Chinese legislators have passed the first amendments to the country’s environmental protection law in 25 years, promising greater powers for
environmental authorities and harsher punishments for polluters.

The amendments, which the Standing Committee of National People’s
Congress passed on Thursday after two years of debate, will allow
authorities to detain company bosses for 15 days if they do not
complete environmental impact assessments or ignore warnings to stop
polluting. The new law will come into practice on 1 January.

Since China’s environmental protection law was passed in 1989, the
country has become the world’s second-largest economy and its biggest
carbon emitter; decades of breakneck economic growth have left many of its rivers desiccated and its cities perennially shrouded in smog.

Over the past year, the Chinese government has begun to emphasise
environmental protection in its official rhetoric. The new law “sets
environmental protection as the country’s basic policy,” state news agency Xinhua reported.

At an annual parliamentary meeting in March, premier Li Keqiang said
that the government will “resolutely declare war against pollution as
we declared war against poverty”.

Yet environmental groups say that China’s greatest environmental
problems arise from a gap between legislation and implementation.

“If you look at China’s air pollution or water pollution control laws,
they’re pretty good compared to global standards,” said Ma Tianjie,
program director for mainland work at Greenpeace East Asia. “But no
matter how good [the laws] look on paper, the true test will always be
the willingness of local authorities to enforce them.”

The amended law will remove limits on fines for polluting factories,
which are currently so low that many enterprises prefer to pay them
than take long-term anti-pollution measures. It will also encourage
“studies on the impact environmental quality causes on public health,
urging prevention and control of pollution-related diseases,” Xinhua
reported.

“Local officials may be demoted or sacked, if they are guilty of
misconduct, including covering up environment-related wrongdoing,” the
newswire reported. “If offenders’ behaviors constitute crimes, they
will be held criminally responsible.”

This month, Chinese environmental researchers concluded that nearly
60% of the country’s groundwater quality is either “relatively poor”
or “very poor”. A separate official report claimed that 16% of the
country’s land is polluted, some of it with chemicals such as arsenic
and mercury. Earlier this month, dangerous levels of the carcinogenic
chemical benzene were detected in the northwestern city Lanzhou’s
water supply, triggering a run on bottled water.

Reducing the country’s noxious smog has also become a challenge for
growth-minded local officials. On Thursday, the UK shadow climate change minister Baroness Byrony Worthington led a well-attended “training
course” for Chinese mayors on strategies for combatting air pollution.

“Every single person we’ve met so far has mentioned the words, ‘smoggy weather,’” said Worthington, who is on a four-day trip to China
representing Globe International, an organisation of legislators
focused on sustainable development. “They fear that the external world
is pointing and laughing at this stage which China’s environment has
reached – it’s a kind of loss of face.”