Daily Penalty System under Revision of the Marine Environment Protection Law in China: Review and Prospect

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is dealing with an interesting topic i.e. overview of the legal framework for the marine environment of China and major changes therein, particularly with respect to an enforcement and control system for marine pollution. While China is a major maritime nation and economic power, this topic is not widely known to the international research community. To that end, this manuscript can make a valuable contribution to literature and a good reference article. It is also relevant with the scope of the Sustainability journal.

However, in its current form, the manuscript requires substantial changes before it is finally accepted for publication (Revise and resubmit). Important topics are dealt with superficially instead of a more elaborate presentation of key policy and a critical review of past changes and major progress (or lack of progress) (i.e. amendments in regulations introduced; lessons learned from gaps in policy implementation; key take home messages etc.) while the manuscript is also is lacking flow between sections. 

Also, if the article is part of a special issue with a focus on coastal communities, such aspects should be highlighted in the context of this important topic, particularly: issue of policy fragmentation and the need for multi-lateral cooperation between competent institutions.

I try to specify below major points that need to be resolved and also provide some section- and line- specific comments that can aid the authors to improve the content and structure of the article.

Major points:

11. The manuscript is lacking flow between sections, while major concepts fundamental for understanding are explained late. As a result, it is difficult to understand the following: key legislation (e.g. difference between EPL and MEPL, what the MEPL’s main contribution to environmental legislation was); major changes in the law framework, when these took place and what they introduced; geographic scope (local and/or national?); competent authorities; objectives and scope of major amendments. A better and more detailed overview of the policy framework of China is necessary, including: competent authorities; major timelines and key changes. e.g. what is the Blue Sea 2020 special Action? What is its scope of implementation? To what level does the MEPL and the penalty system refer each time? E.g. Individual vessel? Does it also include land-based activities that polute the sea? i.e. Who is the polluter or perpetrator each time? Which is the “department empowered by the Law”? Idea: Provide a timeline/flowchart of major policies, with a concise explanation of key points/changes introduced.  This will allow you to narrow down more general introduction; and focus and expand on later sections where the gist of the article is situated.

2.      The aims and objectives of your study/investigation are not very clear. Is the MEPL covering exclusively pollution (point- and/or non-point?) or is pollution specifically the focus of your investigation? How about other environmental aspects? E.g. IUU fishing; overfishing, marine conservation, were these dealt with in the context of the law? Or are you are reviewing the law specifically from the viewpoint of pollution prevention and control? This should be clearly mentioned, as it provides part of your “methods” and “selection criteria”. In each case, you need to establish better in Introduction what is the focus of your Article, the need for a better implementation of the penalty system, i.e. enforcement, who is responsible, what is the gap in this, etc.

3.      “From local legislation to national law” (L164-165): This is a very interesting point, relevant also with the “community” scope of the special issue and requires extra elaboration and foregrounding in the article. What was the situation before the introduction of the law? Did every region/prefecture have its own law, and were there issues with dealing effectively with pollution incidents because of this fragmentation? Did the introduction of the law aim to fix these problems? Elaborate.

4.      Is it a matter of amendment of existing legislation (i.e. absence or relevant provisions to deal with the topic), policy fragmentation across institutions/vertical/horizontal fragmentation; or a matter of better control and enforcement? (Provisions are actually there but not properly enforced?). All of the above? A critical review of policy addresses such aspects.

5.      Statements require sources and/or data to substantiate (e.g. improvement in cases of sand and gravel extraction vessels detained; improvement in water quality, etc.); Underlying data analysis for table 1, etc.

6.      Key terminology and legal jargon needs to be fixed and streamlined throughout the manuscript. 

Section- and Line-specific comments:

Introduction

L55-69: More than describing these, critically review what these statements highlight with reference to gaps in policy.

L69-81: Unclear. Important to clarify to which sectors the penalty system applies and what is your focus. Important to provide more content as to how it is set, where it applies, who is fined etc. Marine pollution from vessels? From land-based activities? Penalty at a vessel level? How is this enforced and which are the competent agencies?

