Environmental Law in China Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Compliance

• Lays out a detailed explanation and analysis of Chinese environmental law
• Provides the most complete guide to date for businesses, particularly foreign-operated, to comply with both national and local Chinese environmental regulations
• Discusses the possible legal ramifications, both civil and criminal, of companies' failure to comply with Chinese law
• Describes generally the relation between international environmental treaties and Chinese national law
• Includes an overview of Chinese culture and its unique influence on the nature of the Chinese legal system

In recent years, China's leaders have started to confront the environmental, economic, and social costs of unchecked development. China's increasing reliance on foreign oil has engendered national security fears and launched a drive for more efficient transportation systems and domestic renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, pressure from a rising middle class and the international community has focused leadership attention on ways to make China's economic engine run more efficiently and with less impact upon the domestic and global environment. This profound shift in priorities has elevated environmental sustainability to the top of the national agenda. To advance this new agenda, the environmental laws that China has enacted over the past thirty years are being strengthened, and new environmental regulations and standards are being issued everyday. Entities operating in China are faced with the need to understand the impact of China's environmental law requirements upon their businesses, and to take actions to ensure that they are in compliance with those requirements.

In Environmental Law in China: Managing Risk and Ensuring Compliance, Charles McElwee addresses how China's environmental regulatory and legal frameworks are structured, how to maintain operational compliance with the environmental laws and regulations, how to ensure products sold in China comply with environmental regulations, and the potential risks and liabilities that attend non-compliance. McElwee offers unique insight into how environmental law is in fact applied, setting forth a realistic account of the way companies encounter Chinese environmental regulations at both the local and national levels.

Readership: Attorneys, consultants, and managers counseling foreign-invested entities on environmental compliance issues. Strong secondary market, including academics, law students and researchers at libraries, universities and research institutes, public officials and government agencies handling environmental law issues.