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

A |     节          气          DONG ZHI                              冬          至          节          气                    日照数九冬至天，          清霜风高未辞岁。

B |          又是一个平衡日，          子线从南向北回。         冬至，作为中国传统二十四节气之一，蕴含着丰富的文化内涵和民俗风情。

C | 前进小步幼儿园的老师们精心策划了一系列冬至活动，让孩子们在欢乐中领略节气魅力，传承中华传统文化。         

    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.
。                             1          小手大作为：冬至美食初体验                              小班的孩子们在包饺子活动中，像是一群勤劳的小蜜蜂，忙得不亦乐乎。他们用小小的手努力地将面团擀成或圆或方的面皮，虽然形状各异，但每一个都充满了童真的创意。         擀好面皮后，就是包肉馅啦。小朋友们把肉馅小心翼翼地放在面皮中间，然后学着大人的样子捏出各种形状的饺子，有像小月牙的，还有像小包子的，大家的眼神都很专注。                   大          如          年          饺子包好后煮熟，孩子们吃着自己包的饺子，脸上洋溢着自豪的笑容。                   2          温暖大灶台：冬至共制美食忙                                        冬至将近，恰逢家长开放日。中班段的老师们邀请家长入园和孩子们一起包饺子、擀面条、搓汤圆。         孩子们包饺子、擀面条的时候，那认真的模样仿佛在完成一件伟大的艺术品。         搓汤圆更是趣味十足，一个个圆滚滚的汤圆在他们的小手中诞生。         在孩子们忙碌的时候，家长们也没闲着。

D | 在大灶台前，一些家长忙着生火，熊熊的火焰为这个寒冷的冬至增添了许多温暖；另外一些家长们熟练地将饺子、面条还有汤圆煮熟。

E |                    3          抽签备食材：关东煮和火锅盛宴                                                  01                    关东煮          关东煮，那是街头巷尾都能闻到香气的美食。

F | 大班的孩子们开启了自制关东煮之旅。         从最初对食材的好奇，到小心翼翼地将食材串在竹签上，每一个动作都充满了童真与专注。         每一串关东煮，都凝聚着孩子们小小的努力，就像他们在成长道路上迈出的每一个踏实的脚步。         02                    火锅盛宴          火锅，是团圆与欢乐的象征。

G | 大班冬至火锅盛宴中，有着独特的环节。         孩子们通过抽签的方式确定自己要负责的食材，这种方式充满了趣味与惊喜。         孩子们将抽到的食材带来，一个个兴奋地投入到洗菜、切菜的过程中。

H |          他们像小小的生活家，在这个过程中了解到食材的模样、质地，明白了食物从田间到餐桌的不易。

I |          冬至虽寒，但幼儿园里的这一场场活动，却让每一个孩子的心中充满了温暖。希望在未来的日子里，孩子们能够带着在这次活动中收获的一切，去拥抱生活中的每一个美好瞬间。                   ·END·                    编辑｜李老师          图片｜各班教师          初审｜宣传组          终审｜吕老师                                                                                                                                                                                    冬          至                    节          气          DONG ZHI。

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Published on:03:43:36