6 February 2021.

Introduction:

According to the Environment Ministry of China, China will set up a new information platform to allow the public to track the emissions of polluting enterprises and help authorities prosecute those that break the rules or try to “evade supervision”,.

Highlights:

• The new information platform will allow authorities and members of the public to monitor real-time emission levels and check historical data in order to determine whether rules are being breached.
• It is set to come into effect on March 1.
• About 2.36 million companies, industrial facilities and institutions in China are legally obliged to obtain permits to emit pollutants like sulphur dioxide or wastewater. 
• All the polluting enterprises are obliged to install monitoring equipment and keep at least five years of data, with fines of 200,000 yuan ($31,000) for those that fail to do so.
• Fines of 1 million yuan can be imposed on firms that pollute without permission.
• All the firms that repeatedly exceed allocations and those that already have a poor “social credit” rating, will be subject to more scrutiny and more frequent inspections.

          China’s Environmental Policy.

• China is known to focus on more on economic growth and neglect the environmental concerns.
• If the above policy goes forth it might adversely affect the local economy that rely on the heavy industry.

China