Reashot Xigwin
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Manufacturers Are Leaving China
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seven7seven
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Western brands and manufacturers, who made cheap stuff for them in China, used China as much as China used them. China is shifting its economy and moving up the quality chain, whilst promoting and developing indigenous brands and heavily investing in R&D. Western companies now need to go elsewhere to find skilled, competent and hardworking labour, that is also dirt cheap and available in massive quantities. That's what China provided, and finding a substitute as good as what they had with China, is going to be very difficult for them. China is moving on because it can now. Western companies are moving out of China because it has no choice.
xunzi
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Wages were in cheaper in Africa and India, why didn't they go to them? I wish the world economic engine is as simple as you think. Fact remains, low cost labor WITH infrastructure, logistics, and supply chain are what make us a MONSTER in manufacture. It will to be hard to find a single replacement that will fill that void. India has labor, cost, and good geographical land mass but they lack infrastructure. They will need to invest hundred of billions in road and infrastructure to build up facilities and transportation of goods. Vietnam infrastructure is a little better than India but their narrow geographical country size and mass make it difficult to have efficient transportation of manufacturing goods. Small scale manufacturing or niche manufacturing is feasibility but large scale is almost impossible for Vietnam. Logistics and supply chain are not favorable in Vietnam due to limit country size. Mexico has a good medium of size and population but crime and drug cartels make it risky to invest in the infrastructure and transportation. It is a difficult problem to solve.
To sum up, India lacks infrastructure, Mexico lacks stability, and Vietnam lacks logistics. It will have to be a combination of India, Mexico, and Vietnam who will shoulder the low-manufacturing, labor intensive jobs that we will transfer over.
Pangu
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The govt. just released new amendments to enforce the Enviromental Protection Law (EPL), If it is implemented diligently by the local officials, I believe more foreign manufacturers who are responsible for polluting our enviroment will be forced to leave. For the past 30 years we have been the "world factory", it's time we move up the food chain.
https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/6937-China-s-new-environmental-law-looks-good-on-paper/en
New environmental law targets China’s local officials
Michelle Ker
Kate Logan
28.04.2014
comments
0
By raising the costs of bad behaviour, China’s new law could push local governments to focus on ecological protection
The new law's sucesss will depend on officials carrying out their orders and civil society helping to keep them in check (Image by Greenpeace/邱波)
Long-awaited amendments to China’s Environmental Protection Law (EPL) are out – and surprisingly, they deliver. Apart from declaring environmental protection the country’s “basic policy”, the new law combines both hard and soft mechanisms to enforce China’s environmental regulations, a critical advancement if China’s declared “war on pollution” as mandated from the top is to be implemented throughout the country.
The amendments, which go into effect beginning January 1, 2015, mark the first change to China’s EPL in 25 years. Adopted in 1989, China’s original EPL was a product of its time. The law’s nebulous language made enforcement an unnecessary challenge. Moreover, the law left few channels for citizen participation when government officials or companies neglected their duties. As a result, changes to the law were a long time in the making.
The actual drafting of amendments did not begin until 2011, however, and the law underwent a rare four revisions before being adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Between each revision, the government solicited feedback from environmental law experts, government bodies, local environmental protection bureaus, and even twice solicited feedback from the public. Such an unprecedented, wide-reaching consultation process exposed the law to vigorous public and private scrutiny, resulting in a law that has teeth.
But whether the new EPL will be effective in improving environmental conditions on the ground, allowing Beijing the right to claim victory in its “war on pollution”, rests primarily on its implementation. The good news is that as a starting point, the new law has set up powerful mechanisms for enforcement, combining strengthened hard mechanisms – legally binding environmental protection responsibilities and consequences for environmental violations – with soft mechanisms of public channels for participation in environmental protection.
