China Environmental Law
China's Environmental and Energy laws, regulations, and policies discussed daily



Plastic Bag Update, or Granny Zhao goes shopping (Jul 4)
There has undoubtedly been a reduction in plastic bag use across China in the first month of the imposition of the “white pollution” reduction measures.  You see more and more use of alternative shopping bags, be they cloth bags, woven baskets, or reused heavy plastic bags. The plastic bag is still very much with us, however.  [...]


Carbon, Carbon everywhere, but not a place to trade (Jul 3)
Plans to establish a market to trade carbon credits in Tianjin have been iced (h/t to Rich at All Roads).  An announcement earlier this year provided that CNPC Assets Management Co., an affiliate of China National Petroleum Corp. (which is also the parent company of PetroChina), together with the Tianjin Property Rights Exchange and the Chicago Climate Exchange undertook [...]


China’s Energy Binge (Jul 2)
Looks like some bad boys have gone out and taken advantage of China’s subsidized energy prices: “State Council: Energy consuming industries developing too fast in China” reports Xinhua. Isn’t that always the way it is, you keep energy prices artificially low to preserve social harmony, and someone goes out and starts buying the stuff like [...]


From the bottom-up: making things happen in China (Jul 1)
The current print edition of The New Republic (online here for now, when the next edition comes on line you will want to find the “07.09.08″ edition) has a China focus with several articles well-worth reading. Since we here at CELB tend toward the environmental, I will direct your attention to an article by Brad Plumer [...]


China’s National Energy Bureau (Update) (Jun 30)
We have previously discussed the moves earlier this year to tinker with China’s energy administrative apparatus.  Despite earlier predictions that China would be creating a Ministry-level energy entity it hasn’t, and Ministry of Energy proponents found little encouragement in the draft of the new national Energy Law, released at the end of last year, which only [...]


China’s Circular Economy Law (Progress Report) (Jun 28)
The third session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), opened in Beijing on June 24, 2008 and the draft of the Circular Economy Law was “deliberated” for a second time. The Chinese language press is reporting that the following provisions of the draft were deleted: Article 14.3国务院和县级以上地方人民政府向同级人民代表大会报告政府工作时，应当同时报告循环经济发展工作。 The State Council and the local people’s [...]


Beijing’s Water Binge (Jun 27)
Apparently Beijing is consuming water at the rate Marie Antoinette consumed petit fours and there is always a price to pay for such gluttony. Many news organizations (see, e.g., here and here) reported today on a new study, published by Probe International and written by a Chinese environmentalist, entitled “Beijing’s Water Crisis: 1949-2008 Olympics” which reads like a [...]


Where is Pan Yue? (Jun 26)
If you know only one official at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, it’s probably Pan Yue (潘岳). His biography reads like countless other cadres: Male, Han Nationality, born in April, 1960 in Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province. Doctor of History. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1987. Associate Researcher. From 1976 to 1982, he served in [...]


Let the games begin (Jun 25)
This is Beijing on June 20, 2008: [Photo Credit: James Fallows] That is how it will look again about the first of October. In the meantime it will get better. China has undoubtedly made great efforts to improve Beijing’s air quality.  As has been noted, given the city’s breakneck development, without these efforts, the situation would be much worse.  [...]


Let the market decide (Jun 24)
More support from China’s financial press for a move to market-based utility pricing (this time even citing Milton Freidman).  Following the Caijing article we discussed last week, the The Economic Observer Online yesterday published an editorial entitled “Let the Market Lead in Prices.”  The recent rise in fuel and electricity prices has to some extent rectified [...]