6 - East Meets West

Summary

Chapter 6 analyses how China has guaranteed the right of access to environmental information through the Open Government Information Regulations 2019 (OGI). The chapter identifies that the OGI conceptualises the right differently to the previous legal regimes, focused primarily on entrenching the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. While some aspects of China’s environmental information regime are effective at meeting the right’s core procedural elements, because it fails to engage with the right’s core substantive elements, it merely provides a diluted version of the right. Yet, even within China’s conceptualisation of the right, there are various procedural elements which can be sourced to the Aarhus Convention. As a result, the chapter concludes by demonstrating that although the Aarhus Convention has not impacted on how China views the right’s core substantive elements, it has exerted a normative influence over its core procedural elements.