Raising the stakes for bad behaviour
The new law contains a number of hard mechanisms for enforcement that present opportunities to tackle local protectionism, a perennial challenge for enforcement. In China, local governments enjoy relative discretion when addressing environmental issues. Local Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), while tasked with implementing both national and local environmental standards, answer to their respective local governments, who control EPBs’ funding and key personnel decisions. The decentralised nature of environmental management requires local government compliance in order to meet and enforce national environmental priorities.
Under the new EPL, provisions giving local governments greater environmental protection responsibilities while formalising a system where local officials are assessed on environmental performance in their respective jurisdictions just might succeed in shifting incentives for local officials to prioritise environmental protection. As Alex Wang, a Chinese environmental law scholar, has argued, bureaucratic performance targets, more so than law, are central to motivating local government implementation of environmental protection measures.
Having environmental performance formally figure in the evaluation of officials represents a positive step for greater accountability of local officials, but for it to be effective in practice, environmental targets for officials must also be elevated. If such incentives fail, under the new EPL, local officials derelict in their enforcement duties can face demotion, dismissal, or criminal prosecution.
The new EPL also provides tougher punishments for violations of environmental law, and gives greater discretion to local officials to dole out punishments to polluters. Another major difficulty with environmental enforcement has been that maximum fines for flouting environmental laws were set so low so as to have little to no deterrent power: it was often much cheaper for polluting companies to pay the fine than to install or operate emissions-reducing equipment.
It removes caps on fines and introduces a daily penalties system for continuous environmental violations, opening the door for potentially substantive fines. Additionally, under the new law, EPBs now have the power to order companies that fail to meet requirements to eliminate or curb their pollution to suspend or shut down operations. All in all, these positive changes raise the cost of bad behaviour for both government officials and companies.
Strengthened tools for public participation
An effective environmental protection law is one that also includes “soft” channels through which the public may hold government officials and companies accountable for their environmental performance. To echo Alex Wang, public supervision reforms – particularly in public participation, transparency, and public interest litigation – “have the greatest potential to improve government accountability because they actually create a possibility for third party, independent monitoring and the increased likelihood of sanction for bad behavior.”
Significant progress on all three counts has been made with the new law. That the EPL now contains an entire chapter devoted to environmental information disclosure and public participation demonstrates the central government’s recognition that it needs public supervision to aid its environmental protection work. Under the 1989 EPL, the scope of public participation was limited, framing citizen participation primarily in terms of a right to “report on or file charges against units or individuals that cause pollution or damage to the environment.” The text of the new law legally enshrines the right of Chinese citizens to participate in environmental protection.
The new amendments' provisions on transparency, the base for public participation, include requirements for corporations to release environmental information and for polluters to provide comprehensive and real-time emissions data. Environmental monitoring agencies and related facilities who are found to have furnished falsified data also face increased liability for their lack of due diligence toward polluting enterprises.
Public interest litigation was one of the most contentious issues of the amendment process. Despite its importance for environmental protection, there was no provision for public interest litigation in the original EPL. Now that the dust has settled, the new EPL establishes a legal basis for public interest litigation, and extends standing to bring public interest cases to a much greater than expected number of organisations.
While the second revision of the law limited public interest litigation to the All-China Environmental Federation – a national, government-organised NGO – the third draft expanded this right to social organisations. These are national organisations, registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which have been continuously engaged in environmental protection work for at least five years, and have “good standing.”
Under the new amendments, these criteria have been whittled down to two points: social organisations must 1) be registered with the civil affairs departments at the prefecture level or above; and 2) have been continuously active in environmental public interest activities for at least five years and have no illegal offences on record. These conditions theoretically expand the number of groups that can raise public interest lawsuits from about 100 to as many as several hundred, although some NGOs have already expressed concern over the potential lack of clarity with the meaning of “prefecture level” registration, a condition which may disqualify groups registered at the district-level of important province-level municipalities, such as Beijing and Shanghai.
