The Impact of Central Environmental Inspections on the Perception of Respect for Human Rights and Its Empirical Analysis
MAO Yimin*
Abstract: To develop China’s human rights cause with a people-centered approach, we should pay close attention to the concrete experiences of the general public regarding the protection of human rights. Deepening the research on the perception of respect for human rights can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the practical achievements of the human rights cause. Public environmental rights, as a new type of human rights, have become an important aspect of the development of the human rights cause in the new era. The central environmental inspection, as an authoritative and interventionist vertical governance mechanism, promotes the implementation of environmental policies by local Party committees and governments and strengthens environmental information disclosure and public participation in environmental matters. As a result, it contributes to the realization of public environmental rights and stimulates public perception of respect for human rights. Among them, the “look-back inspection is an important component of the central environmental inspection, and its implementation consolidates and enhances the previous inspection work. An empirical analysis based on the World Values Survey’s data for China indicates that residents in the provinces that have undergone “look-back inspections are more inclined to believe that human rights are adequately respected compared to residents in the provinces that have not underwent such inspections.It suggests that the advancement and improvement of the central environmental inspection system promote improvements in ecological environment quality and contribute to enhancing the public perception of respect for human rights.
Keywords: central environmental inspection · public environmental rights · perception of respect for human rights · human rights cause
I. Questions Raised
Respecting and safeguarding human rights is a key indicator of political civilization as well as a necessary prerequisite for building a country under the rule of law. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China’s human rights cause has adhered to combining the universal principles of human rights with the country’s realities and exploring a path of human rights development with Chinese characteristics, and has made prominent innovative progress in this regard.1 Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, noted that the people-centered principle is the most prominent feature of the Chinese path of human rights development and that people’s well-being is the greatest human right.2 This highlights that we must uphold a “people-centered” approach in the development of human rights, and pay close attention to the people’s feelings about the current human rights work. That is to say, the efforts to respect and safeguard human rights should not be confined to ought-to-be and legal levels, and the government should take active actions to ensure the people concretely enjoy the results of human rights protection. However, as for current research on human rights, scholars attach greater importance to the normative analysis of human rights from the perspective of jurisprudence but neglect the significance of surveying the public’s subjective perception of current human rights protection from the latter’s angle of view.
The contents of human rights are complex. They constitute a system of various rights with humans as the core. Among them, environmental rights, as a new type of human rights, have drawn increasing attention from all walks of life in recent years. On the one hand, this is because environmental rights are considered the foundation and precondition for the realization of other human rights in terms of the structural relations of rights.3 Humans depend on the environment to live. Without the support of a certain environment, the survival and development of mankind would be unsustainable, and political,economic, social, cultural, and other rights would be unsecured. On the other hand, environmental problems have increasingly threatened the survival and development of mankind. In the face of the global eco-environmental crisis, human beings have begun to reflect on the relationship between themselves and the environment, giving birth to the demand for protecting the eco-environment and realizing the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.4 In China, the traditional development model adopted by local governments for a long period that emphasizes economic growth over environmental protection has led to prominent eco-environmental problems which have threatened the survival and development of the people. The 18th CPC National Congress incorporated ecological progress in the Five-sphere Integrated Plan, emphasizing the need to “give high priority to making ecological progress and incorporate it into all aspects and the whole process of advancing economic, political, cultural, and social progress.”5 To effectively promote eco-environmental governance and bridge the gap in the implementation of environmental policies, a mechanism of central inspections on environmental protection (hereinafter referred to as “central environmental inspection”) was launched as a major institutional innovation under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee. As an authoritative and interventional vertical governance mechanism, the central environmental inspection not only promotes systematic reforms of China’s environmental governance system and governance capacity but also significantly affects the public’s political attitude, including the understanding of the protection of their rights.
Therefore, this paper raises the following question for research: How does central environmental inspection affect public perception of respect for human rights? The theoretical analysis and empirical examination of this question can deepen our understanding of current human rights issues from at least two aspects: first, to understand the current level of public perception of respect for human rights respect and its impactful factors in China, and second, to understand how the implementation of the protection of public environmental rights by central environmental inspection will affect the public’s overall perception of respect for human rights. It can be seen that researching human rights from the perspective of public perception not only helps grasp the social psychological foundation of the development of human rights but also provides ideas for further improving the practical results of human rights work.
