China Environmental Law

It’s official.  The Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress (NPC) passed the Circular Economy Law on Friday.  President Hu Jintao signed it into law.  It will come into force on January 1, 2009.  The law may be found here (Chinese only).
According to a Xinhua report, the law requires

the government to closely monitor energy consumption [...]

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Here are three recent stories I found interesting if you care to check them out.
1. Imagethief  reports that Beijing’s air quality has apparently returned to the status quo ante.  Well, you knew that was coming.  I guess that once most of the international media left there was no longer any need for pretence.  I hope that the populace, [...]

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The fact that China has surpassed the US in total CO2 emissions is old news.  There is no doubt that China’s carbon emissions are big and getting bigger.  Over the past “eight years, global carbon dioxide emissions have grown more than a third to 11.4 billion tons a year. Two-thirds of that has come from China.” 
In [...]

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The demands of my day job will prevent me from providing you today with an informative, topical, yet light-hearted, post of the type you have come to expect on a daily basis from CELB. 
Let me make amends by sending you over to The Economic Observer Online in particular the Blue Sky Games blog which is billed [...]

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China’s Circular Economy Law is up for its third and final reading this week before the fourth session of the 11th Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.  According to Xinhua it will likely “be approved at the session which is due to end on Friday.” 
The Xinhua description of what is in the law is not [...]

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Shanghai was hit with rains of biblical proportions this morning.  I was drawing up plans for an Ark when they finally let up enough for me to venture out of the house, only to be caught half way to the office in the second wave of the storm.  Many streets and sidewalks were literally under [...]

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You may recall that we recently picked up a report on Vermont Public Radio about a frightfully naive Vermont legislator who was scandalized to learn that big bad foreigners may be interested in what the democratically elected legislature in little ole Vermont was up to with respect to electronic product recycling legislation. 
It turns out that the [...]

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We all knew a shakeup of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) was coming, and it appears the shoe dropped on Thursday.
Here’s how China Daily reported the reorganization:
China’s top economic planner will see the focus of its work shifted to ensuring balanced economic growth and the number of its leading officials more than halfed, according [...]

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The State Council on Wednesday approved a draft regulation on the management of electronic wastes.  As usual, the Xinhua story  provides little context or history so it is hard to confirm whether this regulation is, in fact, a new draft version of a regulation initially issued in draft form (for public comment) in 2004 (often [...]

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China yesterday increased the “on-grid price of coal-fired electricity” from (depending on which paper you read) 5  to 6% .  Retail electric rates remain unchanged. 
This latest price rise, unlike the 4.7% increase in (primarily industrial) retail rates which became effective on July 1, does not have any direct inflationary potential.  Thus, it was a relatively [...]

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