2. Evolution of Environmental Thought and Enforcement of Environmental Protection Legislation in China: The Status Quo

Besides, the Keys of report of environmental protection work issued in October 1978 also summarized relevant environmental pollution situations. See State Environmental Protection Administration (hereinafter referred to as SEPA) of China, Literature Research Center of the CPC Central Committee (eds) (2011) Selected works of important documents on environmental protection in the new period. Central Party Literature Press, China Environmental Science Press, Beijing, p 5-8.

“Stock” in the economy means the status of assets and liabilities for a given period of time or assets and liabilities held for a given period of time.

“Approving in principle” means a way to approve a law draft when the SCNPC agrees on the fundamental spirit of the law but does not completely agree on all specific articles. “For trial implementation” means although the SCNPC thought the law draft was not sufficient or the legislation condition was not mature, law was needed in real life; therefore, the law was approved. It was a custom in legislation by the NPC and the SC before the 1980s. “Interim” is a similar concept with “for trial implementation.”

Article 26 of Constitution in 1982 stipulates, “The State shall protect and improve living environment and ecological environment, prevent and control pollution and other public nuisance.”

The phenomenon of “riding on a horse to enclose” means a kind of behavior of land grabbing by including into one’s fiefs the land running across through someone riding a horse. In the context, the phenomenon of “riding on a horse to enclose” can be used as a synonym for competition.

“Three Environmental Policies” mean that environmental protection should carry out the policy of putting prevention first, the policy of those who cause pollution responsible for treatment, and the policy of improving environmental protection and management. “Eight Management Institutions” mean institutional methods which include the EIA, the “Three Simultaneities” system, the collection of pollution charges, quantitative checks for comprehensive renovation of urban environments, an objective responsibility system for environmental protection, declaration and registration of pollutant discharge, pollutant discharge licenses, treatment within a prescribed limit of time, centralized control of pollution, etc.—The author notes.

“Administrative-dominated legislation” refers to the legislations mostly enacted by administrative organs.

In Chinese legislative practice, the method of “amendment” is generally used in legal revision activities when there are few contents to be revised, and the style as well as the structure of laws is not changed. By contrast, the method of “revision” is mainly used in comprehensive revision events when the revised contents are huge in number.

According to the report of the Environmental information disclosure: Arrangement during three years released by the Public Environment Research Center and the US Natural Resources Protection Committee, the environmental information disclosure system in China’s 113 urban governments was evaluated, and the average score is 36, of which there were eleven cities scoring above the approve line (60 points), less than 10% of the total. See Environmental information disclosure: Arrandement during three years (2011). Available via the official website of Public Environment Research Center. http://​www.​ipe.​org.​cn/​/​Upload/​IPEReport/​environmental information disclosure_arrangement during three years_evaluating results of PITIin 2011_page_01.jpg. Accessed 6 November 6, 2012.

See Report by the Law Committee of the NPC on the revision of main issues in the second deliberation draft, Beijing, 14 October 2013. In addition, the revised drafts of Chinese laws are usually put to vote after three deliberations by the SCNPC, and this report indicated that the revised draft of the EPL would continue to be revised and improved. There were two reasons for this: one was to wait for the new requirements of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee on ecological civilization construction and the other was to tell the whole nation that the EPL was about to be revised not slightly but significantly.

“Four Comprehensiveness” means the goal that “comprehensively deepening reform, comprehensively strengthening running the CPC strictly, comprehensively implementing the rule of law, and comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society” shall be achieved till 2020.

The newly revised EPL was approved on 24 April 2014 and came into force on 1 January 2015.

The data is from the report named Judicial actuality and problems in the implementation of the new EPL, made by Han Deqiang, vice director of the Judicial Research Center of Environment and Resources in the SPC on China Annual Seminar of Environment and Resource Law on 18 July 2015. According to the statistics by Sun Youhai, there were 117,308 cases of administrative punishment decided by environmental protection departments at all levels in 2012, 160,625 petition cases, and 892,348 complaint cases of pollution accepted through the Internet and by telephone. The three groups of data add up to 1,170,279 cases. As a result, the small number of cases accepted by the court cannot prove that the environmental disputes are less; instead, it only proves that most disputes are resolved out of court in a nonlegal way, and environmental protection tribunals are far from being the main way to resolve environmental disputes. See Sun Youhai (2014) Analysis and suggestion on the problems on current trials on environment and resources. China Court, 17 September 2014.

Taking the reform of the filing system in the people’s courts as an example, cases should be filed and examined by the people’s court at all levels in China before 2015, resulting in the rejection by the court of a large number of group litigations; cases that have an impact on people’s livelihood and cases that have a big impact on one region and the petition of most environmental cases were rejected by the people’s court so as not to be filed and entertained. The reform of the judicial system in 2015 will change it into a filing registration system, which means that the people’s court should not refuse to accept lawsuits without a hearing, which guarantees the right of the parties to appeal.

However, a written order made by Dalian Maritime Court in July 2015 obviously made the mistake in applying the EPL that the Court dismissed the claims of the nongovernmental environmental organizations on account that the EPL was not applicable to the nongovernmental environmental organizations in the case which nongovernmental environmental organizations sued the PetroChina for pollution by marine oil. To avoid plaintiffs’ appeal, in the next day after the written verdict was made, Dalian municipal government convened both the plaintiff and the defendant to make an agreement by administrative settlement, which PetroChina invested 200 million yuan to establish a special fund for marine ecology for Dalian marine environmental protection and ecological restoration, while the plaintiff abandoned the appeal. The ultimate goal of this action is to avoid that this case continued to move forward in judicial proceedings.

Article 4 in the new EPL stipulated, “To ensure the coordination of economic and social development and environmental protection,” which is revised from “To coordinate the work of environmental protection with economic construction and social development” stated in the 1989 EPL. This revision is similar to that of Basic Law of Pollution Countermeasures of Japan in 1970, in which the provision of “the preservation of living environment should be coordinated with the healthy development of the economy” was removed.