II. The Perception of Respect for Human Rights: Conceptual Definition and Research Value
The conceptual definition is a necessary prerequisite for theoretical analysis. There have been many interpretations of the connotations of human rights, and a basic widely recognized definition is: human rights are the rights that human beings should enjoy in accordance with their natural attributes and social essence.6 As far as the contents of human rights are concerned, they are complicated in terms of category and are constrained by historical and cultural conditions, making it difficult to list them all. However, according to their nature and characteristics, human rights can be roughly divided into the following five categories: first, personal rights, such as the right to life; second, political rights and freedoms, such as the right to vote and to be elected; third, economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to work and the right to social security; fourth, the rights of vulnerable groups and special groups; fifth, international collective (or group) rights, such as environmental rights and development rights.7 That means human rights constitute a system of rights, reflecting human beings’ pursuit of their value and dignity.
Different from the legal interpretation of human rights, the perception of respect for human rights discussed in this paper is essentially a social psychological concept, and its connotation can be defined as the public’s overall perception of the degree of respect and protection of human rights. We can further interpret this concept as follows: first, it provides a new perspective on the realities of respect for and protection of human rights from the public’s point of view; second, it is a subjective perception that reflects the public’s perception and evaluation of the actual situation on respect for and protection of human rights. As far as human rights work is concerned, respect is the value of protection, and protection is the practical embodiment of respect, and the two together constitute the object of public perception; and third, it is a general perception of the current state of respect for and protection of human rights, rather than an evaluation of a specific issue of rights.
It is noteworthy that subjective perception does not necessarily reflect objective reality accurately. Even if human rights are objectively given full respect and protection, different groups of people will still perceive them differently. This is because public perception of respect for human rights depends not only on the current status of human rights, but also on many other factors, including value orientation, income level, educational level, media access, and institutional environment. However, it is undeniable that it is precisely this perception with possible bias that affects the attitude and behavior of the public. When the public believes that human rights are fully respected, they tend to develop a higher sense of recognition for the political system; otherwise, it may breed discontent and even radical behavior.
Therefore, a deep understanding of the public perception of respect for human rights is of great practical significance to the development of human rights theory and the improvement of human rights governance. On the one hand, it can reveal how the public, as rights holders, understand and evaluate human rights protection work, and help understand the social and psychological foundation for the development of human rights. On the other hand, it can reveal the factors impacting the perception of respect for human rights and provide ideas for further improving the practical effectiveness of the development of human rights. Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and pursuing the people-centered concept of human rights is the key embodiment of the innovation of human rights in the new era.8 Implementing the people-centered concept of human rights requires not only advancing law-based human rights governance to achieve the transition from “ought-to-be human rights” to “legal human rights” and then to “actualized human rights,” but also paying close attention to the public’s subjective feeling of human rights cause and transform their perception of respect for human rights to their sense of gain, happiness, and security.
III. Theoretical Analysis of Central Environmental Inspection’s Impact on the Perception of Respect for Human Rights
As a kind of subjective evaluation, the perception of respect for human rights is a product of social construction, and among its many impactful factors, government behavior is undoubtedly the most noteworthy. Since China began its reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, under the leadership of the CPC, the country’s economic development has witnessed remarkable progress, the supply of public services has been increasingly enhanced, and the people’s living standards and rights protection have been significantly improved. However, the increasingly escalating eco-environmental problems have become an important obstacle hindering the Chinese people’s pursuit of a better life. To cope with the severe situation of the eco-environment and urge local governments to fulfill their responsibilities for environmental governance, the central environmental inspection system emerged as a high-level vertical governance mechanism. This paper focuses on how central environmental inspection affects the perception of respect for human rights. Hereby, we carry out a theoretical analysis of public environmental rights to reveal the impacting mechanism behind the central environmental inspection system.
