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How China's new environmental code translates national ecological goals into everyday rules_我的网站

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    Herds of elk graze in the foreground of a lush wetland in Yancheng, East China's Jiangsu Province, while rows of wind turbines turn gracefully against the distant sky on July 16, 2026. Photo: VCG Editor's Note: 
"Building an ecological civilization concerns the well-being of the people and the future of the nation." 

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, once pointed out: "Respecting, adapting to, and protecting nature is essential for building China into a modern socialist country in all respects."
In the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for national economic and social development, securing major breakthroughs in strategic tasks of overall importance to Chinese modernization and making major new progress in the Beautiful China Initiative are key objectives.
The Global Times is launching a series of articles titled "BeautifulChinaING." From the perspectives of the beauty of nature, the beauty of systems and the beauty of lifestyles, the series uses both Chinese and international cases as entry points. Through field reporting and video storytelling, it explores how green development has become a defining feature of Chinese modernization while showcasing China's role as a responsible major country providing global public goods. 
In this installment, we turn our focus to China's Ecological and Environmental Code and the changes it may bring to everyday life. From neighborhood noise and restaurant fumes to ecological conservation and green development, this article examines how the code brings scattered environmental rules into a unified framework, strengthens public participation and turns the vision of a Beautiful China into concrete rules for environmental governance.
A power drill starts in a neighboring apartment just as someone is trying to sleep. Cooking fumes from the restaurant downstairs drift through an open window. A modified car roars past a residential compound, while a food delivery arrives wrapped in layers of plastic. According to China's new Ecological and Environmental Code, these seemingly minor, everyday frictions - closely tied to how people live, sleep, cook, commute and consume - are precisely where environmental governance begins.
The code will take effect on Saturday. Spanning 1,242 articles across five books, it is China's second law to be formally titled a "code," following the Civil Code. It brings pollution control, ecological conservation and green and low-carbon development under one legal framework, while incorporating 10 existing laws.
Speaking at a press conference held on Thursday, Minister of Ecology and Environment Li Gao said that the Ecological and Environmental Code is of major and far-reaching significance for safeguarding the public's ecological and environmental rights and interests in accordance with the law, consolidating the legal foundation for building a Beautiful China, and accelerating modernization characterized by harmony between humanity and nature.
As China puts the vast environmental code into force, a practical question arises: How will it make daily life quieter, cleaner and easier to navigate - and turn the vision of a Beautiful China into rules that people can see, use and help enforce?
From doorsteps to ecosystems
    Young students at a primary school in Hai'an, Jiangsu Province, study the Ecological and Environmental Code during a class session on June 3, 2026. Photo: VCG The Ecological and Environmental Code reaches far beyond everyday urban concerns, covering ecological conservation and public participation in environmental governance.
In Mengla county, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, elephant ranger Li Shengqian once walked through a large area of flattened cornfields. While local rangers were attending training, more than 40 wild Asian elephants descended from the mountains, ate the ripe sweet corn, rolled in a mineral-rich pond and then retreated into the forest to sleep. 
A local forestry official told the Global Times that an insurance company would assess the damage and compensate the villagers.
Yunnan has gradually turned such compensation from an improvised response into an institutional arrangement. Under its wildlife-damage public liability insurance system, governments pay the premiums, affected farmers do not contribute, and insurers assess and compensate their losses. 
By August 2024, Xishuangbanna had invested 225 million yuan ($33.3 million) in the scheme and paid 215 million yuan in compensation for wildlife damage, including 188 million yuan for losses caused by Asian elephants.
The code gives such practices a clearer legal foundation. Article 828 requires local governments in areas seriously affected by wildlife damage to combine compensation with preventive measures, including protective barriers, warning signs and monitoring and early-warning systems. It also stipulates compensation for deaths, injuries and losses to crops or other property resulting from the protection of specified wildlife. In this way, the cost of conservation is not left solely to those living closest to protected animals.
For environmental volunteers, the change may be felt in a different way. Yun Jianli founded the Green Hanjiang environmental group in Central China's Hubei Province in 2002 and has spent more than two decades investigating pollution along the Hanjiang River. 
Yun said volunteers previously often had difficulty dealing with legal matters. "When dealing with some environmental issues, we often had to search across different laws to find a legal basis," she told the Global Times. "The new code integrates these systems, providing clearer and more authoritative legal support for environmental actions."
That support extends beyond a general recognition of participation. The code requires public consultations in environmental planning, standard-setting and impact assessments; mandates accessible reporting channels and feedback for real-name reports; and prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who report pollution by their own organizations. 
For volunteers such as Yun, public participation is therefore no longer only an appeal to civic responsibility. It is positioned as a legally protected part of environmental governance.
After Saturday, the code's practical effect will be tested in equally concrete ways.
From blueprint to reality
Turning this wide breadth of laws into a single code requires more than collecting existing statutes. Lawmakers first had to decide which rules should be fully integrated, which specialized laws should remain in place and where new legal foundations were needed. 
