612
M. Shen
and purpose, and a major social issue concerning people’s well-being. The
Chinese people are eagerly looking forward to more rapid improvement in the
ecological environment. The Party and the government must actively respond
to the people’s wish, expectation, and concern, vigorously promote ecological
progress, provide more high-quality ecological products, and continue to meet
the people’s growing needs for a beautiful ecological environment. Xi went
further to emphasize that local Party and government leaders at all levels are
the first responsible persons for ecological and environmental protection in
their respective administrative region, and that all relevant departments must
earnestly fulfill their respective responsibilities for ecological and environmental protection and work with each other to produce synergy. About 60%
of the 47 systems proposed in the Master Plan for Reform of the System for
Developing an Ecological Civilization are mainly dependent on the government performance. This shows Xi’s sense of responsibility and the CPC’s
mission and spirit.
(2) Full play is given to the role of the market. The Decision of the CPC Central
Committee on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the
Reform proposes to “accelerate the price reform of natural resources and their
products to fully reflect market supply and demand, resource scarcity, costs
and restoration benefits of ecological environment damage… Whoever benefits
shall make the compensation. We shall improve the ecological compensation
mechanism for key ecological function areas, and promote the establishment of
an inter-regional horizontal ecological compensation system. We shall develop
the environmental protection market, promote the trading of energy savings,
carbon emission rights, pollution discharge rights, and water rights, establish
a market-based mechanism that channels social capital to ecological and environmental protection, and promote third-party pollution control.” This fully
shows that ecological conversation must give full play to not only the role
of the green fiscal and taxation mechanism based on Pigou’s theory, but also
that of the green property rights mechanism based on the Coase’s theory. Both
approaches are typical of the market economy. In fact, to translate ecological
benefits into economic benefits we must rely on the market mechanism, the
core of which is the pricing mechanism.
(3) The social governance mechanism shall be constructed. If we compare the
general public to the “client” and the environmental protection department the
“agent,” the agent is naturally subject to the supervision of the client. Therefore,
the government must strengthen the disclosure of environmental information,
and let the public know the environmental quality to take preventive measures,
and wield their environmental rights to supervise the government’s environmental protection behavior. The shift from “management” to “governance” of
the ecological environment is an important part of the institutional reform for
ecological conservation. We must avoid setting the government as the manager
against the public as it used to be, and instead build a system of checks and
balances in which the government mechanism, the market mechanism, and the
social mechanism work together. This is the general trend for environmental
M. Shen
and purpose, and a major social issue concerning people’s well-being. The
Chinese people are eagerly looking forward to more rapid improvement in the
ecological environment. The Party and the government must actively respond
to the people’s wish, expectation, and concern, vigorously promote ecological
progress, provide more high-quality ecological products, and continue to meet
the people’s growing needs for a beautiful ecological environment. Xi went
further to emphasize that local Party and government leaders at all levels are
the first responsible persons for ecological and environmental protection in
their respective administrative region, and that all relevant departments must
earnestly fulfill their respective responsibilities for ecological and environmental protection and work with each other to produce synergy. About 60%
of the 47 systems proposed in the Master Plan for Reform of the System for
Developing an Ecological Civilization are mainly dependent on the government performance. This shows Xi’s sense of responsibility and the CPC’s
mission and spirit.
(2) Full play is given to the role of the market. The Decision of the CPC Central
Committee on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the
Reform proposes to “accelerate the price reform of natural resources and their
products to fully reflect market supply and demand, resource scarcity, costs
and restoration benefits of ecological environment damage… Whoever benefits
shall make the compensation. We shall improve the ecological compensation
mechanism for key ecological function areas, and promote the establishment of
an inter-regional horizontal ecological compensation system. We shall develop
the environmental protection market, promote the trading of energy savings,
carbon emission rights, pollution discharge rights, and water rights, establish
a market-based mechanism that channels social capital to ecological and environmental protection, and promote third-party pollution control.” This fully
shows that ecological conversation must give full play to not only the role
of the green fiscal and taxation mechanism based on Pigou’s theory, but also
that of the green property rights mechanism based on the Coase’s theory. Both
approaches are typical of the market economy. In fact, to translate ecological
benefits into economic benefits we must rely on the market mechanism, the
core of which is the pricing mechanism.
(3) The social governance mechanism shall be constructed. If we compare the
general public to the “client” and the environmental protection department the
“agent,” the agent is naturally subject to the supervision of the client. Therefore,
the government must strengthen the disclosure of environmental information,
and let the public know the environmental quality to take preventive measures,
and wield their environmental rights to supervise the government’s environmental protection behavior. The shift from “management” to “governance” of
the ecological environment is an important part of the institutional reform for
ecological conservation. We must avoid setting the government as the manager
against the public as it used to be, and instead build a system of checks and
balances in which the government mechanism, the market mechanism, and the
social mechanism work together. This is the general trend for environmental