ABSTRACT
Urban environmental efforts are crucial for making substantive progress on emissions reduction. China has been employing command-and-control policy instruments and trying out alternative policy instruments to reduce emissions and enhance urban environmental quality. Analyzing central –local government interactions is relevant to understanding and enhancing China’s environmental governance and environmental policy implementation. The chapter presents a case study approach, focusing on several policy cases to highlight the gap between central government policy and local implementation and to explore how central government exerts controls over local policy implementation. The pollutant discharge fee was one of the earliest policy instruments employed by China for the purpose of emissions control. In China, the pollutant discharge fee was adopted in 1982, when the State Council, the main administrative body of the Chinese government, issued the Interim Measures on the Collection of Pollutant Discharge Fee.
