Campaigns against pollution violations ‘not compromised’ by trade war with the US

Environmental law enforcement will be as stringent this year as in 2017, albeit more wisely executed in the North China plain, experts said on Tuesday.

The comments came after discussions circulated online that the Chinese government may have chosen to loosen environmental curbs to shore up industrial output amid the China-US trade war.

The Chinese capital was caught in a bout of smog not seen for quite a long time in the past few days. A slew of recent economic data has pointed to the pressure that China’s economy faces both internally and externally, raising concerns that the government might ease regulations on environment pollution.

An industry insider, who declined to be named, told the Global Times on Tuesday that he doesn’t feel any of the government’s proposed targets on environmental protection are being compromised, although efforts to perform better than what’s required are also called off.

Wang Guoqing, research director at the Beijing Lange Steel Information Research Center, said “there won’t be a one-sizefits-all cut this year. Local environmental enforcement will be based on the steelmaker’s emission level and the general air condition this winter.”

“Production time will be longer for companies with lower emission levels and in great weather conditions that disperse fog,” she added.

With more government-sanctioned massive infrastructure projects getting approval in the second half of the year to shore up growth, the confidence of steelmakers is high.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment discovered 103 violations in an inspection tour in the Beijing-TianjinHebei area, including furniture shops churning out untreated polluting gases.

“Steelmakers with lower emission levels could unleash their production capacity as demand rises. For those with higher emission levels, they could still face tighter law enforcement and if caught red-handed, could face suspension,” Wang said.

“It is true that the trade war put downward pressure on the Chinese economy, and there is a need to expand domestic demand. For the steelmaking industry, however, it is hard to say it will surely get a boost. It’s also important to safeguard the achievements of supply-side structural reforms and air pollution improvements. It would be awful to see air pollution and overcapacity reappear as a result of production curbs being loosened,” Wang said.

Bai Yunwen, director of the policy center at Greenovation Hub, a Chinese environmental NGO, said Tuesday that “at least in the short term, there is not any direct connection of the seriousness of the environmental campaign with the trade war.”

“China’s environmental campaign should not be let go of. After all, clean air matters more to people,” Bai said.