China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 10

Water-Pollutant Discharge-Fee System in China
legally permitted. And, the penalty fare
was doubled for behaviors that went beyond
the temporary regulation.
The water-pollutant dischargefee
system practiced a serious attempt
to address pollution problems through
an empirical application suiting the
boost of firms, thus the fee standard
was revised in 2003. This reform was a
rational innovation. The fee-collection
principle was changed from one based
on excessive charge to one based on the
discharged equivalent of water-pollutant.
Once a pollutant was discharged
into a water body, a pollution fee was
charged, instead of restricting the discharge
to a standard. The fee standard
was set at 0.7 RMB per pollutant equivalent
and the penalty fare was doubled
for pollutants that failed to meet the
standard. Moreover, enterprises that
suffered economic loss could apply for
half to full pollution-fee exemption.
Current water-pollutant-fee standard
is defined according to the 2014
Adjustment of Pollutant Discharge Fee
Collection and Related Issue. It declared
an increase in the water-pollutant discharge-fee
standard from 0.7 RMB to
1.4 RMB per equivalent. Within each
discharging point, toxic pollutants and
heavy metals should be added to the
calculation. Other pollutants need to be
sorted according to their concentration
from the highest to the lowest, whereby
the total fee charge should include no
more than three types of pollutants. In
addition, local governments are allowed
to adjust the fee standard according to
regional conditions. For pollution-control
areas, heavily polluted areas, and
economically powerful areas, standards
are allowed to be set higher than the national
level. The fee level dropped from
1982 to 2003 and doubled in 2014. As
the half-full pollution-fee exemption
is banned in the adjustment of 2014,
the water-pollutant discharge fee notably
increased and sped up the external
environmental cost, as well as the cost
within the fee system. The obstinate
concept of “if you pay more you can
discharge more” should be precluded.
The 11 th five-year plan set the target at
“reducing 10% of the total pollutants,”
thus making it necessary to monitor
enterprises to limit the total pollutant
discharge amount. A critical penalty on
standard-exceeding discharge would
assure the system’s operation and water-resource
sustainability, theoretically
limiting wastewater discharge to the
largest extent.
1.2.2. The Fee Structure
The evolution of the water-pollutant
discharge-fee system is also reflected in
the fee structure. In 1974, wastewater
was defined partially by an industrial
waste-discharge standard. In 1982,
the temporary regulation claimed that
those discharging more than two pollutant
types in wastewater should be
charged by the highest one. The single-factor
charge principle based on
a standard-exceeding amount determined
the water-pollution discharge
fee. Enterprises from different areas
adopted the same wastewater-discharge
standard, though certain factors such
as difference in economic development
level, pollution transfer (even within
same river-basin area), and water-
7