In an article written by David Stanway; edited by Richard Pullin for Reuters:
From January through October of 2017, Chinese firms accused of violating environmental regulations paid fines totaling 1.02 billion yuan. That’s up 48% from last year. As part of a campaign to protect the environment, China has promised zero tolerance for firms guilty of offences such as illegally dumping waste, exceeding mandatory emissions caps or tampering with monitoring equipment.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said in a notice on Wednesday that 32,227 cases had been handled in the first 10 months of the year, more than double last year. The number of “administrative detentions”, where an official or executive is detained for continuing to violate regulations, jumped 161 percent to 7,093 cases.
With enforcement long seen as a weak link, the government has been at pains to show it is beefing up its supervision and punishment capabilities, and it has established task forces and real-time monitoring systems to help crack down on polluters.
This has been a driver of supply shortages coming from China as plants shutdown to make changes to production processes so they can meet environmental regulations.
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