However, many issues with public interest litigation remain unresolved. For one, as individual citizens do not meet the criteria for standing for public interest litigation, individual citizens’ rights to sue will continue to be primarily limited to tort cases that represent only a portion of the harmful damage that pollution has inflicted on the Chinese public. Most significantly, it is still quite difficult for grassroots environmental NGOs to obtain legal registration as a social organisation. As a recent Economist article highlighted, it was only in 2011 that certain grassroots NGOs were first allowed to register directly with civil affair departments without first finding a sponsoring government agency.
Although this relaxation in restrictions was an important advancement for Chinese civil society overall, environmental NGOs were not included under the new rules and still must find a government sponsor in order to register as a social organisation. Government bureaus will often refuse such a registration and claim that a similar agency already focuses on the same realm of work. Environmental NGOs’ continuing uphill battle to obtain registration constrains both the development of the environmental NGO sector and related opportunities for environmental public interest litigation.
Law as a blueprint
The new EPL reaffirms the central government’s commitment to environmental protection and the elevation of its importance on the national agenda. As the law now states, economic development “must be coordinated with environmental protection”.
Consistency among laws is integral to their implementation. To avoid a key pitfall of the original EPL, China must find a way – starting with statutory interpretation – to clear up inconsistencies between the new EPL and its other environmental laws and regulations.
In many ways, the substance of EPL is a triumph: it addresses many of the old law’s major flaws and limitations and is an environmental law fit for purpose. But laws, no matter how well-crafted, lack agency. Implementation and enforcement of the EPL will require environmental protection officials to carry out their marching orders, and civil society and individual citizens to help keep them in check. China now has a solid blueprint for its war on pollution that provides the right kinds of incentives for all environmental stakeholders. It’s an EPL China can be proud of.
New environmental law targets China’s local officials | Michelle Ker Kate Logan - China Dialogue
https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/6937-China-s-new-environmental-law-looks-good-on-paper/en
New environmental law targets China’s local officials
Michelle Ker
Kate Logan
28.04.2014
comments
0
By raising the costs of bad behaviour, China’s new law could push local governments to focus on ecological protection
The new law's sucesss will depend on officials carrying out their orders and civil society helping to keep them in check (Image by Greenpeace/邱波)
Long-awaited amendments to China’s Environmental Protection Law (EPL) are out – and surprisingly, they deliver. Apart from declaring environmental protection the country’s “basic policy”, the new law combines both hard and soft mechanisms to enforce China’s environmental regulations, a critical advancement if China’s declared “war on pollution” as mandated from the top is to be implemented throughout the country.
The amendments, which go into effect beginning January 1, 2015, mark the first change to China’s EPL in 25 years. Adopted in 1989, China’s original EPL was a product of its time. The law’s nebulous language made enforcement an unnecessary challenge. Moreover, the law left few channels for citizen participation when government officials or companies neglected their duties. As a result, changes to the law were a long time in the making.
The actual drafting of amendments did not begin until 2011, however, and the law underwent a rare four revisions before being adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Between each revision, the government solicited feedback from environmental law experts, government bodies, local environmental protection bureaus, and even twice solicited feedback from the public. Such an unprecedented, wide-reaching consultation process exposed the law to vigorous public and private scrutiny, resulting in a law that has teeth.
But whether the new EPL will be effective in improving environmental conditions on the ground, allowing Beijing the right to claim victory in its “war on pollution”, rests primarily on its implementation. The good news is that as a starting point, the new law has set up powerful mechanisms for enforcement, combining strengthened hard mechanisms – legally binding environmental protection responsibilities and consequences for environmental violations – with soft mechanisms of public channels for participation in environmental protection.
Raising the stakes for bad behaviour
The new law contains a number of hard mechanisms for enforcement that present opportunities to tackle local protectionism, a perennial challenge for enforcement. In China, local governments enjoy relative discretion when addressing environmental issues. Local Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), while tasked with implementing both national and local environmental standards, answer to their respective local governments, who control EPBs’ funding and key personnel decisions. The decentralised nature of environmental management requires local government compliance in order to meet and enforce national environmental priorities.
