China’s Path to Green : Can We Afford To Wait Any Longer to Get the Public and Industry on Board?

Scholars suggested that in China centralized environmental policymaking may be decoupled from idiosyncratic local implementation, and thus have questioned the outcomes. This paper fills a gap in the literature on China’s environmental governance by assessing the effects of the centralized regime on outcomes and diagnosing institutional deficiencies along the following three dimensions: structure, penetration to multiple actors in society, and persistence in efforts taken. Analyses of panel data from the years 1998 to 2005 find the environmental governance regime associated with reduced industrial pollution discharge but not with increased treatment, as measured by COD, SO2, and solid waste. In this case, the Chinese government is faced with the challenge of finding mechanisms to stimulate the public, industry, and officials to embark on the path to green.