Qingzhi Huan: Regional Supervision Centres for Environmental Protection in China: Functions and limitations

Modeling itself on the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) has also established its six regional Supervision Centres for Environmental Protection (SCEPs) in recent years. Generally speaking, as the MEP-affiliated institutions (shiyedanwei) rather than its regional agency (paichujigou), these SCEPs are playing some positive parts in promoting the implementation of environmental policy/laws on the one hand, and are still facing a lot of internal and external restrictions to fulfill the designated functions on the other. This article will offer an investigation of the development and performances of the SCEPs by focusing upon the South Centre located in Guangzhou, so as to shed some lights on the complexity in strengthening/reconstructing the vertical supervision of environmental protection in China.

Accordingly, this article is composed of three parts. It will start with a general review on the historical development, the organisational structure and the empowered supervisory competences/functions of the SCEPs, then in part two we will describe in detail how the South Centre works in reality - its major achievements and difficulties in exercising its powers, and the third section will offer a theoretical analysis focusing on what reform measurements should be taken in order to improve the governing performances of the SCEPs.

Key words: Regional supervision centres for environmental protection, Environmental policy/politics, China, implementation, functions/limitations

 About the author: Dr. Qingzhi Huan is a professor of comparative politics at Peking University, China, and was a Humboldt Research Fellow of 2005/2006 at the MZES, University of Mannheim, and of 2009 at the FFU, Free University Berlin.