Environmental Policies in China: Evolvement, Features and Evaluation

Abstract

This article reviews the development of current environmental policies in China: their initiation started following the United Nations Conference on Human Environment (1972 in Stockholm), and got great progress during 1979?2006. Learning lessons from industrialized countries and combining own situation, China realizes the main features of its environmental policies as follow: (1) explore command and control measures to its full extent; (2) strive to raise funding for environmental protection; (3) identify who should take the accountability for environmental protection, (4) encourage”combination of prevention and control” and “integrated utilization”, (5) Open in field of environmental policy and international cooperation earlier. For the past 30 years, China's environmental policies have been evolved and deepened: status from national basic policy to sustainable development strategy; focus changed from pollution control to combination of pollution control and ecological protection; method changed from end control to source control; scope changed form point treatment to watershed and territory treatment; management style changed from using executive power to using legal and economic measures. At last, this article introduces the evaluation of policies by the international community and the prospects of them.