China slowly improving environmental transparency.

• Author: Block, Ben
• Position: EYE ON EARTH - Brief article

Under a new public disclosure law, cities across China are slowly becoming more forthright with environmental information, according to a study by U.S. and Chinese environmental groups. The "Measures on Open Environmental Information" ruling, which took effect last year, requires municipalities to disclose which companies violated pollution regulations and caused large pollution incidents, and how much contamination these polluters released.

To measure the law's success, the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council launched China's first Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI), filing information requests with 113 cities in September 2008. The PITI rated the cities on a 100-point scale based on their compliance with the requests, responses to citizen petitions, and public records of environmental violations.

Of the surveyed cities, only four ranked higher than 60, and neither of China's two largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, ranked well overall. However, Shanghai came in first...