Air Quality and Local Government Governance in China

Abstract

China’s economy has been growing rapidly for decades. Despite the increasing GDP, its rapid development has caused a string of serious environmental problems, especially air pollution. With the frequent occurrence of serious and complex air pollution phenomena such as smog, China’s air quality problem has become a research focus of the international community, which poses severe challenges to the Chinese government to improve its environmental governance capability and governance methods. In spite of the central government’s continuous attention to air quality issues, local governments tend to choose economic growth over environmental protection. The law enforcement of local governments to control air pollution is a direct factor affecting regional air quality. China’s mode of environmental law enforcement has exposed many problems in the field of air quality control. Through direct leadership of the local Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB), the Chinese government has formed an old administrative mode and a one-sided guiding mechanism with economic development as an indicator. By analyzing the number of days with air quality on and above the Air Quality Level 2 in various regions in China, and by combining the analysis with the GDP of various regions in 2018, this study found that the number of days with air quality on or above Level 2 and the development of local GDP show a positive correlation. Therefore, in response to such management defects, China should focus on strengthening the response and implementation of local governments to environmental policies and form a management structure under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE). Local governments should shift from the simple mode of “administrative supervision” to the comprehensive mode of “administrative supervision + coordination” to form a new mechanism of cooperative governance under the leadership of local governments and implemented by the Local EPB, to decompose the overall and stage tasks of air pollution control, and to specifically implement the governance tasks and objectives to specific local government departments and the local EPB. We need to improve the efficiency of regional air pollution control, and effectively curb the deterioration of air pollution.