Reformed Environmental Impact Assessment in China: An Evaluation of Its Effectiveness

Since 2015, a “reform storm” of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) opened up in China. This study tries to answer the question of whether these reforms improve the effectiveness of EIA. First, we elaborate on the reforms along with three well-acknowledged components, including EIA legislation, administration, and process. Then, evaluate the reformed EIA system against revised Ahmad and Wood’s criteria. The results demonstrate that the revised laws and regulations are more stringent than the old versions. The EIA process is simplified, and its coordination with the pollutant discharge permit system is promoted. The interim and post-event supervision is currently more robust and the penalties are more severe than before. However, the hierarchical position of the Environmental Protection Law is not high enough and the coordination of different government departments is still challenging. In summary, despite the problems occurring at the initial phase of reforms, the effectiveness of the EIA system has largely been improved.

grade, and a certain number of EIA engineers in each agency were not indispensable anymore, which was expected to reduce the chaos of certificate borrowing and attachment. Afterward, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) was established. The MEE, replacing the former MEP, takes the overall responsibility for the environmental management and ecological protection and opens a new era of "super-ministry" [5]. The list of reforms is summarized in Table 1.  The management of environmental protection authorities belongs to higher-level environmental protection authorities.  The supervision responsibility belongs to the provincial level.  The responsibility of law enforcement decentralized to the city and county level.
 All the "Government-affiliated Intermediary Agencies" change to enterprises or withdraw from the EIA service market.  EIRF required to be reviewed by EPBs.  EIRF only needs to do online registration.  The required documents of some projects are simplified from complete EIR to simplified EIF, or from EIF to EIRF.  The review jurisdiction of some projects which have limited environmental consequences is delegated to lower levels.

Catalog of Project EIA
Increasing penalties for violations  The cost of breaking the law is low.  The fine for proceeding to construction before getting approval is increased as high as 1% -5% of the gross investment.  Implements the double-penalty system.

EIA law (2018)
Enhancing interim and post-event supervision  Pays most attention to the EIA review.  Adopts online and offline supervision methods.
 Creates the "intelligence EIA" system.  Conducts the periodic selective examination of EISs.  Adopts a lifelong responsibility system and social credit management system.

2018.1.25
Advice on strengthening the interim and post-event supervision Increasing public participation  Three publicity.  Requires to publicize the brief version of EIR.  Mainly uses government websites, newspapers and posters.
 The publicity covers the whole EIA process. Six publicity and above are required.  The contents of each publicity are enriched, and the whole EIR requires to be exposed.  It also recommends the use of social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo.

The Researches on EIA Effectiveness
As to the effectiveness studies, Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as the direct outcome of EIA, is an indicator of the performance of the EIA systems and attracts great attention [7]. Besides, comparative case studies are conducted.

Research Purpose and Method
Therefore, the present study, first, elaborates on the set of reforms, compare the EIA system before and after reforms. Then, revise Ahmed and Wood's model to make it appropriate for the Chinese context. At last, evaluate the effectiveness of the reformed EIA system against the proposed criteria. Considering that the reforms are mainly about the process of Project EIA, the discussion specifically focuses on Project EIA.
The research framework is shown in Figure 1. We extensively review the leg-

Institutional Arrangements for EIA
In recent years, the Chinese government carried out a set of reforms on EIA.
This section summarizes the main reforms and depicts the reformed EIA system.
The description goes along with three crucial components of the EIA system: legislative provisions, administrative setup, and EIA process [19] [20].

Legislative Provisions
The EPL is the backbone of environmental legislation, which is complemented by several specific laws related to environmental elements such as atmospheric, water and noise pollution prevention and control [1].  [4].
The REPMCP [21] was issued in 1998 and stipulated the environmental protection tool, including "Three Simultaneities (3Ss)" and "EIA". 3Ss requires the environmental protection facilities to be designed, constructed and operated simultaneously with projects, while EIA is responsible for approving the construction of projects. The first version of EIA Law was implemented in 2003 and incorporated into the EIA for Planning. The specific law for Planning EIA, RPEIA, was issued in 2009. As a result, the EIA system of "one law and two regulations" was officially established. With economic growth and social development, reforms were carried out to streamline administration, while strengthening supervision [22]. The EIA Law was revised in 2016 and 2018. And, the law for construction projects, RACPEP, was revised in 2017.

