China is getting serious about curbing pollution. According to sources, up to 40% of its factories have been closed at least temporarily recently as the country has struggled to meet its year-end pollution reduction goals. Officials from more than 80,000 factories have been charged with criminal offences for breaching emissions limits over the past year.
“[B]asically, you’re seeing these inspectors go into factories for surprise inspections,” supply chain consultant Gary Huang from 80/20 Sourcing tells NPR (h/t Futurism). “They’re instituting daily fines, and sometimes — in the real severe cases — criminal enforcement. People are getting put in jail.”
How is the crackdown affecting China’s sprawling manufacturing sector? The government says total output will not be affected, but it is hard to see how the stepped up enforcement could fail to have a negative economic effect.
In prior years, factory shutdowns only lasted a few weeks at most, but environmental protection minister Li Ganjie says the number and length of closures this year is “unprecedented.”
“For those areas that have suffered ecological damage, their leaders and cadres will be held responsible for life,” Yang Weimin told the New York Times recently. He is the deputy director of the Communist Party’s Office of Financial and Economic Affairs. “Our people will be able to see stars at night and hear birds chirp,” he promises.
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