China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 159

China Policy Journal
increasingly interconnected with public
reporting. To be more specific, citizen
reporting has become an important
cause for environmental inspections
and sanctions. For instance, an important
criterion for the environmental performance
rating under the PEPA system
is the frequency of public complaints.
Only those firms receiving fewer than
three public complaints can be coded
“green,” the best score in the rating
system. Many chronic polluters targeted
by the interagency supervisions and
ENCBs were also those polluters who
were frequently reported by the local
residents.
However, the effectiveness of
citizen monitoring and reporting in
China has been constrained by the general
weakness of bureaucratic capacity
of the local environmental authorities.
The official statistics show that more
than 90% of public complaints have
been “properly handled” (tuo shan chu
li) over the past five years (Figure 4).
However, according to our interview
on April 13, 2016, less than 70% of citizen
reports of environmental offenses
could be processed by the EPBs at the
district level, these bodies being seriously
undermanned and also preoccupied
with other regulatory priorities.
Furthermore, the official management
of citizen reporting lacks transparency,
and this makes it difficult for the complainants
to verify the law enforcement
activities and their real impacts on the
reported polluting firms.
In the dataset compiled for this
research, we find only a few chronic
polluters with clear records of citizen
reporting and thereafter connect these
reports of offenses with specific environmental
sanctions. For instance,
Meiye Textile, a Hong Kong-based textile
company and an important supplier
to many brand-name multinational
corporations, was reported by an anonymous
citizen on the website of the
Guangzhou EPB for polluting the air of
the local community in January 2013
(Guangzhou EPB 2013). Two months
later, the Guangzhou EPB publicized
a very specific response to the netizen
who earlier complained through the
same platform on its website. In this
online statement, the Guangzhou EPB
declared that the inspectors dispatched
to the scene had not detected illegal
emissions carried out by the reported
enterprise. However, the enforcement
agency also stated that the reported
plant would be relocated as planned
in June 2013 by the municipal government
in a massive industrial relocation
project (Guangzhou EPB 2013).
Another rare case that shows direct
linkage between citizen reporting
and specific law enforcement actions
against illegal polluting behavior was
a bloc prosecution of polluting firms
surrounding several high and elementary
schools in the District of Baiyun,
in Guangzhou, a suburban area with a
high density of small enterprises that
was particularly weak in environmental
legal enforcement. At least eight polluting
factories were stormed and clamped
down by the local EPB in an enforcement
campaign as a result of four years
of petitioning by teachers and concerned
parents in that area, who might
have been affected by the pollution
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