Administrative Setup
Before the reform, environmental protection duties were dispersed in many dif-

EIA Process
As shown in Figure 2, the process of Project EIA in China is fully compatible with the generic steps that are followed internationally. In the screening phase, projects can be divided into A, B and C three categories using the list and threshold approaches [25]. In the scoping phase, through the preliminary analysis of engineering projects and the baseline analysis of the existing environmental sta-

Evaluation of the Reformed EIA System
In this section, we evaluate the effectiveness of the reformed EIA system against the revised Ahmed and Wood's criteria. As shown in Table 2, the newly proposed sub-criteria, which are appropriate for the Chinese context, are marked with circles. The sub-criteria which are covered by the reforms are marked with triangles. By effectiveness evaluation, we clarify the advantages of the reforms and point out their inadequacies, which has been shown in Table 3.

Legislative Provisions
In the past, China paid the most attention to Project EIA, which can only reject the construction of a single project while not influence the initial decision and layout. Nowadays, the Strategic EIA (SEA), which refers to EIA for policies, plans and programs (PPP), has been given more emphasis, aiming to incorporate environmental protection into the decision-making process [26]. Generally, there exists a tiered system among PPP, that starts with the formulation of policy at the upper level, then followed by the plan at the second stage, and the program at the end [27]. However, the SEA hierarchy in China is incomplete.
SEA in China only covers "plan", called Planning (guī huà) EIA (RPEIA). As is required, the Project EIA should be accordant with the local Planning EIA. However, its implementation is low, and many projects still do not have Planning EIA to follow (interviewee #2, 2019). As to "policy", although the Article 14 of EPL (2015) mentions "the governments need to take the environment into consideration when they formulate economic and technological policies", there are no corresponding regulations to stipulate and guide the implementation of Policy EIA. As to "program", it is missing in Chinese characters [28]. The actions meeting the definition of "program" made by Wood and Dejeddour [27] are, in practice, subject to Project EIA, which makes their EIA measures and technologies inappropriate.
Besides, the revised EPL came into force in 2015 and was regarded as the ever-strictest. However, the hierarchical position of EPL is not high enough to ensure the force of law. EPL has the same hierarchical position as other specific laws, such as Water Law and Forestry Law. That is, the specific laws do not have to be entirely in accordance with EPL [29]. This may lead to a possible conflict between them and give the developers an excuse to comply with specific laws other than EPL. As a result, the strict legal provisions of EPL easily become empty talk.

Administrative Setup
With the implementation of the vertical management reform for EEPBs under the provincial level since 2016, the administrative setup is more efficient and ef- EEPB is in charge of municipal EEPBs, who are supervising counties EEPBs. Besides, the right of law enforcement is decentralized to the municipal and county level. As a result, local governments' responsibility for environmental quality and management has been strengthened [30]. However, this reform is still at the initial stage, and there are still several problems to tackle [31]. For example, how to guarantee the implementation of the environmental responsibility of local governments, how to coordinate the relationship between EEPBs with other local environmental protection departments, and how to strengthen the supervision of local EEPBs. Indeed, this vertical management reform needs to be improved. It is undeniably an excellent attempt to strengthen the overall management of environmental protection in the whole province.

Screening
The MEE periodically updates the catalog in response to knowledge, experience and lessons learned over time [2]. With the progress of science and technology, some projects produce fewer environmental impacts than before and can then be moved from Category A to Category B, or from Category B to Category C. For example, the tobacco production factories with an annual output above 300,000 boxes belonged to Category A are now classified into Category B, according to the catalog issued in 2018 [32]. As announced by MEE, in the first half of 2018, the number of projects compiling EIRF represents 80% of the whole EISs.
Among the rest of the projects, only 8% of them compile the EIRs [33]. Compiling EIRF is more time and cost-efficient than EIR. In short, with the decentralization and adjusting of the projects list, the workload for the central and provincial governments decreased significantly.