L105-106: How do these two differ, and what does a more protection focus entail and guarantee better with reference to the enforcement of law, and the fine system that is the scope of your investigation?

More content is needed on overarching scope of the Law, and the criteria you use to assess your key research questions (i.e. why you review the specific provisions, etc)

L101-107 and Table 1: More than mentioning that the Act succeeds in doing so, important to specify how it does that, through which provisions, and what these provisions do etc.

L112-113: Statement unclear. To which revision do you refer? Consider rephrasing

L116; L117: What is the role of the council, or the State Oceanic Administration in the framework of the Act? These things need to be explained more critically and in more detail.

L121-123: How did this change, into what way and how did it result in a need for the amendment of the Act?

L123-124: Superficial. It is clear that there is central political will, but how this is to be implemented is not discussed.

L125: More than stating that the report said that the marine environment should be protected, critically assess how it aimed to do that, and in this context, what was the “strictest legal system”.

L131-133: what were such suggestions? How was this stakeholder engagement performed? Who are the relevant departments?

Daily penalty provisions

This section starts making some more sense, but again key notions and concepts need to be better described and contextualised.

- Who are such violators? Individual vessels?

L141-143: Who are the department empowered by the Law? Such things need to be clearly described throughout the manuscript.

L141-144: More precision and elaboration required as to what each of these entails (what sort of corrective action? What time limit?

- Information is required on: who is the authority responsible for controlling pollution incidents? Is it national and or regional? Is there a fragmentation between different authorities? i.e. is the authority responsible for policy development the same as policy implementation? Are they different that the control and enforcement authorities?

L163: be specific about “early … century”

-Is the EPL you mention here the same as the MEPL? Streamline acronyms and terms along the manuscript

- L164-165: “from local legislation to national law”. This is a very interesting point and requires extra elaboration and foregrounding earlier in the article. What was the situation before the introduction of the law? Did every region/prefecture have its own law, and were there issues with dealing effectively with pollution incidents because of this fragmentation? Did the introduction of the law aim to fix these problems? Elaborate.

- Conoco Oil spill: Here it becomes evident that the Law deals with vessels. This should have been clearly stated early in the article and not inferred by the reader.

- L170-172: Interesting comparison and good to mention that it was this incident that led to the change in the legal framework. Provide the Yuan to Dollar equivalents for both figures for the reader to have a frame of reference and make the comparison.

- So first major amendment was the change in the ceiling of the penalty system. To whom is the penalty imposed? Is there a polluter pay principle in Chinese law? i.e how is the polluter to do corrective actions in case of the oil spill?

- L179-187: Here it becomes evident that the two are different laws. However, it is not clear how the MEPL came to amend the EPL and specifically the maritime sector and the penalty system thereon in particular.

- “Marine ecological civilisation” unclear what is meant.

- I do not follow the reason in the number sequence first, second, third.

New Regulations and Reasons for Daily Penalties

More content necessary on:

-L198: what do you mean by “new applications”?

-L201-203: what are some examples of these cases (applying for a permit, and not being granted one) to demonstrate limitations in policy implementation and/or needs for additional enforcement and control?

-L203-204: what are “units” or “individuals”? what are cases of emergencies and pollution incidents?

-L205: what are such cases of immediate measures? How is immediate defined in the context of the law?

- How are such pollution incidents established in the law? Who inspects and monitors?

-L215: what is the “daily penalty”?

-L226: illegally discharging pollution? Unlcear. When is there a difference between legally and illegally discharging pollution? Consider wording”

-L226-229: unclear what you established and propose here.

-L252-253: administrative punishment. How and by whom is this applied?  How did you perform your query in the database? This is important for the analysis, as well as including information on the type of data assessed, type of violations etc., level of aggregation, reporting framework, i.e. some information on data used to develop Table 1.

-L256-257: Which authorities? How does this relate with better monitoring of violations rather than a stringer application of the law?

-L275-285: do I understand correct that the MEPL is then implemented at a province level? This should be briefly mentioned. What are some differences in cases of violations between provinces?

3.2. Obstacles in implementation

This is a very interesting section that is the gist of your article.

-L289-291: what do you mean by limited application scope?

