Bo Zhang and Cong Cao argue that China's citizens should have a legal right to safeguard the quality of their environment (Nature 517, 433–434; 2015). The wealthy would stand to benefit most from such a public litigation system, causing pollution producers to migrate to poorer areas.

Heavy industry in China is already moving out of developed eastern regions to the west (see X. Bai et al. Nature 509, 158–160; 2014), where it is damaging the local ecology. Industrial waste slag has eroded a nature conservation area in Xinjiang (see go.nature.com/68e1lo; in Chinese), for example, and discharge from factories has severely polluted part of the Tengger Desert at the border of the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia regions (see go.nature.com/nlfbrs; in Chinese).

Environmental activism by residents in affluent areas such as Shenzhen, Jinan and Beijing (see, for example, Q. Wang Nature 497, 159; 2013) is accelerating this migration of polluters into poor areas where environmental protection is considered a luxury, and where water and soil are already badly contaminated.