Preparation and Review of EIS
With the implementation of the decentralization policy, the review efficiency has been dramatically improved. In the 2018 fiscal year, the number of construction projects conducting EIA is 91,686 in total, among which only 22 projects got approval from MEE at the national level. Besides, around 80% of construction projects do not need to be reviewed and only required to do online registration because of the canceling of review of EIRF [33] [36].
However, local governments, driven by the desire of economic development, Shanxi province also gave EIA approvals to 21 similar projects within three months. The total installed capacity of those projects is significantly excessive [37]. Therefore, the balance between regulation and centralization is hard to achieve. The catalogs need to be continually adjusted.

Monitoring
The follow-up monitoring measures are diverse and comprehensive, which is essential to ensure the concrete implementation of EIA. They cover both the construction and operation phases of projects. The developers are required to submit the results of monitoring during the construction phase to obtain operational approval from EPBs [1]. The environmental protection acceptance (EPA) is adopted to supplement the EIA. The EPA report is to examine and record the big changes of projects' nature, scale, location, production techniques, pollution control measures, or ecology protection methods, the monitoring of the environmental impacts during the construction phase, and the implementation situation of 3Ss systems [38].
In 2017, the administrative examination and approval of EPA by EPB was canceled, and the developers are required to complete the online EPA by themselves and take the whole responsibility for the result (REPMCP

Public Participation
Public participation is obligatory in the EIA process. The revised MPPEIA (2018) declares a broader scope of the public which includes the citizens, legal representatives and other organizations being influenced within the EIA scope. The ways of information disclosure are various that are defined as network, newspapers and posting announcements. The content of disclosure is more detailed. Besides, the penalties are more severe, if any deception is found in the collection of public opinions, the information on construction projects, their legal representatives, and the EIA engineers may be disclosed to the public. Overall, the new MPPEIA makes public participation much more implementable.
With the increasing awareness of environmental and civil rights, public participation is improving (interviewee #4 and #5).

Consideration of Alternatives
Consideration of alternatives lies at the heart of EIA while it is inadequately carried out in many countries [39]. Although the General TG (2011) requires all EIAs to consider project alternatives (Article 14, TG), the alternatives being considered only remain technical options such as variation of the project site, alignment, size, production process, environmental impacts and carrying capacity of the local environment. However, the strategic alternatives such as "without project" or "delay the project", are not mentioned [2] [40]. Interviewee #4, #5, and #6 agreed that before conducting the Project EIA, there is an acquiescent condition that this project will finally be constructed; the only thing EIA needs to do is setting the requirements it should comply.

Supervision
In 2018, MEE promulgated the Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Interim and Post-Event Supervision of Construction Project EIA. The Opinions claims that with social development and economic growth, it is time to relax the pre-construction approval while strengthening the interim and post-event supervision. It requires that the interim supervision includes the legality and validity of the EIA review, the professionality of technical review organizations, the facticity of EISs, the compliance of developers, and the involvement of public participants. The post-event supervision includes the monitoring of three simultaneous (3Ss) by EEPBs, the selective examination and recheck of EISs and the implementation of EIR by developers [41]. At the same time of simplifying EIA approval, the coordination of EIA, 3Ss system, and discharge permission system are strengthened (interview #1, #4 and #5). Online and offline supervision methods are adopted. The "Intelligence EIA" system integrates the online EIA review system with other environmental management systems such as EPA system and EIRF record system. While realizing online management, EIA data are collected. Using the provided data, the super- To further ensure the quality of EISs, the lifelong responsibility system and credit management system were also adopted. The EIA engineers compiling one EIS need to be responsible for the quality of this EIS in their whole life. Whenever some severe quality problems of EIS have been found, the related engineers are held accountable (EPL, RPEIA, IDMRAE (trial)). Besides, the relevant information of developers, projects and EIA agencies and engineers is required to publicize to the public on the online credit management system. For EIA agencies and engineers, their credit files are required to be established, and the penalties mentioned in EIA Law are reflected in their credit score. Because of all these supervision methods, the engineers feel enormous pressure and try to ensure the quality of EISs (interviewee # 1, and #2).

