Environmental information collection and enforcement at small-scale enterprises in Shanghai: The role of the bureaucracy, legislatures and citizens

In the late 1990s there were 23 million small-scale enterprises in towns and villages in rural China, 6.6 million of which were industrial facilities. While amounts of waste released from individual enterprises are usually small, their cumulative environmental impact is severe. My dissertation analyzes the collection of environmental information and enforcement of water pollution control policies at small-scale enterprises in Shanghai Municipality. Using case study methodology and the principal-agent model as an analytical framework, I examine the activities of the agencies and individuals responsible for enforcement at small-scale enterprises: district environmental protection bureaus (EPBs) and township environmental protection officers (EPOs). I analyze how the Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, district and township government leaders and people's congresses, and citizens influence the actions of enforcement officials.; Environmental information is collected at less than thirty percent of all legally registered small-scale enterprises in three case study peri-urban districts, and enforcement occurs at even fewer of these enterprises. Moreover, township EPOS possess significantly more information about small-scale enterprises than EPBs at higher levels of the environmental protection hierarchy. This information asymmetry exists because the objectives of township EPOs are not served by sharing information, and the environmental protection hierarchy has weak mechanisms for overseeing and controlling township EPO actions. By withholding information from district EPBs, township EPOS can respond to their local government leaders, who typically prioritize economic development and wish to protect local enterprises from environmental enforcement.; Using China's environmental complaints system, citizens and local people's congresses can provide higher levels of the environmental protection hierarchy with an independent source of environmental information. However, because citizens and local people's congresses lack knowledge about the seriousness of small-scale enterprise pollution, in general, their complaints highlight individual nuisance problems, but they do not address cumulative impacts.; China's environmental policies have changed little in twenty years: regulations prioritizing large-scale enterprises—the major polluters in the 1980s—continue to be implemented without modification. My research demonstrates that this paradigm is inappropriate for the new millennium because it encourages environmental protection bureaus to neglect China's acute pollution problems linked to small-scale enterprises.