In January 2018, the Environmental Protection Tax Act came into force, replacing the original wastewater pricing system. According to the law, enterprises, public institutions and other producers and operators that directly release taxable pollutants into the environment are considered payers of the environmental protection tax and should do so in accordance with the law. In our latest study, we compared risk regulation in China and the United States, and we also found a more complex trend that does not support the longstanding conventional view that U.S. regulation is much stricter than in China. In collaboration with Huanhong Li, a graduate student at Peking University, we compared the regulatory stringency of the rules written for a random sample of 45 environmental risks between the United States and China in January 2017. We assessed the relative seriousness of the regulation of each risk and found that while the general regulation of environmental risks in the United States is somewhat stricter, the difference is much smaller than conventional impression suggests. Using a scale where “0” indicated equivalent stringency between the two countries and positive values indicated greater stringency in the United States, we estimated a total score of only 0.06 for the 45 environmental risks in our sample. It is expected that further larger lawsuits from environmental organizations in the public interest will follow. The FON has established an Environmental Public Interest Fund to support public interest litigation. The fund has received sponsorship from the Alibaba Public Interest Fund.
[5] In the event of a violation of environmental law, the court has the power to conduct criminal proceedings for environmental offences; investigate the criminal responsibility of offenders; mediation or negotiation of environmental civil matters; promote the resolution of civil environmental disputes; adjudicate environmental management cases in accordance with the law; and supervising the prosecution of administrative bodies. Is there a general rule on liability for environmental damage? [6] “Violations of environmental law must be severely punished,” available in Chinese on August People.cn, August 11, 2014. In China, environmental accidents can result in legal liability, including criminal, administrative and civil liability. For more information, see 4.1 Important types of liability. Similarly, on January 13, 2015, Guangdong Province adopted amendments to the Guangdong Province Ordinance on Environmental Protection. These amendments, which were made on 1. July 2015, address the issue of local protection of polluting companies by establishing a new court system for environmental protection cases. Previously, environmental disputes were handled by local courts and were therefore subject to interference by the local government.
To address this issue, the Guangdong Provincial Court will establish a special division of the court to deal with environmental disputes at the provincial level, where they are less likely to be subject to local influences. At the end of October 2018, the Chinese government promulgated the Law on air pollution prevention and control (amendment 2018)[52], which is being implemented with immediate effect. Experts believe that while the law is inevitably flawed in some respects, if 80% of the law can be implemented, it will significantly improve air quality. This law has been reviewed three times. The new amendment clearly states that companies in the steel industry, building materials, non-ferrous metals, the oil industry and the chemical industry that release dust, sulphides and nitrogen oxides during production must introduce cleaner production processes, build dust removal, desulphurisation and denitrification plants in a complete package, or take technological transformation and other measures to control the release of air pollutants. Compared to the revised Air Pollution Control Act in 2000[53], the new version doubled the entries. Almost all the laws in the current version have been amended and revised to reflect the current situation. In accordance with the Law on the Prevention and Reduction of Water Pollution and the Law on the Prevention and Reduction of Air Pollution and other relevant laws, direct officials and other persons responsible in case of water pollution or air pollution accidents would be punished with less than 50% of their annual income in addition to the fine for the company. Conventional wisdom has long been that some countries systematically have stricter regulations on environmental risks than others, such as Europe vs. the United States or developed countries versus developing countries.
But these conventional generalizations of national regulatory comparisons may have been made too hastily. Detailed empirical research in recent decades has shown that the reality is more complex. The Environmental Protection Act does not directly regulate the environmental liability of financial institutions and lenders. In the past, environmental protection was seen more as a social responsibility of financial institutions. In recent years, provisions on green loans have been adopted as part of green finance policies and standards. Since the implementation of the revised Law on Environmental Protection in 2015, the Supreme People`s Court and the Supreme People`s Procuratorate have published typical cases of environmental resources, including criminal, civil and administrative sanctions, every year.