Penalties
The fourth chapters of the EIA Law and REPMCP titled "Legal Liability" describe the penalties for violations to environmental authorities, agencies, developers and related personnel. For developers, who were found conducting illegal construction and operation, can remedially apply for the EIA approval after paying fines. However, the fines were much lower than the profits of developers' illegal operations. Thus, many developers prefer to pay fines rather than obey the legal process. In 2015, the EIA Law was revised, and this remedial measure was abolished. The fines have been increased as high as 1% -5% of the gross investment (Article 31, EIA Law 2016). It means that for the projects whose investment is above a hundred million, the fine can be significantly high. For those projects who illegally discharge pollutants and fail to rectify it within 30 days, the daily accumulated fines may be charged from the day they are required to rectify (Article 59, EPL 2014).
As to EIA agencies, the double-penalty system is adopted, which means that, if the EISs are found having severe quality problems, both related organizations and personnel are punished (Article 31 and 32, EIA Law 2016). If any corruption is found during the EIA review process, the responsible environmental authorities may be given administrative or criminal penalties (Article 34, EIA Law 2016). Indeed, after these reforms, penalties became more severe, and the legal force much more robust. found that the judges tend to be highly self-restrained and deferential in reviewing EPBs' EIA decision [42]. Thus, it is essential to avoid the complicated trade-offs and balances under the judicial review, and further protect the right of action of developers, residents, and environmental groups.

Capacity Building
The

Conclusions
This study creatively proposes an evaluation framework appropriate for the With the implementation of reforms, a set of corresponding laws and regulations were issued or amended. The revised EIA Law and TGs are more stringent than the old versions. The revised EPL was regarded as the ever-strictest. However, EPL has the same hierarchical position as other specific laws, which makes the strict legal provisions of EPL easily become empty talk. Although SEA has been paid increasing attention, there still lack specific laws for Policy EIA and supporting laws to guide the implementation of planning EIA.
As to the administrative setup, government management is more efficient and To respond to the reforming principle of "streamline administration, delegate more powers, improve regulation and provide better service", the EIA process is greatly simplified. For example, the pre-reviews of EIS by industrial authorities are canceled, the review of the EIA registration form is simplified as online registration, and some projects previously reviewed by higher authority are delegated to lower levels. The EIA approval is efficient than before.
While relaxing the pre-construction approval, the interim and post-event supervision activities are strengthened and penalties are more severe. The coordination between EIA and pollutants discharge permit systems is promoted. The "Intelligence EIA" system is adopted to conduct online supervision. The offline examinations of EISs are conducted regularly. The credit management system and lifelong responsibility system are adopted to constrain the EIA agencies and engineers. Besides, training courses are launched to improve the capacity of officials and engineers. All these measures make the engineers feel pressure to ensure the quality of EISs.
Overall, despite the problems occurring at the initial phase of the reforms, the effectiveness of the reformed EIA system is significantly improved. China simplifies the approval of Project EIA while strengthening the post-event supervision and its coordination of pollutants discharge permit system. In the foreseeable future, the role of Project EIA will be weakened, while the implementation of SEA will be improved.
In this study, we clarify the advantages of reforms, point out their inadequacies, and further put forward several recommendations. Our study is mainly based on document analysis and literature review, which is supplemented with in-depth interviews. It may helpfully provide comprehensive information and understanding of the EIA system for future EIA effectiveness evaluation research in the country, such as discussion of its substantive, transactive, normative effectiveness.