This chapter clarifies why blunt force regulation is so distinctive. It begins by outlining two underlying logics regulatory enforcement, namely, “rules-based” regulation (which prioritizes effectiveness) and “risk-based” regulation (which prioritizes efficiency). Drawing on case details, it then illustrates how blunt force regulation fits into neither category, offering neither efficient nor effective regulation in the long-term. Instead, it represents an unusual combination of indiscriminate enforcement (which devalues compliances) and arbitrary but inflexible enforcement (which increases regulatory distrust and business uncertainty). This raises the question: Why blunt force regulation?

This chapter argues that the Chinese leadership is trying to transition out of blunt force regulation by increasing investments in 1) conventional regulatory institutions, which offer more efficient, sustainable pollution control, and 2) bottom-up enforcement, where citizens are used as “fire alarms” to strengthen the threat of conventional enforcement institutions.Using a case study of antipollution protests in a wealthy Chinese city – a case that, at the outset, appeared likely to succeed at improving government enforcement – this chapter examines how the state’s ambivalence to civil society activism closes off channels for effective bottom-up enforcement. Further interview evidence reveals that as an authoritarian state, Chinese officials fear the accountability mechanisms (such as a free press, independent judiciary, and community activism) that make bottom-up enforcement so effective in other countries. These limitations have pushed the leadership to repeatedly return to blunt force solutions, suggesting that it is not just a transition phase.

This chapter probes the short- and long-term costs of blunt force regulation. Case studies and local news reports show that workers do protest, businesses do resist, and local bureaucrats do publicly criticize the short-term nature of blunt force solutions. How does the state guard against the political risks of blunt force regulation? Using two cities as case studies – one wealthy and developed, and the other poor and industrial – this chapter shows how the state concentrates the costs of blunt force pollution reduction on the groups that are the least able to push back. It targets smaller, private firms or industries that rely on temporary, transient labor. These strategies are effective at preventing unrest, but exacerbate inefficiencies in the economy and may complicate efforts to reduce pollution in the future.

This chapter starts with the central puzzle of this book: Why do governments choose blunt force regulation to control pollution when more reasonable, sustainable solutions are possible? It proposes that governments choose this suboptimal approach because they seek, first and foremost, to overcome principal–agent problems within the state apparatus. Drawing on case research and interviews with government officials around China, this chapter illustrates how blunt force regulation creates shortcuts that allow political leaders to increase the credible threat of punishment towards noncompliant bureaucrats. These measures temporarily scare local authorities into enforcing policies as ordered, even after prolonged periods of noncompliance. Finally, this chapter offers some observable implications for this theory, which will be tested in ensuing chapters.

This chapter broadens the scope of the analysis to assess whether blunt force regulation is unique to China. It reveals that blunt force regulation is a widespread political phenomenon found in both advanced industrial environments (like the UK) and weak institutional environments (like India and the Philippines). When political leaders confront urgent or overwhelming enforcement problems, they sometimes resort to unreasonable, one-size-fits-all measures to ensure that enforcement actions are effective. Through analyzing these cases, this chapter concludes that blunt force regulation is one of a set of potential responses to the inevitable principal–agent problems of regulation. However, the character of blunt force regulation – including how forceful or indiscriminate it is – is shaped by institutional features such as a state’s resource capabilities and coercive capacity.

This chapter tests the theory proposed in Chapter 3: that blunt force regulation is used not to scare polluters into respecting pollution standards, but to scare bureaucrats into respecting central orders. It begins with process tracing on a case of blunt force regulation from southern China to show that two common explanations for this phenomenon – deterring excess pollution and reducing industrial overcapacity – fail to account for local authorities’ indiscriminate shutdown of polluting industries. Instead, the sequence of events reveals how local officials undertook blunt force regulation in response to sudden scrutiny from higher-level officials. Quantitative methods are then used to test this theory on a national scale. Results demonstrate that cities in which local officials were underenforcing pollution regulations were more likely to be subjected to blunt force pollution regulation than those with high levels of pollution or industrial overcapacity. These findings reveal that blunt force regulation is undertaken as a form of bureaucratic control.

The chapter tests a further observable implication of the theory that blunt force regulation does reduce pollution. Regressing pollution levels on blunt force measures, this chapter shows that this type of regulation is effective at overcoming enforcement failures; indeed, it is associated with much greater reductions in pollution than conventional regulation. These findings challenge a common conception that blunt force regulation is mere political theater, in which the government uses highly publicized spectacles to convince the public it is doing something about pollution. Drawing on interviews with national and local regulators, this chapter further illustrates that far from mere performance, blunt force measures are the result of high-level government planning, enlist the efforts of several government agencies, and constitute part of a concerted, multiyear strategy to reduce pollution levels across the country.

In the past decade, the Chinese government has resorted to forcibly shuttering entire industries or industrial areas to clean up the air. These “blunt force” measures are often taken as a sign of authoritarian efficiency; the state uses its coercive powers to swiftly eliminate polluting industries and then silence social dissent. This chapter introduces an alternate perspective: that blunt force regulation is a sign of ineffective bureaucratic control. When institutions are too weak to hold bureaucrats accountable, central leaders increase oversight by drastically reducing the number of steps and resources required to produce a regulatory outcome – resulting in blunt force measures. Through an overview of the causes and consequences of China’s blunt force pollution regulation, this chapter challenges the tenets of authoritarian environmentalism, forcing us to rethink what it means to be a “high-capacity” state.

This chapter explores how China’s authoritarian underpinnings may affect the trajectory of its environmental regulation. It examines whether rising environmental consciousness and a shift in social and economic norms will push China towards an era of greener growth, even if institutions take time to catch up. It then assesses how the regime’s current preference for a flexible, adaptive mode of governance will impact the future of pollution control. Will this spur on a process of “coevolution,” where local policy experimentation eventually produces an unexpected but effective set of institutions that can enforce sustainable solutions to pollution? Or will the regime’s deep-rooted principal–agent problems – combined with the bureaucracy’s growing wariness of experimentation – drive the leadership towards a pervasive “short-termism” in environmental governance?