Compilation formally began on November 3, 2023. A leadership group coordinated major issues, a drafting task force handled the text, and an expert committee provided specialist input. The draft was reviewed twice as a whole and twice in separate books before it was adopted on March 12, 2026, completing a process of nearly two and a half years.
The approach was described as "moderate codification." Huang Wei, a deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee and coordinator of the drafting task force, told the People's Daily that the aim was not to absorb every environmental law into one volume. Instead, different groups of laws were treated differently.
Ten laws covering environmental protection, environmental impact assessment, cleaner production and major forms of pollution control were revised and incorporated in full, and will no longer remain as separate statutes once the code takes effect. Core provisions from more than 20 other laws involving forests, grasslands, major river basins, national parks, energy and resource conservation were included while those laws were retained. For newer fields such as climate governance and the carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals, the code establishes guiding principles while leaving room for more detailed legislation.
The code was also shaped outside meeting rooms in Beijing. In May 2025, Chinese and international students at a vocational university in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality discussed the draft, with their suggestions sent to the national legislature through a grassroots legislative contact point, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, also took part in seminars organized by the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee and other departments during the code's drafting. His organization later submitted detailed proposals when the draft was released for public comment, he told the Global Times.
"The open legislative process was significant in itself, as it prompted broad public discussion of decades of environmental legislation and the major issues of our time," Ma said. "It has enabled the code to engage with cutting-edge international legislative theories while remaining grounded in the practical challenges China faces," Ma said.
During the four rounds of public consultation, more than 7,000 people participated and submitted over 20,000 comments. The drafting team conducted research in more than 30 localities and held 17 seminars in Beijing with national legislators, government departments, companies, social organizations and scholars, the People's Daily reported. 
Suggestions from the public and grassroots contact points helped shape rules on emerging pollutants, urban greening, climate governance and legal liability. Following deliberations at the final NPC session, more than 200 additional changes were made, including over 100 substantive revisions, Xinhua reported.
Passing the code, however, did not automatically align the many rules beneath it. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment said it was reviewing more than 500 related documents, including over 30 administrative regulations, more than 80 departmental rules and over 400 normative documents. Provisions that conflict with, fail to connect with or no longer fit the code will be revised or repealed, while supporting rules and technical standards are being updated.
Innovative tools have also been used in preparation for the code's implementation. An AI-assisted system has been developed to address the difficulties and high costs involved in assessing ecological and environmental damage. The system has been piloted free of charge in 28 provincial-level regions and applied in more than 300 cases, reducing average assessment time by over 80 percent, according to the ministry.
Wider legal practice
Environmental codification is not unique to China. Sweden adopted its Environmental Code in 1998 and brought together rules previously contained in 15 acts. It then entered into force on January 1, 1999. France issued the legislative part of its Environmental Code in September 2000. Germany also attempted to establish a unified environmental code, but the project stalled in 2009.
In terms of the Ecological and Environmental Code of China, an article published in the international journal Carbon Research described it as a systemic response to the interconnected crises of pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change, while also identifying incomplete supporting rules, uneven legal coordination and limited public awareness as implementation challenges.
An editorial by the People's Daily published on Thursday noted that the enactment of the Ecological and Environmental Code signifies a major transformation in China from a participant to a leader in global environmental governance, providing a legislative model that can be studied by countries around the world, especially developing countries.
Lu Weifu, a researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China, wrote in an article published by China Environment News that the code's distinctive feature lies in combining systematic integration with an open structure. Unlike environmental codes primarily shaped around conventional pollution control, China's code places pollution prevention, ecological conservation and green and low-carbon development within the same framework. Its separate book on green and low-carbon development also brings climate change and economic transformation into the core structure of environmental law.
Ma said that conventional air-pollution control and climate governance had long operated in relatively separate legal systems. By connecting the control of conventional pollutants with reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, he said, the code could support more coordinated regulation and reduce duplicated systems and administrative work. 
The larger shift is from dealing with environmental harm only after it occurs to addressing how energy, industry and consumption generate that harm in the first place, he said.
    Residents enjoy leisure activities at a sports park transformed from a sand pit left behind by years of unregulated mining in Qionghai, South China's Hainan Province, on August 12, 2026. Photo: VCG After the code takes effect, most people will never read all 1,242 articles. They will encounter it through more practical tests: Whether environmental information can be found, whether a complaint receives a response, whether a polluter repairs the damage and whether a river or neighborhood becomes measurably cleaner. 
That is where this wide-ranging legal experiment returns to the scale at which environmental protection is ultimately felt - the life outside a person's window.
。    晨曦微露，济源世纪广场体彩主题健身公园已然活力满满：老年人在健身器材上舒展筋骨，年轻人在“乐小星” 主题篮球场上尽情驰骋；望春园内，经过升级改造的健身步道上晨跑者步履轻快，羽毛球场上来来回回，球影翻飞。两座体彩主题公园遥相呼应，依托体彩公益金落地的健身阵地，让市民在家门口就能畅快运动、乐享健身之乐。体彩支持，健身更便捷　　在望春园，河南体彩济源分中心筹措发行经费，支持园区健身空间完成全面升级。崭新的健身步道、标准羽毛球场投入使用，配套路标、休闲石凳、照明路灯等便民设施一应俱全。如今焕然一新的场地，收获了大家一致好评。“这个羽毛球场使用十几年了，以前地面凹凸不平，不少打球的人不小心扭伤脚踝。