Under the new EPL, provisions giving local governments greater environmental protection responsibilities while formalising a system where local officials are assessed on environmental performance in their respective jurisdictions just might succeed in shifting incentives for local officials to prioritise environmental protection. As Alex Wang, a Chinese environmental law scholar, has argued, bureaucratic performance targets, more so than law, are central to motivating local government implementation of environmental protection measures.
Having environmental performance formally figure in the evaluation of officials represents a positive step for greater accountability of local officials, but for it to be effective in practice, environmental targets for officials must also be elevated. If such incentives fail, under the new EPL, local officials derelict in their enforcement duties can face demotion, dismissal, or criminal prosecution.
The new EPL also provides tougher punishments for violations of environmental law, and gives greater discretion to local officials to dole out punishments to polluters. Another major difficulty with environmental enforcement has been that maximum fines for flouting environmental laws were set so low so as to have little to no deterrent power: it was often much cheaper for polluting companies to pay the fine than to install or operate emissions-reducing equipment.
It removes caps on fines and introduces a daily penalties system for continuous environmental violations, opening the door for potentially substantive fines. Additionally, under the new law, EPBs now have the power to order companies that fail to meet requirements to eliminate or curb their pollution to suspend or shut down operations. All in all, these positive changes raise the cost of bad behaviour for both government officials and companies.
Strengthened tools for public participation
An effective environmental protection law is one that also includes “soft” channels through which the public may hold government officials and companies accountable for their environmental performance. To echo Alex Wang, public supervision reforms – particularly in public participation, transparency, and public interest litigation – “have the greatest potential to improve government accountability because they actually create a possibility for third party, independent monitoring and the increased likelihood of sanction for bad behavior.”
Significant progress on all three counts has been made with the new law. That the EPL now contains an entire chapter devoted to environmental information disclosure and public participation demonstrates the central government’s recognition that it needs public supervision to aid its environmental protection work. Under the 1989 EPL, the scope of public participation was limited, framing citizen participation primarily in terms of a right to “report on or file charges against units or individuals that cause pollution or damage to the environment.” The text of the new law legally enshrines the right of Chinese citizens to participate in environmental protection.
The new amendments' provisions on transparency, the base for public participation, include requirements for corporations to release environmental information and for polluters to provide comprehensive and real-time emissions data. Environmental monitoring agencies and related facilities who are found to have furnished falsified data also face increased liability for their lack of due diligence toward polluting enterprises.
Public interest litigation was one of the most contentious issues of the amendment process. Despite its importance for environmental protection, there was no provision for public interest litigation in the original EPL. Now that the dust has settled, the new EPL establishes a legal basis for public interest litigation, and extends standing to bring public interest cases to a much greater than expected number of organisations.
While the second revision of the law limited public interest litigation to the All-China Environmental Federation – a national, government-organised NGO – the third draft expanded this right to social organisations. These are national organisations, registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which have been continuously engaged in environmental protection work for at least five years, and have “good standing.”
Under the new amendments, these criteria have been whittled down to two points: social organisations must 1) be registered with the civil affairs departments at the prefecture level or above; and 2) have been continuously active in environmental public interest activities for at least five years and have no illegal offences on record. These conditions theoretically expand the number of groups that can raise public interest lawsuits from about 100 to as many as several hundred, although some NGOs have already expressed concern over the potential lack of clarity with the meaning of “prefecture level” registration, a condition which may disqualify groups registered at the district-level of important province-level municipalities, such as Beijing and Shanghai.
However, many issues with public interest litigation remain unresolved. For one, as individual citizens do not meet the criteria for standing for public interest litigation, individual citizens’ rights to sue will continue to be primarily limited to tort cases that represent only a portion of the harmful damage that pollution has inflicted on the Chinese public. Most significantly, it is still quite difficult for grassroots environmental NGOs to obtain legal registration as a social organisation. As a recent Economist article highlighted, it was only in 2011 that certain grassroots NGOs were first allowed to register directly with civil affair departments without first finding a sponsoring government agency.
