The Chinese government has made a lot of effort to improve environmental quality in recent years. A number of regulations, standards, normative documents have been published to support all kinds of campaigns, programs, missions, etc. As a result, some previous legal documents are no longer suitable and some local documents may actually contradict new ones issued by China’s central government. In order to decrease these inconsistencies and contradictions, on Sep 18th, 2018, State Council issued a notice, requiring the central governmental branches and local governments to optimize the current legislative/regulatory framework and ensure consistent alignment of local, provincial and central legal stipulations.
The optimization plan will include deletion, consolidation and optimization of the following:
Administrative regulations regarding environmental protection;
Regulations and rules carried out by the ministries under the State Council, provincial governments, governments of the municipalities directly under the central government, and the governments of the municipalities that have jurisdiction over districts;
Normative documents carried out by the local governments above the county level.
Each governmental department and branch should collect and organize the legal documents they have published and then submit a summary to the State Council by Oct 15th, 2018. Any older regulations which contradict, overlap or are inconsistent with new environmental protection policies will be repealed. If the older document partially contradicts current environmental protection policies, then it should be revised.
