Environmental Policy And Air Pollution In China

This book systematically analyzes how and why China has expectedly lost and then surprisingly gained ground in the quest to solve the complicated environmental problem of air pollution over the past two decades. Yuan Xu shines a light on how China’s sulfur dioxide emissions rose quickly in tandem with rapid economic growth but then dropped to a level not seen for at least four decades. Despite this favorable mitigation outcome, Xu details how this stemmed from a litany of policy stumbles within the Chinese context of no democracy and a lack of sound rule of law. Throughout this book, the author examines China’s environmental governance and strategy and how they shape environmental policy. The chapters weave together a goal-centered governance model that China has adopted of centralized goal setting, decentralized goal attainment, decentralized policy making and implementation. Xu concludes that this model provides compelling evidence that China’s worst environmental years reside in the past. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese environmental policy and governance, air pollution, climate change and sustainable development, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in these fields. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429452154, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book focuses on how to create an environmentally friendly society in China from the viewpoint of environmental law and policy. The authors accessed a great number of valuable sources not available in English, and interviewed various scholars and public officials, in order to analyze the environmental policies in China while comparing some of the features to Japan. The book stresses the importance of introducing a brand-new policy of central and local government, and analyses why these policies have not been executed effectively in the local society. In addition to the economy-oriented policy and spirit of the Chinese nation, which are the main causes, this book also highlights shortcomings in the inspection system, information management, and the extremely low degree of public participation as important aspects to focus on in order to tackle the current problems. The individual chapters will help readers to understand the environmental issues in China in depth, and provide guidance on resolving the issues in China and in developing countries that are now or soon will be facing the challenge of combining economic growth and environmental improvement. Air, water and soil pollution are serious challenges in China. The deterioration of the environment often leads to rioting that influences social stability, which is also a great concern to foreign investors. This book will be of interest to a professional audience such as policymakers, journalists, members of environmental NGOs, managers and employees who do business with China, as well as academic researchers and students.

As the dazzling economic and social changes in China have imposed substantial impact upon the quality of environmental governance, it is time to review the problems and progress in the politics of China''s environmental protection. This book analyzes the factors in China''s governance and political process that affect and restrain its capacity to handle the mounting environmental problems. It argues that solutions to China''s ecological woes to a larger extent lie in the political and institutional changes rather than in engineering, technological and investment input. The book talks about new policies and reform measures in the green area taken by the government since 2007, arguing that some of them may be quite effective in the long run, as long as they alter institutional factors and the OC growth-firstOCO mindset that obstruct the green effort. The book also includes discussion of China''s climate change policy not only because global warming has come under the limelight of the international community in recent years, but also because it offers a unique dimension to analyze the country''s environmental diplomacy and domestic bureaucratic structure on emissions cutting and related energy issues. China is currently at the crossroads of further political and economic reform, and the intensified public attention to environmental pollution may help the Chinese Communist Party to decisively push forward the long-sluggish political reforms.

This book details various stages in the introduction, establishment and evolution of China’s environmental management system. By combining a literature review, comparative analysis, and case study, it investigates the environmental management system in several key periods in order to systematically assess the necessary measures and appropriate adjustments the Chinese Government implemented to reconcile the growing conflicts between economic development and resources conservation, in the context of rapid economic growth and economic transformation. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for experts, scholars, and government officials in related fields.

When Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms in the late 1970s, few would have imagined what the next four decades would bring. China's GDP has grown on average nearly 10 percent annually since, and its economy is now the second largest in the world. Forty years ago, the Flying Pigeon bicycle ruled the roads; today, China is the world's largest car market. And if forty years ago you looked out across the Huangpu River from the Bund in Shanghai, you would have seen farmland and a few warehouses and wharves; now you see the stunning, futuristic cityscape of Pudong. The material progress of the past forty years has been staggering -- a source of pride for the Chinese people, as well as a source of legitimacy for the ruling Chinese Communist Party. But that progress has come at great cost: the extreme pollution of China's air, water, and soil has taken a stark toll on human health. In Environmental Pollution in China: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Daniel K. Gardner examines the range of factors -- economic, social, political, and historical -- contributing to the degradation of China's environment. He also covers the public response to the widespread pollution; the measures the government is taking to clean up the environment; and the country's efforts to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels and develop clean sources of energy. Concise, accessible, and authoritative, this book serves as an ideal primer on one of the world's most challenging environmental crises.

How well air and water pollution regulation is implemented depends very much on both the level of economic development and the actual environmental quality. Pollution pricing is closer to the dictates of environmental economics than China's formal regulatory statutes would suggest, and there is considerable scope for using economic instruments to reduce China's industrial pollution problems.

This volume of the Chinese Research Perspectives on the Environment series is a translation of selections from the 2015 or the 10th edition of the Annual Report on Environment Development of China. Friends of Nature, which has been organizing the writing and compilation of the Annual Report, is the first and continues to be one of the most influential Chinese environmental NGO. Articles in the current volume, written by a group of academics, independent scholars, activists and journalists cover recent development in a host of environment-related issues in China, including air pollution control, plans and policies on coal consumption, recent developments in environmental criminal justice, China's role in Antarctic marine conservation, among other topics.