'Don't cause disruptions', China's eco inspectors warned

Teams of inspectors being dispatched by China's central government to verify the status of environmental protection facilities at industrial enterprises including steelmakers nationwide are being warned that their presence at plant sites should not disrupt production. This will be good news for steel consumers in many parts of China for whom steel prices have risen recently on market fears of supply shortages caused by works stoppages.

Teams of inspectors being dispatched by China’s central government to verify the status of environmental protection facilities at industrial enterprises including steelmakers nationwide are being warned that their presence at plant sites should not disrupt production. This will be good news for steel consumers in many parts of China for whom steel prices have risen recently on market fears of supply shortages caused by works stoppages.

An announcement from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment last Friday warned that throughout the month of June, a central government-backed program would see six teams of environmental inspectors fan out to ten provincial-level areas to re-check the environmental protection and related facilities in place there – either long-existing or newly-installed over the past two years. Most inspections will take place at factories, smelters and assembly plants – notorious for causing pollution – but visits will also be made to construction sites and virtually anywhere where pollution is recognized as a problem, the ministry said.

But in its announcement, the ministry stressed that during the inspection period, local governments should avoid pressing the targeted companies to suspend production or in some other way interfere with the manufacturer’s normal production or the work of employees. The practice during previous rounds of inspections was for local governments to notify plant management ahead of the arrival of inspection teams and insist that operations be stopped for the duration of the visit, Mysteel notes.

“For companies in the steel and iron ore sectors, the same advice applies – everything must be done to avoid the arbitrary suspension of production in companies while the inspections are in progress,” a Shanghai-based analyst explained.

According to the ministry’s directive, those companies possessing all the necessary approvals and whose environmental protection facilities meet all the required standards should not be asked to suspend production, the analyst said. Those whose legality is not in question but whose facilities fail to meet the appropriate green standards will be helped by the inspection group to set targets to tackle the specific problem, while those businesses lacking both government approvals and whose equipment fails to meet the necessary standards will be forced to shut down until both problems are rectified, he told Mysteel.

Most of these inspection teams will start month-long, on-site inspections from the beginning of June. The number of inspectors in each team was not disclosed but each team would have two leaders, namely an official from the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political consultative body, and another from the environment ministry. The ten provincial-level areas to be visited comprise North China’s Hebei, Henan, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang, East China’s Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Southeast China’s Guangdong, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Southwest China’s Yunnan.

The key purpose of this round of follow-up checks is precisely that, Mysteel notes: to inspect the current situation at industrial enterprises that have been subject to local government environmental protection inspections over the past two years and which have been ordered to establish new environmental protection facilities or to resolve other issues relation to emissions and pollution.

“The re-checking on local government environmental protection work is to prevent environmental problems from recurring,” another industry analyst in Shanghai remarked. “The pattern of environmental checks and inspections is being normalized in China now, which strongly reflects Beijing’s resolve to combat pollution and push for an Ecological Civilization.”

This was one of the expressions China’s President Xi Jinping used in a landmark presentation during a two-day national conference in Beijing over May 18-19, convened to address environmental issues. “The building of an ‘ecological civilization’ has entered a critical period, a period that requires more quality ecological goods to meet people's ever-growing demands for a beautiful environment, and a period when China is capable of addressing prominent ecological and environment issues,” Xi told delegates.

China has started to conduct central environmental inspections, established guidelines to control air, water and soil pollution, published its own plans to realize the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and is implementing a national plan to tackle climate change, he added.

“We should focus on key areas and key fields as well as strengthen the pollution control of the ‘three major sources’ – heavy industries, coal consumers and motor vehicles – to resolutely win the battle against air pollution,” Xi stressed.

China started a Central Environmental Inspection Campaign back in January 2016 which initially targeted just industries in Hebei province. Over the past two years, a total of four groups of inspection teams have conducted month-long on-site probes examining the success of environmental protection work initiated by local governments and which covered some 31 provincial-level areas in China, Mysteel notes.

Written by Victoria Zou, zyongjia@mysteel.com

Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mystesel.com