China's environmental governance in transition

Abstract

Abstract In the face of unprecedented economic and industrial growth levels, China is rapidly developing its system of environmental governance. Coming from a conventional command-and-control approach to environmental policy, which fitted well its centrally planned economy, transitional China is swiftly reforming and diversifying its environmental approaches, instruments, arrangements and legal regulations. This article aims to grasp and assess the direction, extent and speed of change in China's environmental governance. New relations between state, market and civil society, and an opening up towards the outside world characterise new modes of environmental governance that try to turn China's development path in more sustainable directions.