By the mid-2010s, China’s environmental problem was no longer only a lack of laws. A growing concern was uneven enforcement at the local level. Many counties and towns depended heavily on small industrial clusters for employment and tax revenue, while environmental violations were often handled inconsistently or tolerated for long periods.

The central government responded by strengthening inspection and accountability. In 2016, the first full round of Central Environmental Protection Inspections was launched in eight provinces and regions. The inspections did not focus only on individual polluting companies. They also examined whether provincial and local governments had actually enforced environmental rules and responded to public complaints.

At the same time, regulators began targeting large numbers of small, scattered, and weakly regulated enterprises, commonly described as “散乱污” enterprises. In 2017, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding cities were instructed to identify and rectify these businesses. Authorities used a combination of closure, upgrading, and relocation into industrial parks. By mid-2017, regulators had already identified 398 clusters of “散乱污” enterprises in the region.

This marked a shift from writing environmental standards to enforcing them through direct political accountability, cross-regional inspections, and large-scale industrial restructuring. In places where an entire local economy depended on small polluting businesses, environmental enforcement could reshape not only production but employment, migration, and community life.