Study On China's Environmental Protection Industry Development

The development of global industrialization, improvement of social productivity, and economic growth has created unexpected material wealth and material civilization. Meanwhile, the natural resources and environment is on the verge of depletion resulted from rapid population growth, expansion of production, and changes of production and lifestyle, such as degradation of soil, desertification, water pollution, scarcity of freshwater resources, soil erosion, decrease in forest area, ozone depletion, biodiversity decrease, etc. .All these phenomena remind us that the earth is in the face of huge environmental and ecological problems.China's large population, unique energy structure and accelerated industrialization contribute to the extraordinary pressure of environment and resources. World Bank report, "China 2020," conveyed that in the last 20 years, Chinese rapid economic growth, urbanization and industrialization pushed China to be one of such countries having the worst air pollution and water pollution. Environmental pollution has imposed costs on economy and society……If living condition were not improved, achieving the economic growth target is meaningless. Indicated by over-exploitation of natural resources free use of environment and inefficient exploitation of resources, economic growth mode has totally weaken and shaken China's economic and social fundamentation of the modern society. How to maintain China's rapid economic growth, improve the quality of life, realize the coordinated development of national economy and environment, and promote the sustainable development of population, resources and environment is a major issue. Under such circumstances, the emergence of China's environmental protection industry provides an available choice in realizing the sustainable economic and environmental development. In recent years China has obtained some achievements in controlling pollution and preventing further deterioration of ecological environment by developing environmental protection industry. However, China's environmental protection industry started relatively late compared to developed countries, and has a lot defects in many aspects such as market size and technological level.Research studies on China's environmental protection industry generally conveyed brief introduction rather than deeply and systematically analyzed the existing problems and factors restricting the development of environmental protection industry. Very few academic studies presented the way how to promote the development of environmental protection industry. This study aims to demonstrate the features of China's environmental protection industry and its relationship to other industries, analyze the interaction between environmental policies and environmental protection industry development, reveal the current problems happening to Chinese environmental protection industry development, discuss the future development pattern of China's environmental protection industry by comparing with successful experiences in developed countries, and present related advices and suggestions. It has theoretical and practical meaning in leading the industry to a reasonable and specified direction, promoting Chinese environmental protection, establishing ecological economics society, developing recycling economy, and implementing sustainable development.The thesis consists of six chapters in addition to its introduction and conclusion. The first part introduces the background and meaning, study object, methodology, outline, literature review, and innovation.Chapter one is the logical starter of the study. First of all, it defines the meaning of environment, environmental problem, environmental protection industry, then demonstrates related theories including environmental economics, industrial development, and sustainable development, and reveals their enlightenment on environmental protection industry.Chapter two analyzes the pressing and necessity of developing environmental protection industry from the aspects of population size, economic growth mode, and environmental management methods in China. China's population size has threatened the environmental carrying capacity, the economic growth mode has hardly been adapted to the requirements for environment-friendly society, and the administration management cannot meet current needs of environmental protection that definitely trends to be market-oriented. To achieve the coordination of environmental protection and economic development, improve the quality of economic growth, and realize the change of China's economic growth mode require the support of environmental protection industry.Chapter three provides the current developing features and future prospects of China's environmental protection industry. This chapter first describes several important stages experienced by china's environmental protection industry, and then elaborates the current industrial features form the aspects of its size, scale and benefits, industrial structure, and geographical distribution. By analyzing the industrial characteristics and its impact on the national economy, this chapter comes up with a statement that protecting environment through developing environmental protection industry would not hamper Chinese economic development, instead, it would bring huge economic benefits and promote Chinese economic development. The prosperity and development of environmental protection industry, on the one hand, could control pollution and protect the environment creating environmental benefits, on the other hand, as a high-tech sector it could provide enormous employment opportunities and lay a technological foundation for improving the quality of economic growth. Besides, the development and application of environmental protection technology could affect the production and development of other national industries, contribute to upgrading traditional industry structure, and finally create enormous economic benefits for our country.Chapter four analyzes the interaction between environmental policies and environmental protection industry development. From the history of its developing, China's environmental protection industry has developed accompanied by the evolution of environmental policy. Confined to "externality" the market of environmental protection industry barely could be formed. Especially at the initial stage of industrial development, environmental protection industry depends on the policies to ensure the market demand and transfer the potential market to real market demand. Environmental policies can promote environmental protection industry market to arise, guide its developing direction, and improve its developing quality. As environmental protection industry develops and matures, it contributes to environmental policy system perfect whose supervision role would be played better.Chapter five demonstrates the problems appearing in the development of environmental protection industry. The major problems include six aspects. First, the government monopoly manages environment, some local government protects regional economic growth ignoring environment cost which results in the low market-orientation. Second, relative surplus supply of environmental products and demand deficiency in environmental market coexist contradictorily. Third, high-tech products are imported because of poor self-development while low-tech products are duplicated by small factories, which leads to vicious competition. Fourth, the product structure mainly consists of end-control products, environmental services sector occupies extremely low market share. Fifth, regional development is unbalanced. Sixth, small and medium sized environmental enterprises have difficulties in financing either directly or indirectly. The key factor caused these problems lies in that Chinese resources price which is too low cannot reflect the scarcity and non-reversible nature of resources. In addition, the imperfect law system and local protection cause the environmental protection industry out of market control, failing in optimal resources allocation; lack of financial support from the government for environmental protection industry adds to financial problems of small-medium sized enterprises so they can hardly raise funds in capital markets.Chapter six discusses the future pattern of environmental protection industry development and presents suggestions. Based on the analysis of factors hampering the development of environmental protection industry, this chapter explores a developing mode of environmental protection industry in light of China's basic conditions comparing with the features of environmental protection industry development in developed countries, and puts forward suggestions from the aspects of industry restructuring, environmental policy, environmental product standards, financing channels for environmental protection enterprises and public environmental awareness and environmental education.Final part concludes the study.At present, Chinese economic structure is going through an adjustment period. The industrial structure is changing from extensive to intensive type where China's environmental protection industry would have a bright future, for environmental protection industry plays a vital role in whether economic restructuring can be successfully achieved. With administrative measures and economic instruments, create a fair market environment, encourage and stimulate the development of environmental protection industry, so as to alleviate the contradiction between environmental protection and economic development, and speed up the construction of China's environment-friendly society.