Although this relaxation in restrictions was an important advancement for Chinese civil society overall, environmental NGOs were not included under the new rules and still must find a government sponsor in order to register as a social organisation. Government bureaus will often refuse such a registration and claim that a similar agency already focuses on the same realm of work. Environmental NGOs’ continuing uphill battle to obtain registration constrains both the development of the environmental NGO sector and related opportunities for environmental public interest litigation.
Law as a blueprint
The new EPL reaffirms the central government’s commitment to environmental protection and the elevation of its importance on the national agenda. As the law now states, economic development “must be coordinated with environmental protection”.
Consistency among laws is integral to their implementation. To avoid a key pitfall of the original EPL, China must find a way – starting with statutory interpretation – to clear up inconsistencies between the new EPL and its other environmental laws and regulations.
In many ways, the substance of EPL is a triumph: it addresses many of the old law’s major flaws and limitations and is an environmental law fit for purpose. But laws, no matter how well-crafted, lack agency. Implementation and enforcement of the EPL will require environmental protection officials to carry out their marching orders, and civil society and individual citizens to help keep them in check. China now has a solid blueprint for its war on pollution that provides the right kinds of incentives for all environmental stakeholders. It’s an EPL China can be proud of.
New environmental law targets China’s local officials | Michelle Ker Kate Logan - China Dialogue
Established_1965
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Yeah, it might happen due to rising salary of Chinese. Some companies just can't afford it.
KingMamba
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I agree with your explanation makes sense.
Pangu
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There is no choice. Everyone wnats to earn more to improve their living std, the only way out is to progress up from low cost industry to mid & high tech industry. But it also requires training the work force, building better infrastructure, enhancing supply chain, & compete with better foreign products. It's a vicious cycle.
Lol. China's gdp is only 6500/year. Rising salary my ***.
Established_1965
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It includes both skilled and non skilled workers.
In China right now, salary had increased drastically for skilled workers.
Solomon2
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I've met Chinese businessmen who laugh about pollution controls. Changing the law isn't going to change that culture, for how can the culture can change if the Chinese government keeps imprisoning anti-pollution activists? They'll keep pumping their wastes into the air and streams, or making them into sub-standard concrete or dangerous landfills.
China wasn't always like this; these is a deep respect Chinese have had for thousands of years for a healthy environment, especially in their own cities. A hundred years ago industrial pollution was reviled and regarded as an exclusively Western evil. Now the shoe is on the other foot, yes?
Sam1980
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Mexico has always been a natural spot.
Man, calm down... I know its internet and all, but there is no need to be mean!
tranquilium
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Which type of businessmen are you talking about? Because that's not what I heard from the Chinese engineers from the IEEE conference three weeks ago. Chinese pollution has two parts, one associated with industrial/agicultural production, which is characterization by industrial waste water and by association, metal/ organic contamination. The other part is associate with rising living standard which included waste and garbage created by increased urbanization and consumption. A very significant part of this is the motor vehicle pollution, which is increasing because people's living standard is getting better. Common consensus from engineers on solving pollution problem in China include streamlining the production process, getting rid of small and inefficient business which are the biggest pollution producers and improved technological process such as hydride/electrical vehicles. Since the people that run Chinese government are also engineers and scientists, these are the solutions they are implementing.
And the last paragraph is just plain stupid. Not developing your industry leads to be invaded by foreign powers. The environment is worth squat when everything you cared and everyone you loved is dying because you can't defend yourself.
TaiShang
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So much care for China's environment. It is probably because China is a sovereign nation and will not have its natural resources to be plundered by Western industries.
If they can get their hands on your land and resources, they will poison you and rape your land and water over and over again. If you are sovereign and powerful, then they will send over their environmental terrorists (like they did in Russia last year) and try to stir trouble on petty environmental concerns.
Alligator tears which will not move us an inch!
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