Recurring environmental incidents haveled to increased public awareness of the threats ofenvironmental pollution to public health and rapidurbanization is driving up land prices in Chinese cities. Asa result of these developments, industrial plant relocationsare numerous, particularly of heavily polluting industrialplants, such as pesticide, coke, steel plants, and chemicalindustry plants. These relocations are leaving behind manycontaminated sites in the cities, sometimes with variouspollutants, as well as complex and serious soil andgroundwater contamination. It has become increasingly clearthat China needs a comprehensive policy, regulatory,technical, financial, and management framework toeffectively track, evaluate and clean up the numerouscontaminated sites. Currently, China has no specific lawregulating contaminated site remediation and management.Soil protection provisions do exist in some genericlegislation, in the form of air and water protection laws,solid waste laws, and toxic substance control acts. However,due to their different objectives and scopes, they are oftenaimed at different aspects of the issue. As a result,existing provisions, even if fully implemented, may notfully cover the whole range of threats related to sitecontamination. Hence, learning from the experiences of othercountries is essential for the Chinese government toincrease its capacity and preparedness to manage issuesrelated to site contamination.
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