Compliance with International Environmental Regimes: Chinese Lessons

The global ecosystem continues to display signs of strain because of a policy of inadequate responses that are not entirely commensurate with the challenge and a substantial gap between prescribed and actual behavior within and across State boundaries. Weak adherence to international environmental law, one of the factors contributing to the disparity between normative expectations and observed outcomes, has been explored extensively by legal researchers. Some of the insights that have been generated may be fruitfully examined in light of the problematic Chinese experience on the ecological front.