-L300-302: This is very interesting, this is why it is important to specify early in the Manuscript, that mostly pollution is dealt with in the current law, not other major issues.

  -L305-306: Only here is it first mentioned who is the inspection authority. What do you mean be grassroots government?

-L374: “not uniform” Where?

Please see comments above and also address in following sections especially “suggestions for future revision” and “conclusions”

Author Response

Reviewer #1: The article is dealing with an interesting topic i.e. overview of the legal framework for the marine environment of China and major changes therein, particularly with respect to an enforcement and control system for marine pollution. While China is a major maritime nation and economic power, this topic is not widely known to the international research community. To that end, this manuscript can make a valuable contribution to literature and a good reference article. It is also relevant with the scope of the Sustainability journal.

Response: Many thanks for the comment.

However, in its current form, the manuscript requires substantial changes before it is finally accepted for publication (Revise and resubmit). Important topics are dealt with superficially instead of a more elaborate presentation of key policy and a critical review of past changes and major progress (or lack of progress) (i.e. amendments in regulations introduced; lessons learned from gaps in policy implementation; key take home messages etc.) while the manuscript is also is lacking flow between sections. 

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have made major changes, including to readjust the structures of the article and the content of some sections. We do hope that the revised manuscript has the flow between sections. The revised paper has been reorganized into seven sections as follows:

Section 1 is the Introduction, in which deleting the described policy content of original L55-69, increasing the evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy with a concise explanation of key points/changes, adding the problem, aim and approach of this research, and the comparison of 2022 Environmental Performance Index between China and Untied States, finally to form a complete theoretical background of this paper. In order to avoid the abrupt structure, the authors have abandoned the writing approach of directly introducing the daily penalty provisions of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL) at the the beginning of the article, and added two new sections to introduce the revision background of MEPL and origin of the daily penalty system.

Section 2 introduces the revision background of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL), which takes the first part of original section 2 as a separate section. This revised section 2 includes the legislation history of MEPL, reasons and progresses of starting a new revision of MEPL. Section 3 as a new section, examines the origin of daily penalty, stating some legislation experiences referring to the daily penalty of foreign countries and describing how the daily penalty of China becomes a national law from the local legislation. Section 4 analyzes the daily penalty provisions of MEPL focusing on the Article 73, mainly including the legal factors, specific applications and innovative regulations. The authors have added many contents such as the scientific factor of daily penalty provisions, the relationship between EPL and MEPL, legal case and further explained the Article 73. Section 5 details the achievements and obstacles in the implementation of daily penalties in maritime law enforcement. The authors have rearranged the structure to divide into three parts as achievements, first obstacle and second obstacle. The first obstacle is the defects of daily penalty in MEPL such as narrow scope of application, low daily fine quota and vague provisions. The second obstacle is imperfect daily penalty in the marine special legislation. On the basis of the two obstacles, Section 6 proposes the corresponding suggestions of the daily penalty system for the future revision. Suggestion one is revising the daily penalty provisions of MEPL by such measures as expanding the applicable scope, increasing the daily fine quota and formulating the specific application standards. Suggestion two is improving the daily penalty system in the maritime-specific legislation. Section 7 presents the conclusion.

Also, if the article is part of a special issue with a focus on coastal communities, such aspects should be highlighted in the context of this important topic, particularly: issue of policy fragmentation and the need for multi-lateral cooperation between competent institutions.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors consider that is a constructive suggestion. It may need write another article to introduce the special issue with a focus on coastal communities. If do that in the future, we hope to have the opportunity to submit it to you for review. This paper emphasizes the review analysis of daily penalty in the marine law, it may take coastal communities’ situation as the example in the text, but it is not the main point. So the authors have not given a wider statement. We do hope the reviewer can understand.

