Research On The Division Of Powers And Expenditure Responsibilities For Air Pollution Prevention And Control In China's Central And Local Governments

Since 1978,with the rapid advancement of China's industrialization process,the problem of environmental pollution has increasingly become an important livelihood issue affecting the sustained and healthy development of the economy and society.In particular,the urban air quality in recent years has become the focus of much attention of the society.The frequent heavy foggy weather has seriously affected the operation order of the economic and social.Since the 1970 s,the Chinese government has paid attention to environmental and carried out the protection work.It has also achieved certain results by formulating special air pollution prevention laws ? regulations and air pollution prevention policies to deal with air pollution and improve the quality of the air environment.On the overall level,the regional characteristics of air pollution are increasingly prominent,and there is still a large gap between air quality and public expectations.The 13 th Five-Year Development Plan pointed out that it should be clear that the current emissions of many atmospheric pollutants are still at a high level,and nearly 80% of the urban air quality is not up to standard.The ecological and environmental problems including air pollution have become a prominent short-board that affects the well-off society in China.Governments at all levels attach great importance to the prevention and control of air pollution,and the policy system has been continuously improved and the intensity of prevention and control has been continuously enhanced,but the effects of air pollution prevention and control have not reached expectations.One of the important reasons is that the division of government power ? fiscal expenditure responsibility for air pollution control is somewhat unclear,unreasonable and irregular between the central government and local governments.Clearly dividing the government's power is the premise and basis for rationally dividing expenditure responsibility.The rational division of government power ? expenditure responsibility is the core content of coordinating the relationship between central and local finance and is the basic project to improve the national governance structure and strengthen the government's ability to govern.Comprehensively deepening the reform of the socialist market economic system with a pilot demonstration effect.Therefore,clear and reasonable division of government power ? expenditure responsibility for the prevention and control of air pollution between central and local governments is not only an important optimization path to improve the efficiency of the prevention and control of air pollution,but also an inherent requirement for establishing a modern fiscal system and realizing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.The prevention and control of air pollution is an important government providing public service function.The main body of the power is the governments at all levels.The research object of this paper is the division of government power ? expenditure responsibility for the prevention and control of air pollution between the central and provincial governments.The division of government power ? expenditure responsibility among other local governments can refer to the division between the central and central governments.This article does not discuss.The spillover and spatial mobility of air pollution are prominent.Therefore,the prevention and control of air pollution has the characteristics of benefit spillover,regionality and complexity.The promotion of air pollution prevention and control requires the governments at all levels promote together in the framework of coordinated governance,which is conducive to the improvement of the overall welfare level.However,this is not the case in practice.Under the principle that “local governments at all levels are responsible for the quality of the air environment in their own jurisdictions”,local governments have assumed most of the air pollution control and fiscal expenditure responsibilities.The level of benefit of the prevention and control work is not matched,and does not meet the basic principle of the division of public goods supply duties among governments.At the same time,after the tax-sharing reform aimed at strengthening the macro-control ability of the central government,the financial power gradually concentrated in the central government,while the focus of the power ? expenditure responsibility shifted downwards.The more the lower-level government,the more government power ? expenditure responsibility.There is a “mismatch” between the government power ?responsibility of the local government and the financial resources owned by the local government.There are two ways to solve this problem.One is to appropriately shift the center of government's power ? expenditure responsibility,and the other is to moderately shift the focus of financial power.However,the complexity and the regional liquidity of air pollution,and the level of benefit spillover of air pollution prevention and control indicate that the administrative management system in the prevention and control of air pollution is not conducive to the improvement the efficiency of air pollution prevention and the improvement of air environmental quality objectives.Therefore,this paper proposes to solve the problem of misalignment and mismatch in the division of power and expenditure responsibility for the prevention and control of air pollution along the line of "shifting the focus of power and expenditure responsibility appropriately".This paper first defines the relevant concepts and outlines the framework of this paper.Then it analyzes the theoretical basis of the division of government power ? expenditure responsibility of air pollution prevention and control between central and local governments in the context of China's special economic system reform,which provides theoretical support and necessary methodology for our research.At the same time,air pollution is a common problem in the world,there has accumulated rich experience in prevention and control and achieved good results,which has great reference value for promoting the prevention and control of air pollution in China.Since this problem is both a real problem and a historical issue,the study of the history of the prevention and control of air pollution will help to understand the crux of this problem.This article divides the problem into four stages with the formulation of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution and the revision of the previous period.The division of the characteristics of each stage,government power ? expenditure responsibility between the central and local governments has been carried out.Furthermore,the deep-seated reasons such as the institutional background and economic and social roots are traced back,and then the main government power ? expenditure responsibilities of central and local air pollution prevention and control are listed in the form of a list.Finally,the article puts forward optimization suggestions from two aspects,one is to standardize the transfer payment system,and the other is to construct a local government incentive compatibility mechanism.This article may have innovative value in the following aspects:(1)novel topics.This paper combines the research object with the modernization of the national governance system ? governance capacity,and China's reform process of establishing a modern fiscal system.This is the biggest difference from previous research;(2)The operability of the research conclusion is strong.The recommendations made in previous studies are usually general and difficult to implement.In this paper,the results of the division of government power? expenditure responsibility in this field are presented in the form of tables,and the operability is greatly enhanced;(3)The research framework has certain application value and reference value.In addition to focusing on the division of the central government and local governments in the prevention and control of air pollution,the article also proposes an optimization path with the aim of increasing the flexibility of the division system.This research framework can provide reference and reference value for reforms in other fields such as basic education and public health.This paper believes that there are many factors influencing this problem,such as local government's preference for the air environment,local government competition,inter-governmental power allocation model,financial differences between local governments,industrialization processes,the distribution of energy resources.To solve this problem,we should follow the following principles: the principle of benefit scope,the principle of efficiency,the principle of not being on the right,the principle of equal rights and responsibilities,the principle of incentive compatibility,and the principle of matching expenditure responsibility with power,the principle of matching expenditure responsibility with financial resources.This paper constructs a strategic interaction model on the intensity of air pollution control under the framework of local government competition,estimates the influence coefficient of the adjacent local government's air pollution control policy on the region,and demonstrates the importance of efficiency improvementof the prevention and control of air pollution in the joint prevention and control of air pollution.Based on the empirical analysis,this paper proposes the optimization path: optimizing the financial transfer payment system and constructing the local government incentive compatibility mechanism.