A. The perception of respect for human rights stimulated by the protection of public environmental rights
From the perspective of the historical development of human rights, French scholar Karel Vasak put forward the theory of “the three generations of human rights” in the 1970s: the first generation mainly refers to civil rights, political rights, etc., the second generation mainly refers to economic, social and cultural rights, and the third generation emphasizes collective association, including the right to peace, the right to development and the right to the environment. Although this theory has not been fully accepted by academia,9 environmental rights, as a new type of human rights, have been acknowledged by increasing numbers of scholars.10 Professor Lyu Zhongmei regards citizens’ environmental rights as “a kind of independent, basic human rights” and gave the following definition: “the rights enjoyed by citizens to live in an unpolluted and non-destructed environment and utilize environmental resources.”11 Defining environmental rights from the perspective of human rights is a result of mankind reflecting on the continuously worsening eco-environment, as well as a legal demand for building a relationship of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. In practice, “environmental rights” have been included in the four editions of the National Human Rights Action Plan of China issued in the past 12 consecutive years. Furthermore, the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2021-2025) issued in September 2021 has an independent chapter, the first time the action plan has done so in history, called “Environmental Rights,” which clarifies planned measures in the realms of pollution prevention and control, eco-environmental information disclosure, public participation in environmental decision-making, public interest environmental litigation and eco-environmental damage compensation, territorial eco-environmental restoration and protection, and response to climate change. This indicates that the protection of the public’s environmental rights has become a key part of human rights development, whether in theory or practice.
So, how does the protection of public environmental rights stimulate their perception of respect for human rights? From the perspective of mechanism, there are two channels for this impact: first, the direct promotion effect, that is, environmental rights themselves have the attributes of human rights, and whether they are respected and protected will directly affect public perception of the human rights situation; second, the indirect diffusion effect, that is, the protection of environmental rights will affect the situations of other human rights, such as the right to subsistence and the right to development, and then affect public perception of respect for human rights as a whole. This underscores the special place of environmental rights in the human rights system: it forms the basis and precondition for the realization of other human rights.12 As C.G. Weeramantry once said, the enjoyment of all human rights is closely related to environmental issues. First, not only the right to life and the right to health, but also political rights, civil rights, and other social, economic, and cultural rights can only be fully enjoyed in a healthy environment.13 For this reason, when the public senses that their environmental rights are well protected, their perception of respect for human rights is enhanced.
B. Central environmental inspection system and the protection of public environmental rights
Many studies have shown that the gap in the implementation of environmental policies is the key cause of China’s eco-environmental problems.14 For a long time, under the economic development-centered performance assessment system, local government officials tended to emphasize economic growth and neglect environmental protection out of the pursuit of their interests. In the principal-agent relationship between the central and local governments, information asymmetry makes it difficult to achieve timely and effective supervision, which further exacerbates the selective or incomplete implementation of environmental policies by local governments.15 In this context, eco-environmental pollution is increasingly intensifying, and public environmental rights cannot be effectively guaranteed. In response to policy implementation issues, the central government has taken many measures, such as incorporating environmental indicators into the assessment system, promoting the disclosure of environmental information to the public, and establishing six regional environmental inspection centers. These measures have advanced the implementation of environmental policies to a certain extent, but there are still many limitations, and it is difficult to strongly urge local governments to fulfill their environmental governance responsibilities.16
To fill the gap in the implementation of environmental policies, the central environmental inspection system was established. In July 2015, the 14th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform adopted the Plan for Inspections of Environmental Protection (Trial), replacing the previous “comprehensive environmental inspection” system with the “central environmental inspection” system, and listing the performance of local CPC committees and governments in environmental protection among the key subjects of inspection for the first time. In January 2016, the central environmental inspection was launched in Hebei Province on a pilot basis and then expanded to all provinces and cities in four batches. To ensure that provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government rectify their environmental governance issues, the “look-back inspections” have been launched since 2018. In the process of the “look-back inspections,” the central environmental inspection team exposed the phenomenon of “superficial rectification and false rectification” and held relevant officials accountable. In June 2019, the Regulations on the Central Inspection of Eco-Environmental Protection was issued, which further promoted the institutionalization of central environmental inspection. In April 2021, the second round of central environmental inspections was launched. Central environmental inspections have continuously driven China’s implementation of environmental governance and the construction of an ecological civilization.17
