Major Changes! The ''Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Environmental Protection Bureau'' Is on the Verge of Being Established; It Is Expected to Be Set up in the Second Half of This Year

[Introduction] Reforming regional environmental protection agencies, from an administrative cost perspective, will increase national administrative expenditures. However, because these agencies strengthen grassroots environmental protection work, they lead to a shift in economic development towards greener models, reducing pollution emissions and various forms of environmental damage. This will save significant economic costs, offsetting, and even exceeding, the increased administrative costs of establishing these agencies.

On the afternoon of May 23, President Xi Jinping, head of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, chaired the 35th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, which reviewed and approved the "Pilot Program for Cross-Regional Environmental Protection Agencies" (hereinafter referred to as the "Pilot Program").

The meeting pointed out that the pilot program for cross-regional environmental protection agencies in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas should focus on improving air quality and addressing prominent air pollution problems. It should streamline and integrate air environment management responsibilities, explore the establishment of cross-regional environmental protection agencies, deepen the joint prevention and control cooperation mechanism for pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas, and achieve unified planning, unified standards, unified environmental impact assessments, unified monitoring, and unified enforcement, thereby promoting a new pattern of regional environmental governance.

Peng Yingdeng, a researcher at the National Research Center for Urban Environmental Pollution Control Technology, told the China Times that in the second half of last year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection solicited opinions from Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province on the "Pilot Program," whose functions include air pollution control and water pollution control. Now that the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms has approved the program, it means that the pilot process for the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Environmental Protection Bureau" will accelerate, and it is expected to be established in the second half of this year.