Policies That Promote Environmental Industry in China

Abstract

Purpose

We aim to comb the current policies that have been developed to promote the environmental industries in China and analyze them in a comparative manner.

Methodology/approach

We mainly use the method of text study to study the existing policies that Chinese central government published to promote the development of environmental industry. We built a database of policies and regulations from 1979 to 2015 by searching the official website of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China.

Findings

We find that the existing policies focus on command and control approaches. Policies are more oriented to the stage of production instead of stages of investment and consumption. They rely more on negative incentive when stimulating supply and positive incentive when encouraging demand. Based on existing academic wisdom, we suggest that Chinese government should pay more attention to environmental economic policy and to stimulating demand for environmental products.

Originality/value

Few studies provide a systematic overview of the policy systems that have been developed to promote environmental industry in China in a systematic manner.

Citation

Yin, H., Spigarelli, F., Zhang, X. and Zhou, H. (2016), "Policies That Promote Environmental Industry in China", Spigarelli, F., Curran, L. and Arteconi, A. (Ed.) China and Europe’s Partnership for a More Sustainable World, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78635-332-020161001