China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 149

China Policy Journal
emissions and to monitor compliance
(Stranlund and Chavez 2000), while the
poorer quality of CEMSs in China often
fails to achieve such accuracy and they
are mainly used to provide guidance for
occasional site inspections (Pan, Wang,
and Wang 2005; Xu 2011).
Weaver (2014) has criticized the
conventional scholarship on compliance
and enforcement gaps that predominantly
focused on the motivations
of the regulatees. He then proposed a
comprehensive framework to analyze
noncompliance with public policies by
adding factors related to the willingness
and capacity of the regulatees. He also
suggests that the technical and social
aspects of policy instrument designs,
such as the heterogeneity of regulation
targets and the political constructs
of seriousness of noncompliance, can
have important effects on the compliant
behavior of regulatees. Weaver’s
conceptualization of “compliance and
enforcement regimes” provides a useful
framework for this paper, although
it falls short by focusing narrowly on
formal rules made and implemented by
governments and by failing to capture
the widespread informal enforcement
initiated by nongovernmental actors
against noncompliant behavior.
This article intends to evaluate
the instruments of formal and informal
compliance regimes and their impact
on chronic noncompliance behavior.
As shown in Figure 1, the Y-axis shows
compliance regimes measured in terms
of formality. The most formal compliance
regime mainly includes institutional
and policy instruments set by
the formal regulatory bodies. The less
formal regime includes the instruments
of voluntary regulation established by
enterprises and professional civil society
organizations. The least formal one
refers to more spontaneous and sporadic
efforts made by local communities.
The X-axis measures the instruments
compliance regime by the degree of enforcement
coerciveness. A combination
of both formal compliance regime and
coercive enforcement instrument lead
to highest level of compliance.
3. Chronic Offenders
in Guangzhou
Located in the heartland of the
prosperous PRD, Guangzhou is
a main growth engine of China’s
manufacturing industries and consequently,
yet it suffers from serious
industrial pollution. Textile manufacturing,
paper making, electronics, and
metal processing are the main sources
of pollution. In addition, Guangzhou
has a high concentration of power stations
and industrial waste treatment facilities,
and these can produce high levels
of pollution if their emissions are not
properly treated. Chronic environmental
infringers discussed in below are all
from the abovementioned sectors.
Chronic environmental infringers
can be further divided into two
broad categories based on the variation
in types and frequencies of penalties
imposed by the environmental
regulators (Figure 1). The first group
of chronic environmental offenders are
often termed “nail polluters” (wuran
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