China Environmental Law

The third session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC), opened in Beijing on June 24, 2008 and the draft of the Circular Economy Law was “deliberated” for a second time.

The Chinese language press is reporting that the following provisions of the draft were deleted:

Article 14.3国务院和县级以上地方人民政府向同级人民代表大会报告政府工作时，应当同时报告循环经济发展工作。

The State Council and the local people’s governments at or above the county level shall report the work for the development of recycling economy at the time of reporting government works to the people’s congresses of the same level.

Article 26.1国家对城市居民生活所用的电、气、自来水等资源性产品，根据实际需要和可能实行累进加价和收费制度。具体办法由国务院或者省、自治区、直辖市人民政府制定。

The State will implement the system of graduated increase of prices and fees for electricity, gas, tap water and other products of resource nature used in the ordinary life of urban residents according to the reality and possibility. The concrete measures shall be formulated by the State Council or the people’s governments at the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government.

Article 40      Recovery and Dismantling of Scrapper Motor Vehicles or Vessels

报废机动车船的所有者，必须将所报废的机动车船交售给回收、拆解机动车船的企业。

The owners of scrapped motor vehicles or vessels shall sell and deliver the scrapped vehicles or vessels to enterprises engaged in recovering and dismantling vehicles or vessels.

回收后的报废机动车船必须拆解，禁止重新拼装使用。

Any scrapped vehicles or vessels as recovered shall be dismantled and any reassembly thereof for use is prohibited.

The most notable deletion appears to be Article 26.1 which promoted a gradual move to something akin to market-based pricing for basic utilities.  I suspect this was a bit of pandering to popular will (rising prices are still a topic of considerable discussion on the street), since the provision imposes no absolute requirements and could have been ignored in practice. 

No word on when the law will be passed, but, in line with previous pronouncements, it should be before the end of the year.