PROFILE: Levying of Ecoenvironmental Compensation Fees in China: An Analysis and Proposals.
/ The levying of ecoenvironmental compensation fees on China's resource exploitation and construction activities, which can cause ecological damage, has been proposed as one effective means to help better manage China's present ecological and environmental problems. Such a fee, however, has not been adopted on a national scale, although small-scale experiments are underway. Using the experience of developed countries as a guide, a policy reform to institute ecoenvironmental compensation fees would require wide-ranging studies and analyses. These would have to include both theoretical and practical investigations on subjects including, but not limited to, methods for setting fees, managing their implementation, and the full range of their impacts (environmental, economic, and social). This article identifies guidelines for the principles and objectives to cover the proposed levy as well as proposals for fee collection and the subsequent these levies.In addition to estimating the total amount of the ecoenvironmental levies, the article analyzes the fee's quantitative effects on the government's major price indexes. Assuming fee collection started in calendar year 1998, total revenues collected by the end of the year 2000 are estimated to range from 6.68 billion Renminbi (RMB, unit of money used in China; 1990's comparative value, the same thereafter), 12.6 billion RMB, to 18.6 billion RMB, depending on the fee rate in question. The revenue collected in this way would, if used to finance environmental reclamation projects, greatly improve important parts of China's endangered environment. Moreover, our calculations indicate that fee collection would likely not lead to significant price fluctuations.KEY WORDS: Ecoenvironmental compensation fee; Levy; Chinahttp://link.springer-ny.com/link/service/journals/00267/bibs/24n3p353.html
Wang
X
Department of Urban and Environmental Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Li
J