By Qi Changdong & Chen Xiaohong, Enterprise Research Institute, DRC

Research Report, No.133, 2018 (Total 5408) 2018-8-21

Abstract: Japan has solved the problem of industrial pollution across the board in less than two decades and greatly reduced the load of major pollutants in the air. Its experiences are mainly as follows: First, the country has built a complete system of environmental protection. Second, the standards of pollutant disposal are scientific and rational. The more severely a region is polluted, the stricter the standards will be. The disposal standards are also formulated and adjusted in a scientific manner. Third, the strict supervision and control systems covering a wide range provide enterprises with leeway to optimize plans of reducing disposal. Fourth, the Japanese government focuses on incentive mechanism and provides policy incentives such as low-interest financing, tax preferential policies and subsidies, propelling enterprises to actively invest in environmental protection resulting in relatively high proportions of total investment volume in more than 20 consecutive years. Fifth, environmental protection ranging from reducing pollution to cutting energy and carbon emission is regarded as a systematic task by the Japanese government. The main way to reduce capacity by the Japanese government is to encourage enterprises to dispose excess equipment and adjust employment policies Japan’s experience provides the following enlightenment to China. It makes sense for relevant sectors to support enterprises to improve environmental protection, save energy and cut excess capacity by issuing policies against the background of market-oriented economy, while relevant policies, measures and mechanism should be formulated in a rational manner. The Japanese government has implemented different policies and different measures in terms of reducing pollution and disposal, saving energy and cutting excess capacity in the steel industry. The patterns of how the above-mentioned policies work are also different from China. Therefore, the government’s policy intervention should be combined organically with market-oriented mechanism.

Key words: reduce pollution and emission, cut capacity, Japan, steel