I try to specify below major points that need to be resolved and also provide some section- and line- specific comments that can aid the authors to improve the content and structure of the article.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have carefully visited the reviewer’s comments, and addressed the issues as the following:

Major points:

1. The manuscript is lacking flow between sections, while major concepts fundamental for understanding are explained late. As a result, it is difficult to understand the following: key legislation (e.g. difference between EPL and MEPL, what the MEPL’s main contribution to environmental legislation was); major changes in the law framework, when these took place and what they introduced; geographic scope (local and/or national?); competent authorities; objectives and scope of major amendments. A better and more detailed overview of the policy framework of China is necessary, including: competent authorities; major timelines and key changes. e.g. what is the Blue Sea 2020 special Action? What is its scope of implementation? To what level does the MEPL and the penalty system refer each time? E.g. Individual vessel? Does it also include land-based activities that polute the sea? i.e. Who is the polluter or perpetrator each time? Which is the “department empowered by the Law”? Idea: Provide a timeline/flowchart of major policies, with a concise explanation of key points/changes introduced. This will allow you to narrow down more general introduction; and focus and expand on later sections where the gist of the article is situated

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have made major changes, including to readjust the structures of the article and the content of some sections. The revised new structure, have been responded in the former response to the reviewer’s comment. Further, the authors have given the following explanations for the major concepts: 

• In the para. 4 of section 4.1, the authors have further the relationship of the EPL and the MEPL:

“The EPL is a basic and comprehensive law in the environment field, and the MEPL is a comprehensive law in marine environmental protection. Both of them are reviewed and adopted by the NPCSC, equally effective from the legal level. However, the two actually have an inclusive relationship from three aspects: (1) the applicable scope. The EPL shall apply to the territory of the People's Republic of China, and other sea areas under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China, which naturally includes the applicable scope of the MEPL; (2) the protected objects. The protected objects of the EPL is “environment”, which means the entirety of all natural elements and artificially transformed natural elements that affect the survival and development of human beings, including seas, water, air, land and so on; (3) the required content. In terms of marine environmental protection, the EPL has made principled and general provisions, while the MEPL has made specific provisions [41]. Hence, the EPL is the general law, and the MEPL is the special law. Under the principle that special law is superior to general law, if there is any discrepancy between the MEPL and the EPL, the MEPL shall prevail.”

 

• In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have increased the development history of China’s marine environmental protection legal system in the para.1 of the revised section 2:

“China’s marine rule of law started relatively late. With a long period of development and accumulation, China has formed a marine ecological environmental legal system. As a whole, the development history of this legal system can be divided into four stages: (1) foundation stage (before 1982). China had no formal marine law, and the legislative level of marine environmental management was limited to administrative regulations and rules, issued by the SC and its departments; (2) rapid-development stage (1982-1999). China appeared the first marine law, formulated by the NPCSC, which opening an era of China’s marine rule of law. Under the the times’ limitation and insufficient legislative experience, the content of the law was restricted to the pollution prevention; (3) revised-improvement stage (1999-2017). The MEPL was revised many times, a series of supporting regulations were issued by the SC and its departments, and some local legislation was established by the the Local People’s Congress and its Standing Committee, which finally constructed basic framework of China’s marine ecological environment protection legal system. The content began to consider marine ecological protection; (4) deepen-promotion stage (2017 to present). The marine legislation aims to further deepen marine pollution prevention and control and marine ecological protection, and the MEPL is about to start a new round of revision.”

 

• In the para. 2 of Introduction, the authors have further explained the “Blue Sea 2020” special action including the issuing authorities and implementation scope, as follows:

“In practice, the China Coast Guard jointly with Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Environment, Transport carried out the “Blue Sea 2020” special law enforcement action for marine ecological environmental protection in coastal provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, and achieved fruitful results.”

 

(4) In the section 4.2, the authors give a further explanation for the daily penalty provisions of MEPL, which illustrating the penalty objects, implementation scope and authority departments. Notable, the daily penalty is applicable to any polluting marine violations which appearing one of the four situations stipulated by the Article 73 of MEPL, naturally including the land-based activities that pollute the sea, as long as violating one of the four situations. As to the polluter or perpetrator, the MEPL doesn’t specify the objects, which is not good for the law enforcement, and this problem have be stated in the section 5.2.3 and section 6.1.3. In addition, the departments empowered by the MEPL have been changed because of the 2018 institutional reforms of the State Council, which has been explained in the added content.

