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Ecological Conservation and Environmental Protection in China, 1978–2018

by Pan Jiahua (Volume editor) Zhuang Guiyang (Volume editor)
©2025 Monographs XIV, 274 Pages

Summary

China’s sustained and rapid economic growth since 1978 has meant increasing importance of ecological conservation and environmental protection. This book reviews the history of China’s experience in ecological conservation and environmental protection in China under reform and opening-up, identifies lessons learned, examines obstacles and challenges the country is facing, and offers suggestions for addressing them. Written by some of the most prominent experts in their respective fields, the chapters cover such topics as environmental planning and policies, the rule of law, sustainable development, circular economy, climate change, and ecological civilization. The volume shows that China’s environmental objectives are consistent with the country’s long-term development goals and that a prosperous and beautiful China must be one and the same.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • Chapter One: “Protecting the Environment Pays”: Theory and Practice (Pan Jiahua and Zhuang Guiyang)
  • Chapter Two: Environmental Policies: Evolution and Evaluation (Zhou Hongchun)
  • Chapter Three: Environmental Protection Planning: Review and Outlook (Wu Shunze, Wan Jun, Yang Liyan and Zhao Zijun)
  • Chapter Four: Circular Economy (Qi Jianguo, Wang Yingjie and Ma Xiaoqin)
  • Chapter Five: Water Resources: Exploitation and Protection (Xia Jun and Zuo Qiting)
  • Chapter Six: Adapting to Climate Change: Policies and Actions (Zhuang Guiyang and Bo Fan)
  • Chapter Seven: Sustainable Development: Strategy and Practice (Chen Ying)
  • Chapter Eight: Sustainable Urban Development: Practice and Experience (Wang Mou, Kang Wenmei, Liu Junyan, Lv Xianhong, Zhang Ying and Luo Dongshen)
  • Chapter Nine: Toward an Ecological Civilization (Li Meng)

Chapter One

“Protecting the Environment Pays”: Theory and Practice

Pan Jiahua and Zhuang Guiyang*

1. Introduction

Chinese economy has been greatly rejuvenated, thanks to the reform and opening-up since 1978, dwarfing the whole world in growth rate with an ever- rising size. However, the four decades of economic take-off is also a period of time when the country wound out of all the twists and turns in environmental protection, and a space of time when environmental deterioration in general was improved by a large margin. The past forty years of rapid industrialization and urbanization in China have not been able to escape from the outburst of environmental woes that Western countries experienced during their century-long industrialization. The country, consequently, has entered a critical period with overlapping pressures and heavy burdens. After forty years of unremitting efforts, China has made huge progress in the institutional establishment for environmental protection, improving ecological conservation to a new stage of development. Generally speaking, China’s environmental movement did not advance in an isolated way, for it has always been closely associated with the country’s economic development, reform and opening-up. In the early 1980s, China’s policy was to “sell mineral resources as fast as possible” and to “live on what the land and sea can offer.” While in the rapid industrialization and urbanization, China began to realize that it needed not only golden mountains but also clear water and lush mountains. Since 2010, under the guidance of this environmental philosophy, Chinese people have begun to refused to trade their lucid waters and lush mountains just for economic benefits. Recent years have seen the emergence of a new age of ecological civilization featuring the harmonious symbiosis between nature and humans. As we can see, along with the special junctures in the forty years of socioeconomic development, China’s environmental protection also displayed different characteristics in its development, policies and institutional establishment.

2. Local Pollution and the Beginning of Institutional Improvement (1978–1991)

The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in 1978, marked the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up in an all-round way and its exploration of socialism with Chinese characteristics through learning while moving forward, or figuratively speaking, “crossing a river by feeling the stones.” The Third Plenary Session made clear that the work of the whole Party and the whole country should focus on socialist modernization drive. With this shift in the national development strategy, China started to establish its institution for environmental protection by drafting relevant laws, regulations and policies.

