where industries are spatially concentrated and pollutionmonitoring
systems are well developed, it does not work in
the rural areas where water polluting industries are
dispersed in villages and have close associations with local
government officials. Water pollution control regulations
can be applied to rural industries only to the degree that
local government officials are able and willing to implement
environmental standards and exercise authority.
The problems of controlling rural water pollution derive
from the same characteristics of Chinese development that
have proved so successful in generating rapid economic
growth. The limited capital investment, small labour forces
and dispersal over the countryside that made the TVE
model so adaptable to the conditions of the Chinese
countryside are also the conditions that make rural
enterprises so polluting and hard to monitor. The close
ties to local government that have underpinned the
competitive success of rural enterprises against the more
sophisticated urban enterprises are also the ties that make
it so difficult to enforce environmental regulations in rural
areas. The power and flexibility of local governments to set
their own development agendas has encouraged governments
to adopt a variety of models of development suitable
to their regional conditions, but has also worked to reduce
the power of the central government to set uniform
standards of practical regulation.