INTRODUCTION

China is today facing very high levels of pollution and its associated large human and economic costs, because of the burden placed by environmental pollution on both natural resources and on the population's well-being and health.

Although the problem of environmental pollution has traditionally been largely neglected in China, even when the Chinese environmental situation sharply deteriorated as the consequence of the fast industrial development of the country at the end of the last century, it must be highlighted that that enduring attitude has recently undergone a profound change. Indeed, probably as a consequence of the increased general awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution and of the huge economic development enjoyed by the county, the new century has brought with it a different political approach to the issue.

That different approach started in 2014 with the declaration of war on pollution by Li Kequiang and was shortly after confirmed during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, in October 2017, when President Xi Jinping clearly reaffirmed China's commitment to sustainable development and a “beautiful China”. On that occasion, in fact, President Xi Jinping affirmed that “[t]he modernization that we pursue is one characterized by harmonious coexistence between man and nature” and that “[i]n addition to creating more material and cultural wealth to meet people's ever-increasing needs for a better life, we need also to provide more quality ecological goods to meet people's ever-growing demands for a beautiful environment”.

The seriousness of the government's intentions was soon revealed by the efforts dedicated to the task, the successes already acquired and the severe enforcement of administrative violations by central authorities. In practice, the actions of the central government aimed at reducing environmental pollution are apparently reaching their goals.

Unfortunately, the goal of compensating the victims of the same pollution have apparently not yet been attained, although the same central government enacted rules aimed at that purpose. It is interesting to observe that those rules are shaped on civil law models, following traditional paths of negligence and strict liability. Those rules have features that have proved to work well, or at least to be sufficiently satisfying, in many civil law countries, where they are routinely applied to compensate damages caused by environmental pollution.