In 1972, Chinese delegation participated in the UN Conference on the Human Environment. In 1973, the first National Environmental Protection Conference approved the environmental protection policy of “overall planning and rational distribution; utilizing resources comprehensively and turning hazards into benefits; relying on the people and involving everybody; and protecting environments for the benefit of the people,” which is also known as the “Thirty-Two-Character Principles.” In a very short time, the Leading Team for Environmental Protection, along with its office, was officially established under the State Council. Governments at lower levels were urged to establish their environmental agencies correspondingly. All these efforts officially symbolized the outset of Chinese environmental movement in modern times centering on pollution prevention and control. Reform and opening-up needed legal safeguard, but at that time, the legislative process had to start all over with so many things to attend to. Still, the legislation for environmental protection was written into the agenda. In 1979, the Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China was officially promulgated, marking the official inclusion of environmental protection into the legislation. In 1983, the second National Environmental Protection Conference made environmental protection a basic state policy and established eight “synchronous development” guidelines.1 In 1989, at the third National Environmental Protection Conference, Chinese government further proposed the “three major policies” and “eight major management systems,”2 which produced far-reaching influence on China’s environment movement.

Environmental protection was written into the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1981–1985) as an independent chapter. Since 1983, environmental protection has been an integral part of the annual report on the work of the government, serving as a guarantee for the implementation of environmental projects and objectives. Environmental protection agency in China has gone through different stages of development too. In 1982, the Office of the Leading Team for Environmental Protection under the State Council, a previous temporary institution that had been established for ten years, was transformed into a regular permanent institution, while at the same time, the Environmental Protection Bureau was set up under the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development and Environmental Protection. In 1984, due to the fact that the environmental protection involved the coordination of different departments, the State Council established the Environmental Protection Commission and changed the name of Environmental Protection Bureau to National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA, a sub-ministerial level agency), which was still under the leadership of the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development and Environmental Protection. In 1988, the State Council reorganized its institutions and severed the NEPA from the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development and Environmental Protection. The NEPA was hence defined as the competent department directly under the State Council for integrated environmental planning, monitoring and management.

By the end of 1991, China had drafted and promulgated 12 laws on resource and environment, more than 20 administrative laws and regulations, over 20 departmental regulations, 127 local laws, 733 local regulations and a large number of normative documents. Thus, the legal system of environmental protection had been preliminarily formed, laying a legal foundation for strengthening environmental administration.

In general, environmental protection developed in parallel with economy, and to certain extent, even beyond the corresponding phases of economic growth in terms of the building of management system. At that time, China, a country still practicing central planning to a large extent, was highly vigilant of repeating the development mode of “pollution first and management later” of western countries, but was equally desirous of the development road of “protection first and development later.” Chinese government became more alert in the 1980s when economic growth and industrialization, especially the rise of enterprises in small towns, led to ecological damage and increasing pollution.3 However, before 1992, Chinese economic development was basically in the exploring period of “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” Most pollution accidents emerged during this period of time, mostly were local or of point-source pollutions.

3. Worsening Environmental Pollution and Faster Legislation (1992–2001)

Since China began to accelerate and expand its reform and opening-up in 1992, the year that marking a turning point in Chinese history, the country experienced two decades of rapid economic development and the highest environmental stresses ever as well. During his tours in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, Deng Xiaoping delivered two very important speeches, which played a critical part in propelling China’s economic reform and social development in the 1990s. People were able to take their first bite into the benefits of thriving economy and saw the hope of being lifted out of poverty. However, ecological and environmental integrity was sacrificed for economic growth in many places as China then was still in the transition from planned economy to market economy, a period dominated by persistent extensive growth mode, which had resulted in serious pollution and ecological loss as well as threats and damage to people’s livelihood and the country’s sustainable social and economic development.

