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Environment

Polluters migrate to China's poor areas

Nature volume 518, page 483 (2015)Cite this article

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Bo Zhang and Cong Cao argue that China's citizens should have a legal right to safeguard the quality of their environment (Nature 517, 433–434; 2015). The wealthy would stand to benefit most from such a public litigation system, causing pollution producers to migrate to poorer areas.

Heavy industry in China is already moving out of developed eastern regions to the west (see X. Bai et al. Nature 509, 158–160; 2014), where it is damaging the local ecology. Industrial waste slag has eroded a nature conservation area in Xinjiang (see go.nature.com/68e1lo; in Chinese), for example, and discharge from factories has severely polluted part of the Tengger Desert at the border of the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia regions (see go.nature.com/nlfbrs; in Chinese).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Xin Miao

  2. Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China

    Yanhong Tang

  3. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Christina W. Y. Wong

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  1. Xin Miao
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  2. Yanhong Tang
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  3. Christina W. Y. Wong
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Correspondence to Xin Miao.

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Miao, X., Tang, Y. & Wong, C. Polluters migrate to China's poor areas. Nature 518, 483 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/518483d

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