SHANGHAI — More than 8,000 people were arrested in China for violating environmental laws last year, in what officials said was a sign of the country’s determination to enforce its laws more strictly, in the face of grave pollution.
Chen Jining, China’s recently appointed Minister of Environmental Protection and former Tsinghua University president and environmental scientist, told a meeting of the country’s legislature that some 8,400 people were detained in 2014 — while more than 2,000 cases of environmental violations were handed over to police, twice as many as in the previous decade put together.
The announcement comes amid growing public concern about environmental pollution in China, crystallized earlier this year with the release of a privately funded documentary on the country’s air pollution problem by former state TV journalist Chai Jing. The film, “Under the Dome,” was watched more than 100 million times in the first three days after its release online, and has sparked an ongoing debate. And the director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission said recently that natural resources and the environment were among the biggest obstacles hindering China’s drive to become a “moderately prosperous society.”