How can the central environmental inspection system promote the implementation of public environmental rights? According to scholar Lyu Zhongmei, public environmental rights represent a system of rights composed of multiple sub-rights, including the right to environment use, the right to know, the right to participate, and the right to claim.18 Based on this, the positive effect of the central environmental inspection system on public environmental rights is reflected in the following two aspects:
First, it urges local CPC committees and governments to attach importance to environmental protection, actively fulfill their environmental governance responsibilities, and effectively improve the quality of the local eco-environment. From the perspective of system design, the central environmental inspection realizes the implementation of local environmental responsibilities through three mechanisms. One, it strengthens the authority of environmental inspections through “high-level promotion”. Central environmental inspections are led by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council and are carried out in the form of a central environmental inspection group. The inspection group is usually headed by a provincial or ministerial-level official who is in service or has just retired from a leading position, and the deputy head is a vice minister or equivalent at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Every time such an environmental inspection group is stationed in a province (or municipality directly under the central government), the top Party and government leaders of the province (or municipality) shall hold a work mobilization meeting. Such setting and practice demonstrate the authority of the central environmental inspection and are conducive to advancing follow-up inspection work.19 Two, the principle of “Party and government officials with equal responsibilities and one post with dual duties” is adopted to encourage local officials to attach importance to environmental issues. The focus of central environmental inspections is “administrative supervision:” To achieve “Party and government officials with equal responsibilities,” it requires local CPC committees and governments at various levels to bear the overall responsibilities for local environmental protection, their principal leaders to bear the main responsibilities for environmental protection, and other relevant leaders to bear corresponding responsibilities for environmental protection within the scope of their duties; “One post with dual duties” means officials shall not only assume the responsibilities of their posts but also perform the environmental protection responsibilities related to their posts. This can make local Party and government officials focus on environmental governance by means of fulfilling their responsibilities, so as to ensure that environmental policies are effectively implemented at the local level. Last, “look-back inspections” ensure that corrective measures are in place. After the first round of four batches of environmental inspections was completed, the central environmental inspection groups conducted “look-back inspections” to check the implementation of rectification measures. This initiative is of great significance. On the one hand, through “lookback inspections,” a series of phenomena such as perfunctory rectification and false rectification were exposed, and Party and government leaders in many places were interviewed or held accountable, further promoting the substantive solution of eco-environmental problems. On the other hand, through the implementation of “look-back inspections” and accountability of relevant derelict officials, the central authorities demonstrated the determination to improve environmental governance for the whole of society. Through the collaboration of these mechanisms, the first round of central environmental inspections and relevant “look-back inspections” solved about 150,000 environmental problems concerning the lives of the general public, and promoted the resolution of more than 2,100 major eco-environmental problems in various regions.20
Second, it promotes information disclosure of environmental governance, strengthens public participation in environmental affairs, and responds to public environmental demand promptly. From the perspective of the system, Article 4 of the Regulations on the Central Inspection of Eco-Environmental Protection stipulates that environmental inspections shall “adhere to the mass line, disclose information, and pay attention to comprehensive efficiency;” Article 29 further elaborates on strengthening information disclosure: “The specific arrangements of central environmental inspections, information about inspection and rectification, relevant prominent problems and cases, the main content of the inspection reports, the inspection and rectification plans, the implementation of inspection and rectification plans, and information related to supervision and accountability, etc., shall be disclosed to the public in accordance with relevant requirements, respond to social concerns, and accept public supervision.” In terms of practice, after determining the settling location and date of the central environmental inspection group, the inspection group will set up a special hotline and post office box for the general public to report and complain via telephone and mail. Under the requirements and efforts of central environmental inspections, the inspected government agencies or enterprises will set up a special website to disclose the progress of relevant inspections in accordance with the prescribed process. For example, by publicizing in batches the list of transferred petitions and complaints from the public and the disclosure of inspection and rectification information, the public can see the types, content, and handling of reported problems. During the inspection period, the inspection group will also collect information through various channels such as overt inspection and covert visits, and actively listen to the opinions of local people to better understand local ecological and environmental problems.
