China Environmental Law

"We will try to avoid repeating the same shopworn statistics, e.g. '20 of the world’s top 30 most-polluted cities,' that are often trotted out when talking about Chinese environmental matters. ... We’ll try to stick to the facts and the law to the extent they can be determined (more on this point later), keying off of current news items and emerging storylines."

Author: Charlie McElwee is counsel at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Shanghai, China.

Blawg Related Categories: Energy Law • Environmental Law • International • Asia

Recent Posts from China Environmental Law

China’s (proposed) Water Pollution Permit Load Limit Regulations
If you stayed awake during our previous discussion of China’s water pollution discharge permit regulations you remember that for the most part these permits contain only concentration-based limits. In practice, only one “total quantity control…
Plastic Bag Update, or Granny Zhao goes shopping
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,…
Carbon, Carbon everywhere, but not a place to trade
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.…
China’s Energy Binge
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,…
From the bottom-up: making things happen in China
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.…
China’s National Energy Bureau (Update)
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…
China’s Circular Economy Law (Progress Report)
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…
Beijing’s Water Binge
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…
Where is Pan Yue?
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…
Let the games begin
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…