UDTR — Radar mondial des droits de la Nature

Did the Tiger Grow Fierce Teeth? An Examination of the Use of Criminal Sanctions for Environmental Pollution in China

Identification

Clé publique

radar:r-62f4ca1b0fbe79c3380b23d62b3a65e8

Auteurs

Mengxing Lu · Michaël Faure

Année déclarée

2026

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

article

Première détection

2026-11-14T02:47:53.750039+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-14T02:47:53.750039+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Institutions déclarées par la source

China University of Political Science and Law · Maastricht University · Erasmus University Rotterdam

Pays d’affiliation déclarés

CN · NL

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

ABSTRACT Despite an extensive body of environmental law and policy, China's environmental law has long been dubbed a “paper tiger” owning to persistent enforcement failures. Over the past decade, legislative and judicial reforms have substantially strengthened the criminal enforcement of pollution offenses, raising the question of whether Chinese environmental law has grown fierce teeth to generate sufficient deterrence. This study addresses this question by constructing and analyzing a database of 11,793 court judgments decided under Article 338 of the Criminal Law between 2012 and 2022, specifically focusing on the evolution of the criminal sanctioning system of environmental pollution in China. Assessed against the benchmark of the economic model of optimal deterrence, the findings reveal a pronounced gap between law and practice. While data show an increasing number of criminal cases brought for pollution violations and an increasing number of convictions in China, the prosecution rate remains strikingly low. Corporate defendants are prosecuted in only a negligible number of cases, while prosecution falls disproportionately on individual defendants, particularly on front‐line employees. Courts in China mostly impose a combination of fines and imprisonment for pollution crimes, but the level of sanctions remains relatively low for both individual and corporate defendants. Complementary sanctions (e.g., restitution orders) are increasingly used by the courts for the restoration of environmental damage. Taken together, the findings indicate that criminal law plays an increasingly important role in China's environmental law enforcement regime, but also falls short of yielding optimal deterrence constrained principally by a low probability of prosecution, modest sanction levels, and a systematic misallocation of criminal liability.

Identifiants

OPENALEX

https://openalex.org/W7212592747

DOI

10.1002/eet.70137

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

article

Types déclarés par les sources

article

Éditeurs

Wiley

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

OpenAlex · Document 1

• Document · https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.70137

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.