On April 27, 2019, Jiangsu’s provincial government released the Program of Jiangsu Province for Rectifying and Improving Safety and Environmental Regulation of Chemical Industry, making an ambitious pledge to overhaul the local chemical manufacturing industry in the wake of a string of chemical explosions.
The authorities wish to achieve three goals by putting the Program in place, including to fundamentally enhance safety in the chemical industry, to significantly improve the regional layout of chemical businesses, and to substantially decrease ineffective and lower-end capacity.
The Program reiterates commitments to shut down, relocate, and transform chemical businesses in Jiangsu and provides relevant criteria and timetables, with some minor adjustments in details. Interestingly many of the specific targets specified in the draft [1] have been omitted from the official release.
For example, it was detailed previously in the draft that the number of chemical plants in the province should be cut from 50 to around 20 after a comprehensive evaluation of various factors, however this specific goal has been removed and replaced with more vague requirements calling for the “reorganization or removal of chemical plants and chemical industry clusters”. Most importantly, the goal of “slashing the number of chemical enterprises to 2,000 by 2020 and to under 1,000 by 2022” is absent in the document as well.
Meanwhile, there are some new additions in the Program compared with the draft, including requirements calling for strengthened regulation of chemical industry clusters, sound disposal and management of hazardous waste, consolidated safety regulation of hazardous chemicals, etc.
