China upgrades environment ministry in reshuffling

As part of its largest government reshuffling since 1998, China has increased the power of its environment ministry. The change takes place as air quality improves in northern China cities that had been afflicted by chronic smog in recent winters.

The Chinese government will soon consist of 26 ministries, down from 34. The current minister of environmental protection, Li Ganjie, will become minister of ecological environment, with added responsibility for climate change, agricultural pollution, and marine ecology.

At a press conference held on March 17 during the National People’s Congress, Li vowed to make permanent a campaign of strict enforcement of environmental regulations that began in late 2016. “You will note that one of the specific functions of the ministry of ecological environment is to carry out the central government inspections,” he told reporters.

The government’s push to reduce pollution has been aggressive. Earlier this winter, residents in the north of China found themselves shivering because a swift shift from coal to natural gas heating, mandated by regulators, led to widespread gas shortages.

Strict enforcement of environmental regulations also led to shortages of materials and higher prices, as thousands of factories, many of them making chemical and drug ingredients, were ordered to stop production, sometimes permanently.

“We had to explain delays and higher prices to our customers in Europe and the U.S.,” Haijun Dong, CEO of the Nanjing-based fine chemicals producer PharmaBlock, told C&EN late last year. Dong noted that his company has started making some starting materials it can no longer source from others.

But the enforcement campaign also yielded dramatic improvements in air quality in some of China’s dirtiest cities. A recent study led by Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, concluded that air pollution has dropped by 35% in Beijing and 39% in Shijiazhuang over the past four years. Cleaner air will raise life expectancy by several years in those cities, the study predicts.