialogues and procedures that enhanced local compliance with its international practices and standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article traces a civil environmental lawsuit from dispute to decision to explore how environmental law works, as well as how lawyers and litigants try to work the law. Detailing ground-level encounters with a legal system promoted and carefully watched by political elites offers a fresh perspective on the ways the past 30 years of legal reforms have affected the experience of China's court users. Amid accounts of financial stress, lawyer–client tensions and the hunt for elite allies, what emerges is a story of variation. Although plaintiffs and lawyers agree that environmental cases are hard and wringing concessions out of polluters requires remarkable persistence, the process sometimes creaks forward so that appraisals are conducted on time, help is solicited and compensation won. How Chinese courts work (and how well they work) depends on local circumstances, an insight that suggests that disaggregating expansive concepts like rule of law is a helpful way to explore complexity instead of glossing over it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The existing literature on China's 1989 Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) has rarely discussed a minor provision that permits administrative agencies to enlist court assistance in enforcing administrative decisions. Focusing on court enforcement of pollution levies, this study examines how and why ALL has been employed so extensively by administrative agencies, environmental protection bureaus (EPBs) in this context. The study is based on interviews with judges, EPB officials and polluters involved in court actions as well as court statistical data from 1992 to 2005 for Hubei province. EPBs' heavy reliance on court enforcement for collecting pollution levies and fines resulted from incentives that encouraged the formation of mutually beneficial relationships between courts and EPBs in the 1990s. Court involvement has enhanced EPBs' enforcement powers, but the courts' engagement in enforcement has neither curtailed EPBs' arbitrary exercise of discretionary power nor induced polluters to reduce waste discharges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is the largest consumer of turtles in the world and international trade has been cited as the greatest threat to Asian turtles. Two main types of trade in live turtles occur in China: for food and traditional Chinese medicine, and for pets, including those for release by Buddhists. The food trade involves the largest quantities of turtles. In recent years, however, the international pet turtle trade has increased dramatically. Yuehe Pet Market in Guangzhou is the largest pet market in China. selling live chelonians and other animals.To understand the potential impacts of the pet trade on chelonians we conducted seven surveys in Yuehe Pet Market from August 2006 to March 2008. Over 39,000 individual chelonians of 61 species were recorded (19.1% of the global total of 319 species). Fifteen (24.6%) of these species are native to China and 46 (75.4%) are native to other countries. Two are designated as grade II key state-protected species in China. Thirty-eight (62.3%) are CITES listed species (four in CITES Appendix I, 26 in CITES II and eight in CITES III). Four are categorized on the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered, 16 as Endangered and 19 as Vulnerable. Our surveys indicate that increasing demand and the illegal international pet trade could be having a severe impact on chelonian conservation, and we make recommendations for law enforcement and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The north-west Tibetan Plateau in China is currently undergoing development-related changes in land use that illustrate a significant mismatch between national/ international conservation objectives and national livestock and other rangeland development goals for the region. Areas designated as nature reserves are being subjected to the same livestock development policies as elsewhere on the Plateau, including interventions that are detrimental to the supposedly protected wildlife populations. Unintended effects of some livestock development activities, such as the fencing of winter grazing areas and resultant enhancement of illegal hunting, have been little considered in overall development actions inside the nature reserves. We address these issues within the 300,000 km2 Chang Tang Nature Reserve, covering much of the north-west Plateau, and concentrate on Gertse County in the western part of the Reserve. There are still tens of thousands of Tibetan antelope Pantholops hodgsonii, Tibetan gazelle Procapra picticaudata, kiang Equus kiang and other species in the north-west Chang Tang, and long-distance antelope calving migrations are still relatively intact. However, increasing human and livestock populations, new rangeland management initiatives, effects of mining activity and continued hunting have the potential to counter conservation initiatives even in the most critical areas for wildlife in the region. Within the nature reserves livestock carrying capacity determinations that allow for wildlife needs and recognize the variable climate are essential. Livestock fencing amenable to wildlife movement, a ban on fencing in areas critical to wildlife, and other actions that mitigate negative effects on wildlife are needed in nature reserves where antelope and other species are still abundant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a case study approach to examine the processes and consequences of pollution enforcement in an industrial township in rural Sichuan. China's national pollution emissions standards are relatively strict, but enforcement is the responsibility of some 2,500 Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) within municipal and county governments. EPB officials exercise considerable discretion in prioritizing and carrying out enforcement activities, but exactly what factors influence regulatory behaviour within EPBs is poorly understood. Data for the article are drawn from interviews with EBP officials, township government officials, industrial managers and local residents, as well as a review of township and district financial records and pollution enforcement records. In this case study, EPB enforcement priorities and actions were guided by State Council directives and State Environmental Protection Administration policy, but citizen complaints and media exposure regarding polluting factories also played a key role, and action culminated in the forced closure of township factories. The article uses political ecology as an analytical framework for understanding how pollution enforcement is shaped by the competing values, goals and priorities within the EPB and the administrative unit in which it operates. This is crucial in China, where the decentralized nature of environmental oversight requires an examination of both policy formulation and implementation. The implications of pollution enforcement on rural enterprises for ecological health, fiscal revenue and rural development are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the environmental policies of several cities in China. According to the author, the cities demonstrate relatively high environmental awareness but policymakers are reluctant to implement environmental protection policies at the cost of sacrificing the rate of economic growth. The factors affecting environmental policy preferences are also discussed.

Examines cross-border environmental problems in Hong Kong, China. Public concern over cross-border environmental problems due to rapid industrial and urban growth; Effectiveness of the Special Administrative Region government; Indications of the fragmented environmental governance structure and a dominant pro-growth culture permeating the delta region.

Discusses the interactions between environmental agencies and public opinion in developing countries. Environmental governance in Guangzhou, China; Effort of the Guangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau to cultivate an environmentally sensitive community; Bureau's handling of complaints and its institutional constraints on mobilizing greater public support.

Describes and analyzes changes in the environment and related policy developments in the People's Republic of China since 1949. Growth of population and the economy in relation to the quality of China's environment; Realization that environment can be a tool for international diplomacy; China's choice not to make environmentally friendly transport investments.

Examines he adoption and implementation of Chinese environmental policies and pollution abatement measures. Role of the State Environmental Protection Administration; Adoption of Five-Year Plan; Coping with China's increasing problems of water, air and soil pollution; International agreements, investments and trade; Problems of national leadership and control.

Focuses on environmental protection efforts in China. Environmental policy trends; Patterns of participation in regimes; Compliance with international norms; Environmental protection in international context; International environmental diplomacy; Role of private sector in international environmental regimes.

Discusses the environmental regulation in the People's Republic of China. Institutional framework; Environmental legislative framework; Environmental liability and dispute resolution; Ideas of non-governmental environment activists; Orthodox policies of socialist legal development; Provisions of the Environmental Protection Law.

Examines the institutional constraints of China's environmental management system. Information on some studies of China's environmental problems; Details on the environmental management system established in post-Mao China; Data on environmental regulations in Guangzhou; Reference to some of China's enforcement problems.