>It seems to me like there is laws against this, there are inspectors, but local corruption and small fines is making it ineffective. It's not just that, highe

>It seems to me like there is laws against this, there are inspectors, but local corruption and small fines is making it ineffective. It's not just that, higher government in China have caused the situation - they without doubt hold much of the burden for this. There are multiple angles as for why: * One of the Chinese Communist Party's main points confirming how amazing their party is (and therefore why it shouldn't be challenged) is the amount it's been able to grow the economy. This has created a national sentiment of "growth at all costs". * Setting high economic growth goals on local officials means they need to cut corners to get there - including lying about how much money they really made and ignoring laws in favour of growth. The consequence to this is often human lives and environmental damage. * Preventing the average person from investing in anything other than cheap buildings means that China's housing market has ballooned out of control. (Those who have been able to sneak money outside of China usually also invest in housing.) Building companies therefore want to widen their margins as much as possible whilst competing for investment from locals. * Trying to maintain a positive image for the Chinese Communist Party means squashing any scandals caused by officials and censoring public discussion/outrage on sensitive issues, such as health and environmental damage. (This doesn't always work, feeding babies cement instead of milk powder was a "little" too far.) >Of the numbers at the end of the article are just somewhat correct, we're talking about maybe 10 factories (give or take). So this is certainly something that can be fixed. That's so far and in just one industry. It's also possible other industries are also using CFC-11 but are yet to be discovered. >At it's so far clear that the government is not condoning this behavior. 1 billion+ people and mass monitoring, I'm pretty sure somebody was aware of this in high level government. By not saying anything, they are effectively condoning it. Actually, I wouldn't trust the Chinese government to make the formal investigation - they had their chance years ago and did nothing. If we were serious about this, the investigators would be an international team (including Chinese people) and the repercussions would be massive. One "benefit" to it being a dictatorship is that they can arbitrarily set the consequences of these actions and set an example. Of course this won't actually happen, foreign Countries wouldn't want to risk bad relations with China and the Chinese government wouldn't actually benefit from punishing a large part of their crucial industry who were effectively acting on their orders. They only need to be seen doing the "right" thing.