2. Research Rationale

In the field of managing solid waste, including the trans-boundary shipment of solid waste, many developed countries, such as the United States, Germany, Japan have already had a complete set of policies in place and achieved a considerable success. Compared to these developed countries, China’s policy in solid waste is still incomprehensive. This imbalance of regulatory power between China and other developed countries will put it at the risks of being threatened by the transfer of hazardous waste from other countries (Zou, 2007). To protect the public interests, China should make efforts to improve its policy of importing solid waste. To achieve this aim, studying and understanding the current policy of importing solid waste in the first place is a necessity.

At the same time, in The 12^th Five-Year Plan issued by Chinese Central Government in 2011,⁶¹ the recycling industries for resources will be given priorities of development. It is essential that the policies related to recycling industry should play a positive role in promoting the recycling industries. Also, with the increasing public dissatisfaction and social instability caused by environmental pollution, China is now becoming deeply aware of the significance of protecting environments while developing economy, thus devoting great efforts in devising and implementing the environmental policies. Moreover, since China's accession to WTO, China has made great efforts to adjust its trade policies so as to participate the international trade regime. How to ensure the free trade which is in conformity with the principles of WTO agreements while protecting its domestic environment is another question posed to China's policymakers. The policy of importing solid waste is linked with all these above-mentioned fields of resources, environment and trade, so it is worth being studied to figure out the way how China tries to solve the conflicts between the environment and economic interests.

In this context, the author tries to analyze China's policy by resorting to the concepts developed by Peter Knoepfel in his work of Public Policy Analysis so as to better understand it and give some indications for the future improvement of this policy, or for the formulation of other policies of this kind. Also, another purpose of this thesis is to provide some experiences to other developing countries which are faced with the same challenge posed by the import of solid waste.

3. Literature Review and Conceptual Framework

3.1 The literatures on solid waste

A large volume of literature has been contributed to solid waste, among which there are a plenty of reports issued by international organizations, such as the Vital Waste Graphics I (2004), and Vital Waste Graphic II (2006) issued by The Basel Convention Secretariat; What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management by The World Bank;⁶² there are also many reports produced by the research projects supported by (super-) national environmental departments, such as Waste without borders in the EU? Trans-boundary shipments of waste (2009), and Trans-boundary shipments of waste in the EU Developments 1995-2005 and possible drivers (2008) issued by European Environmental Agency. In such kinds of reports, the majority of the content is concentrated on the definition, generation, impacts, and management of the waste. For example, in The Vital Waste Graphics I, it is clearly stated that the complexities and controversial issues about the definitions of waste lead to the difficulties of collecting comparable waste data. A life cycle approach is also employed to demonstrate that waste can be generated at all stages of a product, including the extraction of natural resources, production, distribution, consumption. The serious environmental impacts caused by solid waste, including surface water contamination, groundwater contamination, air contamination, and soil contamination, are explored in details. Besides, the management of waste is also a focus of study in this report, such as the integrated waste management approach, that is “reduce, reuse, and recycle” (3R). The strategies of waste management have also been discussed. The best steps are source reduction (educating, sorting, recycling, composting); collection, transport, and treatment (incineration, or chemical and biological treatment); and disposal (open dumps, sanitary landfills, deep-well geological disposals). Some scholars are also interested in exploring the successful experiences of waste management of some countries, in particular, Germany. For example, the experiences of municipal waste management in Germany concluded by Rainer Stagmnn in his report.⁶³ Concerning the movement of waste, Waste without borders in the EU? Trans-boundary shipments of waste (2009) issued by the European Environmental Agency,⁶⁴ have demonstrated all the relevant regulations for trans-boundary waste shipment, including Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste and other EU regulations on the supervision and control of shipments of waste within, into and out of European Community. Some of these kinds of reports are contributed to the study of the trade volume of trans-boundary waste shipments and serious problems of illegal shipment. For example, Trans-boundary shipments of waste in the EU, technical report 2008/1 put particular emphasis on exploring the trans-boundary shipment of waste electrical and electronic equipment (E-waste), one of the most traded hazardous waste, because it not only contains hazardous substances (for example, heavy metals) but also some kinds of valuable materials such as precious metals, which make it attractive as a type of resource.⁶⁵ Moreover, this report explains the driving forces of the international trade of waste. It is proposed that, ass the factors behind the trade vary, the status of countries in waste trade (importer or exporter), the kind of waste imported by them, as well as the volumes of waste imported also vary greatly.⁶⁶