At a summit on chemical parks and industry chain development held on April 20, an official from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) noted that initial investigations revealed that there are altogether 676 chemical parks in China and their infrastructure development appears worryingly inadequate.
Among these industrial parks, nearly 9% of them are not equipped with unified sewage treatment facilities, nearly 30% have not established a safety regulation platform, and treatment facilities for hazardous wastes remain absent in around two thirds of them.
In the wake of the Yancheng explosion which occurred last month, the relocation and upgrading of hazardous chemical enterprises is gathering pace. By the end of 2018, a list of 1,176 chemical enterprises were submitted to the central government: 479 of them need to be relocated, 360 need to be upgraded, and 337 need to be shut down. Moreover, the list included 1,089 small and medium-sized enterprises as well as large enterprises exposed to major hazards.
There are enormous difficulties and challenges involved in the relocation and upgrading of hazardous chemical enterprises. For example, some chemical parks earmarked for relocation may have dismal infrastructure and are unable to ensure safe and environment-friendly production, and the existing parks are suffering from limited land and energy use quotas and insufficient discharge capacities. Meanwhile, as most enterprises in the list are traditional chemical businesses, their relocation and upgrading requires a huge amount of investment. Moreover, the assets of businesses which are to be shut down will inevitably depreciate a lot.
