Three departments, including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE"), have recently issued the Action Plan for Launching the Tough Battle on the Integrated Bohai Sea Rehabilitation (the "Plan").
The Plan puts forward the goals of, though the three-year integrated rehabilitation, dramatically reducing the quantity of land-sourced contaminants that are discharged into the sea, significantly reducuing the number of rivers with water quality worse than grade V from flowing into the sea, realizing the steady and up-to-standard direct emission of pollutants from industrial sources into the ocean, completing the elimination of illegally and unreasonably established outlets from which pollutants are discharged into the ocean, building and improving systems for activities of ports, vessels and fisheries and for the prevention and control of pollution caused by waste created by such activities, placing the toughest management and control of sea reclamation to constantly improve ecological functions of the coastal zone. It is expected that around 73 percent of waters in the offshore areas of the Bohai sea will see good water quality by the year 2020. To this end, the Plan schedules tasks in four aspects, including "the action to clean up land-sourced pollution", "the action to clean up pollution in sea areas", "the action for ecological protection and restoration" and "the action to prevent environmental risks". Moreover, the Plan expressly states that, coastal cities are required to clear up and weed out "enterprises that are in unauthorized locations, lack the proper certificates and fail to meet emission standards", according to requirements for intensifying the integrated rectification of such enterprises as provided by the Three-Year Action Plan for Winning the Battle for a Blue Sky.