After Deng Xiaoping’s visits to southern China in 1992, the country ushered in a new round of economic boom. But as a Chinese proverb goes, “turnips are not washed when selling fast,” which means, in this case, that environmental health was compromised for economic gains. This situation was complicated by the robustious and disorderly development of township enterprises in the 1980s, giving rise to graver environmental pollution. For example, some rivers and lakes turned black and malodorous, which, along with blue algae eruption, jeopardized the drinking water safety. Smog enshrouded many cities, directly causing the outburst of respiratory diseases among urban residents. To make it worse, pollution, which began to expand from cities to the countryside, from eastern China to western regions and from local to countrywide in scale, not only led to the increasing number of environmental accidents but also grew into the hotspots of social complaints. Worse still, pollution grew as air and soil pollution were added to water pollution, causing widespread concern. Urban environmental pollution was especially alarming, which was largely caused by the high population density and over-concentrated manufacturing enterprises, unsound industrial structure and building layout, underdeveloped infrastructure for urban environmental protection, and the concentrated discharge of residential waste and industrial wastes (gases, water and solid).

But at that time, it was only possible to tackle the pressing environmental issues, among which the case of Huaihe River was the most typical. In 1989 and 1994, an accident occurred and resulted in the serious pollution of Huaihe River, challenging more than 1.5 million residents in Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province in their access to drinking water. As a response, the State Council laid down the objective that Huaihe River should be cleared before the end of the twentieth century, symbolizing the beginning of water treatment for Huaihe River. In Huaihe River basin alone, Chinese government closed down 999 small paper mills and renovated 1,139 polluting enterprises from 1994 to 1998, achieving initial results. The achievement, however, was not consolidated, despite the fact that the water quality of some major monitoring sections of Huaihe River was improved obviously, with some reaching Grade III. Due to the inadequate industrial restructuring, some small yet still polluting enterprises started their business again, leading to the rebound of the Huaihe River pollution. This is largely because the environmental impairment outgrew pollution abatement during that period of time, which was more known as the time of environmental debt accordingly.4

To beef up environmental administration, the Decision of the State Council on Several Issues Concerning Environmental Protection, which was promulgated in 1996, stipulated that fifteen kinds of heavily polluting small enterprises to be closed, in an attempt to contain serious pollution sources infamous for backward technology, little hope of abatement, large number and huge amount of discharge. The shutdown of the fifteen kinds of polluting small enterprises5 put an end to the irrational development of township enterprises since the 1980s, which could be described as “every village developed heavy industry and every household had a smoking factory.” Thanks to the restructuring and upgrading, effective control was maintained over the pollution of atmosphere, water and the heavy metal in soil, which, to a certain extent, protected the health of workers who used to work in these township enterprises.

During this period, China strengthened step by step, its legislation for environmental protection. The Environment and Resources Protection Committee, which was created by the National People’s Congress as the Environmental Protection Committee in 1993 and changed into the current name in 1994, formulated five laws, including the Law on Promoting Clean Production and the Law on Environment Impact Assessment, while revising three laws such as the Law on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution and the Law on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution. Thus, China established a legal system for environmental protection which consists of eight environment laws, fifteen natural resources laws, more than fifty administrative regulations, nearly 200 departmental regulations and normative documents and over 1,600 local environmental laws and regulations.

Details

Pages
XIV, 274
Publication Year
2025
ISBN (PDF)
9781636678542
ISBN (ePUB)
9781636678559
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781636678535
DOI
10.3726/b21669
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (February)
Keywords
ecological environment water resources circular economy environmental protection planning public participation environmental policies China’s Agenda 21 reform and opening-up
Published
New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2025. X, 230 pp., 6 b/w ill., 6 b/w tables.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Pan Jiahua (Volume editor) Zhuang Guiyang (Volume editor)

Pan Jiahua holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge. He is a Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and Director, Research Fellow, and Doctoral Supervisor at the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies, CASS. Zhuang Guiyang holds a Ph.D. in Economics. He is Research Fellow of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies, CASS; Doctoral Supervisor at the Graduate School of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

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Title: Ecological Conservation and Environmental Protection in China, 1978–2018