Can Legislation Promote a Circular Economy? A Material Flow-Based Evaluation of the Circular Degree of the Chinese Economy

Yuan Hu, Xuan He and Mark Poustie
Additional contact information
Yuan Hu: School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai 200433, China
Xuan He: School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai 200433, China
Mark Poustie: School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai 200433, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: The circular economy has been widely developed in China and other countries. However, China has been the most proactive country in upgrading its economic model by enacting a Circular Economy Promotion Law (CEPL). Nearly 10 years have passed since the adoption of the CEPL, and it is thus essential to evaluate the progress of circular economy development to see if the targets have been achieved. Although it is extremely difficult to evaluate the role of the CEPL in the development of a circular economy in China, we think that if we can estimate the circular degree of the Chinese economy and identify the changes of some key indicators before and after the adoption of the CEPL, it will be helpful in judging whether the CEPL has played a key role in promoting the transition of the economic development model. Since the existing circular economy indicators and evaluation systems have focused mainly on the recycling of resources, we designed a methodology based on the material flow that can be used to evaluate the circular degree of the whole national economy. Through a detailed observation of the circular economy indicators of China, we conclude that the CEPL has not yet played a significant role in promoting the circular economy as was previously believed.

Keywords: legislation; Circular Economy Promotion Law of PRC (CEPL); circular degree; Chinese economy; evaluation; material flow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/4/990/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/4/990/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:990-:d:138366

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().