Table 3. Daily Penalty Provisions of MEPL

	Penalty Objects	Implementation Scopes	Applicable Situations	Authority Departments
Daily Penalty	Indefinite	Polluting marine violations	Four situations	Departments which conducting marine environment supervision and control

 

“Notable, MEPL as the top-level marine law was issued by the national legislature NPCSC, in which the daily penalty provisions apply to any polluting marine violations appearing one of the four situations in the nationwide. Furthermore, before the 2018 institutional reforms of the SC, the authorities of marine environment supervision are the SOA and the departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision and control under the coastal local people's governments at or above the county level. The work of enforcing law is a specifically undertaken by the Chinese maritime supervision section affiliated thereto. After the reforms, the marine environment supervision is in charge of the Ecology and Environment Ministry at the central level, and the local ecological administrative organs (Ecological Environment Bureau). In 2021, Coast Guard Law was formulated by the NPCSC, and the coast guard agencies, uniformly perform the duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement.”

 

(5) In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy (additional a Table 1) in the para. 2 of revised Introduction:

“After years of layout and construction, China’s marine governance system has experienced a development process from weak to strong. Since the promulgation of the MEPL of the People’s Republic of China in 1982, China has issued a series of marine governance policies. The policies take the five-year plan for marine economic development as the node, issued by the State Council (SC), which is the Central People's Government of China, and can be roughly divided into six stages: the germination, the establishment stage, the steady advancement stage, the deepening adjustment stage, the strategic development stage and the strategic updating stage (see Table 1). Obviously China’s marine governance system is a huge and complex project with some progress such as diversity of participants and policy tools, from ex-post control to ex-ante control, especially the principle of green priority.”

 

Table 1. Evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy.

Stage	Progress	Characteristics
1982-2000 Scattered Policies	Germination	Ex-post control (pollution control); Single policy tool (administrative means)
2001-2005 (The 10th Five-Year Plan)	Establishment	Shifted to ex-ante control (dynamic monitoring); Increased policy tools (economy means)
2006-2010 (The 11th Five-Year Plan)	Steady Advancement	Expanded governance scope; Increased policy tools (legal means)
2011-2015 (The 12th Five-Year Plan)	Deepening Adjustment	Ex-ante control (risk prevention and control); Diversity of policy tools
2016-2020 (The 13th Five-Year Plan)	Strategic Development	Coordinated land and marine; Diversity of participants
2021-2025 (The 14th Five-Year Plan)	Strategic Upgrading	Regional coordinated development; Green low carbon development

 

 

2. The aims and objectives of your study/investigation are not very clear. Is the MEPL covering exclusively pollution (point- and/or non-point?) or is pollution specifically the focus of your investigation? How about other environmental aspects? E.g. IUU fishing; overfishing, marine conservation, were these dealt with in the context of the law? Or are you are reviewing the law specifically from the viewpoint of pollution prevention and control? This should be clearly mentioned, as it provides part of your “methods” and “selection criteria”. In each case, you need to establish better in Introduction what is the focus of your Article, the need for a better implementation of the penalty system, i.e. enforcement, who is responsible, what is the gap in this, etc.

Response: Many thanks for comments. As a comprehensive law, the current Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL) includes two parts: pollution prevention and control, and ecological protection, which mainly focusing on pollution prevention and control (see Table 2). However, the daily penalty provisions of MEPL only applies to the four situations of polluting marine violations (see Article 73), which no extending to violations of marine ecological protection. Therefore, this paper holds that the daily penalty of MEPL actually exists some defects and needs to be improved in the coming revision of MEPL. The revised section 5.2 details the deficiencies of daily penalty provisions in MEPL and the revised section 6 states how to perfect the daily penalty clause of MEPL and extend the application of daily penalty in the marine field. In addition, in order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to present the theoretical approach, the problem and a clear objective:

