The Contradictory Impact of Reform on Environmental Protection in China

Reform has posed a serious contradiction for environmental protection efforts in China. On the one hand, the first decade of reform (1979–89) ushered in a vast expansion of environmental protection institutions, laws and policies, a process which in certain respects continues to this day. On the other hand, the reforms also welcomed the rapid and often unrestrained growth that is responsible for the dramatic erosion of the quality of Chinas environment over the past two decades. The central governments professed concern for the environment and the national measures taken to protect it appeared, by the end of the 1980s, to have slowly caused some improvements in the enforcement of environmental policy. But by the mid–1990s, a renewed burst of economic activity following Deng Xiaopings 1992 Shenzhen trip had combined with another round of administrative reforms in early 1994 to set back these efforts.