It is clear that the central environmental inspection system ensures the transmission of policy pressure through measures such as “high-level promotion,” “Party and government officials with equal responsibilities, one post with dual duties” and “lookback inspections.” Meanwhile, it responds to public environmental demands promptly by means of environmental information disclosure, collecting complaints from the public via telephone and mail, etc., so as to improve eco-environmental governance and realize respect and protection of public environmental rights. With the improvement of environmental quality and the realization of environmental rights, public perception of respect for human rights will also be enhanced.
IV. Empirical Analysis of Central Environmental Inspection’s Impact on the Perception of Respect for Human Rights
Based on theoretical analysis, this paper further conducts an empirical analysis to delve into the relationship between the central environmental inspection and the perception of respect for human rights. The World Values Survey for China includes data on the perception of respect for human rights. Unfortunately, the survey data is not vertically tracked, making rigorous causal inferences difficult. But we found that the seventh round of the World Values Survey took place between the end of July and the beginning of August 2018, just between the first and second batches of “look-back inspections.” Based on the above theoretical and practical analysis, the “look-back inspections” have further strengthened the pressure transmission of central environmental inspections, effectively urged local CPC committees and governments to carry out rectification measures, and demonstrated the determination of the CPC Central Committee to promote eco-environmental governance. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine whether the regions underwent the impact of “look-back inspections” on public perception of respect for human rights. We hypothesize that residents in the regions undergoing a “look-back inspection” show a higher perception of respect for human rights than residents in the regions without experiencing such an inspection.
A. Data, variables and research methodology
The perception of respect for human rights is the response variable that this paper focuses on. In the World Values Survey, a question was: “Do you think that human rights are respected in your country?” For the convenience of interpretation, the paper reversed the order of the options, so that the first to fourth options went from “Not respected at all,” “Not respected very much,” “Respected to some extent” to “Highly respected.” Because the distribution of those options is non-normal, this paper assigned a score of at least 3 points (“Highly respected” and “Respected to some extent”) to 1 to indicate that the public believes that human rights are fully respected, and the rest options to 0 to indicate that the public believes that respect for human rights is still lacking. In the seventh round of the World Values Survey, a total of 2,995 people from 29 provinces or municipalities in China responded to this question, of whom 88.51% believed that human rights were fully respected.
The core independent variable is whether the regions where the respondents live have undergone “look-back inspections.” The basic process of the central environmental inspection is as follows: first, the inspection group is stationed in the inspected region to inspect while the inspected region makes rectifications for one month; second, the inspection group gives centralized feedback according to inspection results and requires rectification of problems one by one; last, a “look-back inspection” is conducted to review and strengthen the implementation of rectification measures. Therefore, it is safe to say that the implementation of “look-back inspections” realizes the closed-loop operation of environmental inspections and ensures that the rectification of environmental problems is completely in place. After the first round of four central environmental inspections, 10 provinces received the first batch of “look-back inspections” from the end of May to the end of June 2018. This paper assigns the value of these regions that have gone through “look-back inspections” to 1; otherwise, the assigned value is 0.
Direct comparison is not feasible due to the presence of confusing factors. This paper controls the relevant factors from both the individual and provincial levels. At the individual level, several control variables were considered to eliminate the influence of individual differences on the analysis results. Specifically, these individual factors include gender, age, education level, Internet use, awareness of environmental protection, household income and expenditure, self-perception of social class, sense of security, perception of government honesty, and evaluation of democracy level. The data are all from the seventh round of the World Values Survey for China. At the provincial level, three variables were also included in this paper to reflect regional differences. First, the average perception of respect for human rights in each province in 2012. Based on the average data from the sixth round of the World Values Survey and referring to the assignment method of the corresponding variables, this paper assigns an average score of at least 3 points to 1 to indicate that the public in these regions generally feels that human rights are fully respected, and otherwise, it means that there is a deficiency in respect for human rights, which is assigned the value 0. Second, the level of economic development, based on the per capita GDP of each province from 2012 to 2017. Third, the level of urbanization, measured by the proportion of urban population in the total population. Economic growth and urbanization are not only driving the structural transformation of Chinese society but also reconstructing the values of the public, which in turn affects how they perceive social phenomena. Table 1 presents a brief description of the connotations and values of all control variables.