“The problem is that, although the daily penalty has made progress since introduced to the marine law, it still contradicts with the fact of severe marine ecological environment situation. It is far from enough for a thorough response to protect marine environment by the original intention as the “strict enforcement”, and reflects the system design of daily penalty needing to be improved. For example, the daily penalty of MEPL only applies to the four situations of polluting marine violations, with no covering all violations of polluting marine, and no extending to other marine ecological protection such as IUU fishing, overfishing, over-exploitation of marine resources and marine conservation. Therefore, the key issue is how to take the opportunity of the coming MEPL revision, to formulate a reasonable structure of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system. After all, “a sound legal system of marine environmental protection is an important prerequisite for orderly promotion of marine comprehensive utilization and sustainable development”. [17]”

“This article mainly applies normative and comparative analysis. Under the normative analysis approach, this research centers on article 73 of MEPL, which is the top-level marine legislation of China, macroscopically reviewing the daily penalty provisions. Then, it microscopically carries out in-depth analysis of specific norms of daily penalty in local marine protection legislation. Furthermore, this paper also uses a comparative analysis. Besides a comparison with the foreign legislative experiences, it focuses on the China’s internal comparative analysis, which exploring the daily penalty compared with other environmental legislation at the same level and between local marine legislation. These discussions will have great reference values for the improvement of daily penalty system in the future.”

 

3. “From local legislation to national law” (L164-165): This is a very interesting point, relevant also with the “community” scope of the special issue and requires extra elaboration and foregrounding in the article. What was the situation before the introduction of the law? Did every region/prefecture have its own law, and were there issues with dealing effectively with pollution incidents because of this fragmentation? Did the introduction of the law aim to fix these problems? Elaborate.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added a new section to illustrate the origin of daily penalty. Especially add the legislation history of daily penalty in China, stating the daily penalty how to become the national law from the local legislation. The added content is in the revised section 3, as follows:

“The daily penalty in China first appeared in the local legislation. Chongqing Municipal Environmental Protection Ordinance (2007 Revision) was the first to put daily penalties into effect. Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Environmental Protection Regulation (2009 Revision) was the second to adopt the daily penalties. One year following the implementation of the daily penalty system in Shenzhen city, the rectification rate of enterprises facing environmental violations had increased by 30%. In Chongqing city, enterprises’ voluntary rectification rate raised from 4.8% in 2007 to 95.5% in 2014 following seven years of implementation [29]. Further, environmental regulations in Hebei, Ningxia, and other regions successively proposed the daily penalty. However, lack of the superior law’s authorization, the daily penalty provisions differed in different regions and became “zombie regulations” [30].”

Fortunately, encouraged by the successful experiences of local legislation, the central authorities began to concern and discuss the introduction of daily penalty. Going through several processes of initial proposal, intermediate deletion, multiple deliberations, and final into the law, the daily penalty was clearly defined in the Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (EPL) in 2014 and become a national legal responsibility. Article 59 stipulates the daily penalty clause as: where any enterprise, public institution, or other business is fined and ordered to make correction for illegally discharging pollutants but refuses to make correction, the administrative agency legally making the punishment decision may impose continuous fines on it in the amount of the original fine for each day from the next day after it is ordered to make correction [31]. Obviously, China specifically establishes a preventive correction mechanism before starting a daily penalty. If the lawbreakers correct the violations, they won’t be imposed daily penalty. In the same year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (dissolved) deliberated and adopted the Measures for the Implementation by Competent Environmental Protection Departments of Consecutive Daily Penalties (hereinafter referred to as Daily Penalties Implementation Measures), standardizing the scope of application, implementation procedures, methods of calculating penalties, and other specific contents. The application of daily penalty is limited to five types of illegally polluting discharge violations as discharging pollutants beyond the standards or the total volume, illegally discharging pollutants by means to avoid supervision, discharging pollutants as prohibited discharging by laws and regulations, illegally dumping hazardous wastes and other acts as illegally discharging pollutants [32]. The 2014 EPL and the Daily Penalties Implementation Measures provides the legal basis and specific guideline for other environmental laws and local regulations, and empowers the local regulations to increase the types of illegal acts subject to continuous daily fines based on the actual needs for environmental protection. For example, the daily penalty was respectively introduced in the 2016 MEPL, 2015 Atmospheric Pollution Prevention and Control Law (APPCL) and the 2017 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law (WPPCL).”

