China has adopted an expansive new environmental law that promises to widen its war on domestic pollution. But some observers worry the new legal code also weakens the public’s ability to challenge government actions that could threaten the environment.
“Symbolically and institutionally, [the new code] is a big step. … It’s not just about traditional pollution control,” says Qi Qin, a China analyst at the nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which tracks air pollution, climate, and policy trends. But new policies on environmental lawsuits could “make some accountability channels more difficult to use.”
The code, formally adopted on 12 March, replaces 10 existing statutes on pollution and environmental protection. One of its key aims is to simplify China’s green laws and “streamline enforcement,” says Changhao Wei, a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Another goal “is symbolic or political,” he says. “It shows [the Communist Party] leadership cares long-term about environmental and climate issues.”
The law is the latest product of China’s long-running effort to address its serious environmental problems. In 2014, following an infamously smoggy winter in Beijing that some dubbed the “airpocalypse,” then-Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution” at the opening session of the National People’s Congress. Since then, Beijing and other parts of China have seen far more blue-sky days thanks to limits on coal-fired power plants, vehicle emissions, and other sources of air pollution. Nationally, particulate air pollution levels have dropped about 40% since 2014, according to an analysis from the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index. And the percentage of surface water considered fit for drinking after treatment increased from 63% to 89% from 2014 to 2023. More work remains, but “significant progress” is clear, says Ma Jun, director of the nonprofit Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs.
The new code aims to sustain such progress and open several new legal fronts in the war on pollution, Ma says. It seeks to restrict new sources of pollution before they emerge, he notes, instead of focusing only on “reactive, postpollution punishments targeting visible sources like smog.” The government is also targeting an expanded class of “new contaminants,” says ecologist Yong-Guan Zhu, director general of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences. For the first time, Chinese law now addresses microplastics and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or forever chemicals—of which China is a leading global producer.
Previously, some of these pollutants had been addressed in ministry-level policies. But enshrining them in a national law clarifies enforcement obligations and makes priorities more enduring, says Dimitri de Boer, who directs the China office of the legal nonprofit ClientEarth. “Policy can shift on a political whim, whereas law is harder to change and repeal and tends to be more lasting,” he says.
Another new target for regulation is light pollution. Many Chinese cities have become famous for bright displays at municipal buildings, luxury hotels, and shopping malls. In Shanghai, the sky glow created by these and other light sources “became more than 100 times brighter” from 1995 to 2014, says Chengze Liu, an astronomer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who analyzed night-sky images collected by the Sheshan Observatory. But recent research from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutions has raised concerns about how light pollution contributes to health risks, including sleep disorders, obesity, and diabetes.
Although it benefits the environment and public health, the new code may curtail the public’s role, some observers say. Some of the law’s new provisions, for example, could reduce the ability of advocacy groups and the public to legally challenge environmental threats, fears Feng Ge, an environmental lawyer at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of New York University. Ge, who previously worked for the nonprofit Friends of Nature, is well known for leading successful public-interest environmental lawsuits. In 2020, she won a case that halted dam construction that would have destroyed the last Chinese habitat of the endangered green peafowl.