B | 体彩翻新了场地，真是为咱们老百姓办了件实实在在的好事。

C | ” 常年在此锻炼的李先生感慨道。

　　世纪广场西北侧的中国体育彩票主题健身公园，则盘活闲置空地，打造充满青春气息的“乐小星” 主题篮球场，色彩明快、富有活力，为周边青少年和篮球爱好者提供了专业舒适的运动场地。

D | 篮球场采用环保材料铺设，场地标线清晰，与园内绿植相得益彰，既确保运动安全，又营造出愉悦的锻炼氛围。放学后和周末，这里成为孩子们挥洒汗水的一方乐土。“球场修得很好，离家也近，孩子放学就能来打球，特别方便。”一位陪孩子锻炼的家长如是说。

E |

　　公园内设置体彩公益宣传栏，图文并茂解读中国体育彩票“来之于民，用之于民”发行宗旨。市民休闲健身的同时，直观了解一座座运动场、一套套健身设施背后的公益力量，真切感受体彩温度与社会责任。

F | 体彩助力，全民健身成效显著　　济源两座体彩主题公园的建设，只是体彩助力全民健身的一个缩影。数据显示，2025年济源体育场地总数达3565个，人均体育场地面积2.86平方米，城市社区10分钟健身圈实现全覆盖，经常参加体育锻炼人数比例达到44.3%。承留花石健身步道、思礼健康步道等一批户外健身打卡点广受市民喜爱。各村（社区、公园）公共体育设施免费开放，篮球城等场馆推行分时段免费、低收费开放，持续拓宽群众健身空间。　　赛事活动方面，济源充分利用体彩公益金，持续丰富群众赛事供给，先后举办新春全民健身系列活动、河南省社区运动会等各类赛事，涵盖篮球、排球、足球、太极拳等多个项目。从城市社区到乡村广场，体彩支持的全民健身赛事活动遍地开花，让“我运动、我健康、我快乐”的理念深入人心。　　从社区里一套崭新的健身器材，到城市中的运动公园；从日常健身阵地建设，到丰富多彩的群众体育赛事，体彩公益金持续扎根山城大地，将“来之于民，用之于民”的公益初心落到群众身边。　　每一笔体彩公益金投入，都是为健康中国建设添砖加瓦；每一次市民在运动场挥洒汗水，都是体彩公益力量最鲜活的回响。中国体育彩票持续以责任传递温暖，点亮每一处热爱运动的角落，让健康幸福的生活方式触手可及。

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Published on:11:36:42