Since the data involve two levels and the response variables are dichotomous, the paper adopts multi-level generalized linear models for empirical analysis. In the models, surveyed provinces were included as random effects to control for differences in the perception of respect for human rights across provinces.
B. Empirical analysis results and relevant discussions
Table 2 presents the results of regression analysis based on the multi-level generalized linear models. Among them, Model 1 functions on the control variables at the individual level, Model 2 functions on the individual factors as well as economic development and urbanization degrees at the provincial level, and Model 3 further introduces the average perception of respect for human rights in each province in 2012 to control the differences between provinces in the perception of respect for human rights before the central environmental inspection is carried out. Since the sixth round of the World Values Survey was conducted in 24 provincial regions in China, the sample size was reduced after the data matched, but 2,557 respondents remained. Based on analysis results, even after many factors that may affect the analysis results at the individual and provincial levels are put under control, it indicates that there is a significant correlation between “look-back inspections” and public perception of respect for human rights in a region (p<0.05).Specifically, residents in the regions that have undergone a “look-back inspection” are about 80% more likely to believe that their human rights are fully respected compared to those in the regions that haven’t experienced such an inspection. It can be concluded that “look-back inspections”, as an important part of the central environmental inspection system, can arouse a certain degree of respect for human rights in society through the consolidation and improvement of the rectification measures in the previous inspections.
The analysis also shows that none of the three control variables at the provincial level are significant and that public perception of the basic level of socio-economic security, including the improvement of household income, the elevation of self-perception of social class, the increase in the sense of security and the level of interpersonal trust, and the evaluation of the political system, including the perception of government honesty and democracy level, significantly promotes their perception of respect for human rights. This means that to improve public perception of respect for human rights, it is necessary to strengthen work related to basic social security while promoting the integrity and democratization of governance. In addition, it can also be seen that the differences in gender, age, and urban and rural residents exerted an insignificant influence on public perception of respect for human rights, and there are no significant differences between groups with different educational levels and between groups with different attitudes toward environmental protection. And although some studies have shown that the Internet use affects political attitudes,21 this factor does not appear to have a significant impact on public perception of respect for human rights. It can be concluded that the perception of respect for human rights depends more on individuals’ subjective perception of their social situation and their country’s governance capacity.
Note: All regression coefficients in this table are OR values. Due to the limited space, the table doesn’t show the standard errors.
*p<0.1 **p<0.05 ***p<0.01
V. Conclusion
To develop China’s human rights cause with a “people-centered” approach, we should pay close attention to the concrete experiences of the general public regarding the protection of human rights. Public environmental rights, as a new type of human rights, play a fundamental role in the human rights system. However, the long-term adherence to a growth-oriented development model has resulted in prominent eco-environmental problems, and public environmental rights cannot be effectively guaranteed. The central environmental inspection, as an authoritative and interventionist vertical governance mechanism, mends off the gap in the implementation of environmental policies and strengthens public participation in environmental governance through a series of specific methods such as “stationed inspection,” “feedback and rectification” and “look-back inspection.” In particular, the “look-back inspection” reviews and consolidates the previous inspection work, ensures the local CPC committees and governments fulfill their responsibilities for environmental governance, and demonstrates the central authorities’ determination to advance the building of ecological civilization and create a better living environment for the people. Based on the World Values Survey’s data for China, the paper finds that residents in the provinces that have undergone “look-back inspections” are more inclined to believe that human rights are adequately respected compared to residents in the provinces that have not undergone such inspections. This indicates that the implementation and advancement of the central environmental inspection system can enhance respect for human rights in society to some extent. In general, along with the institutionalization, regularization, and legalization of central environmental inspections, public environmental rights will be more effectively protected and realized, which will in turn enhance public perception of respect for human rights.
(Translated by LIU Haile)
* MAO Yimin ( 毛益民 ), Research Fellow in management at the Yangtze River Delta (Pilot) Legal Research Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Doctor of Laws. This paper is a phased achievement of “Research on the Improvement of the Central Environmental Inspection System” (project No. 21ZDA088), a key project on studying and interpreting the guiding principles of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, under the support of the National Social Science Fund of China.
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