Behind ugly scenes of dead fish and filthy water is a lesson to learn from a string of environmental disasters that ravaged a pair of major rivers in China. 

It’s a lesson about the benefits waiting to be reaped if Beijing would agree to reform its current system for protecting waterways – a system with light fines for polluters and a reputation for blocking private lawsuits. 

That’s the opinion of Ji Weidong, a professor at Japan’s Kobe University and Caijing legal consultant, who favors legal reforms aimed at encouraging a grassroots, “private force” for regulating riverside factories and other potential polluters. 

“Considering the long history of abominable lawsuits in Chinese society, we must first reform the system and clear away the obstacles to providing incentives for lawsuit winners,” Ji wrote in a commentary for Caijing. 

Ji and other scholars are calling for changes following the government’s recent decision to slap the wrist of the JiHua petrochemical company, a division of PetroChina, whose Jilin City factory exploded in November 2005 and spilled tons of toxins into the Songhua River. 

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) imposed the highest fine allowed under Chinese law. But JiHua’s penalty – a paltry 1 million yuan (US ＄130,000) – was a small price for a major disaster. 

Later, JiHua avoided further damages when People’s High Courts in two provinces that depend on the polluted river – Jilin and Heilongjiang – separately refused to consider environmental lawsuits filed by local citizens. 

The Songhua was not the first river to suffer from flaws in China’s Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law. Since 2001, the Yellow River in Henan Province has been similarly polluted by three, “secret” discharges from the Sanmenxia Chemical Fiber Plant. But the law forced regulators to impose only small fines, the largest of which was a penalty of only 100 thousand yuan (US ＄13,000). 

Various investigations by the Environment and Resources Protection Committee (ERPC) of the National People’s Congress have found that many polluters would rather pay fees for the legal right to dump waste than install waste-treatment equipment. And some firms choose to reduce costs by idling their existing treatment facilities. 

Ji said changing the system to encourage lawsuits by genuine victims of environmental disasters would force companies to put the building, maintenance and operation of pollution-control equipment on their agendas. 

Litigation aimed at protecting individuals “must be encouraged” to strike a legal balance that benefits individuals as well as powerful institutions, including factory operators and the government, he said. 

Ji supports a system that embraces a loser-pay method for covering attorney fees, fair rewards for winners, and legal aid that encourages victims to seek professional services and top lawyers. To limit compensation claims, he also supports letting environmental, non-governmental organizations and other groups support the lawsuits of individuals. 

Anticipating critics, Ji said advocates of such reforms do not “support cruel punishment, or the blind increase in the force of disciplinary penalties. It does not mean we are encouraging victims to attack enterprises that cause damage in order to get compensation. And we do not want to block the rapid development of some industries.” 

“We have a very clear aim,” Ji said. “Pollution victims and those in high positions must participate in the supervision, administration and enforcement of the law in order to effectively advance legal oversight and reach an appropriate balance between development and environmental protection.” 

“By bringing civil action and public-interest lawsuits,” he said, “the perpetrators will be feel the pain and learn a lesson.” 

Referring to the Songhua and Yellow river disasters, Mao Rubai, director of ERPC, also called for raising the standards for fee-based waste discharges and increasing pollution fines. He admitted that regulators now find it difficult to prevent illegal environmental activities by simply collecting fees and imposing fines at current levels. 

But Ji wants to lift current restrictions on NGO participation and give legal-aid centers a bigger role in public litigation. He said SEPA and other government agencies, at all levels, should accept such reforms as part of their legal responsibility. 

Ji said the current, water-protection law has been undermined by a system that lets China’s powerful “misbehave.” To reverse the trend, he writes, “it’s time to improve the legal process by welcoming grassroots participation.”