 

4. Is it a matter of amendment of existing legislation (i.e. absence or relevant provisions to deal with the topic), policy fragmentation across institutions/vertical/horizontal fragmentation; or a matter of better control and enforcement? (Provisions are actually there but not properly enforced?). All of the above? A critical review of policy addresses such aspects.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The daily penalty is actually a legal liability provision of the Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL). Although after being introduced into the law, the daily penalty has made some progress, it is not properly enforced in marine practice. That is mainly due to rather concise and vague content, which causing that the deterrent effect of the daily penalty is not fully brought into play. Under the proper time of MEPL revision, many law enforcers of local environment protection and experts all mention the legal liability of one of the key points in this revision. The authors hold that the daily penalty as the deterrent enforcement design, should be widely used, not limited to the four situations of polluting marine violations. Hence, this paper mainly aims to discuss the deficiencies of daily penalty provisions of MEPL, and proposes corresponding improvement suggestions, which to a better control and enforcement.

 

5. Statements require sources and/or data to substantiate (e.g. improvement in cases of sand and gravel extraction vessels detained; improvement in water quality, etc.); Underlying data analysis for table 1, etc.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors can ensure that the data source of this article is true and reliable. For example, the resource of the improvement in cases of sand and gravel extraction vessels comes from the official notification from China Maritime Police Bureau. The resource of improvement in water quality comes from the Report on China’s Marine Ecological Environment in 2020 issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China. The data analysis for the original Figure 1 comes from the specialized legal database of Peking University, an authoritative and comprehensive database in China. In order to address the reviewer’s comment and make the readers completely accept, the authors have added the source in the places which needing to state.

 

6. Key terminology and legal jargon needs to be fixed and streamlined throughout the manuscript. 

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors have fixed and streamlined the key terminology and legal jargon as follows:

 “Marine Environment Protection Law” =“MEPL”;

 “Environment Protection LAW” = ”EPL” ;

“National People’s Congress” = “NPC”

“Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress” = “NPCSC”

“State Council” = “SC”

“Environmental and Resources Protection Committee” = “ERPC”

“Atmospheric Pollution Prevention and Control Law” = “APPCL”

“Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law” = “WPPCL”

“Marine and Maritime Administrative Penalty Regulations” = “MMAPR” 

 

Section- and Line-specific comments:

Introduction

 

1. L55-69: More than describing these, critically review what these statements highlight with reference to gaps in policy.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The content of this paragraph only describes some proposals about the legal liability of in the next revision of Marine Environment Protection Law by some authority figures, which actually having no great importance in the expressing the core view of this paper. So, the authors have deleted it in revised Introduction.

2. L69-81: Unclear. Important to clarify to which sectors the penalty system applies and what is your focus. Important to provide more content as to how it is set, where it applies, who is fined etc. Marine pollution from vessels? From land-based activities? Penalty at a vessel level? How is this enforced and which are the competent agencies?

Response: Many thanks for comments. This part just briefly summarizes when and how the daily penalty is incorporated into the Marine Environment Protection Law. As to where it applies, who is fined and how is this enforced and which are the competent agencies, the above issues have been illustrated at length in revised section 4.2. In addition, the authors have added the problem and aim of this paper in this part to make the Introduction clear.

3. L105-106: How do these two differ, and what does a more protection focus entail and guarantee better with reference to the enforcement of law, and the fine system that is the scope of your investigation?

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors just explain the content changes of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL) from the promulgation to now, and makes people understand that the MEPL has always focused on pollution prevention and control, and later added the marine ecological protection which occupying not heavy proportion. That can be seen clearly in the revised Table 2 (original Table 1). This paper mainly reviews the daily penalty of the MEPL, the content of the original L105-106 just provides a legal background for the daily penalty, not the main part. So the authors have no detailed distinction between the two. If we do that, a minor issue may take precedence over a major one.

More content is needed on overarching scope of the Law, and the criteria you use to assess your key research questions (i.e. why you review the specific provisions, etc)

Response: Many thanks for comments. The MEPL only includes the marine ecological protection and pollution prevention and control, besides the general provisions, supervision and control over the marine environment, legal liabilities and supplementary provisions. The original L105-106 has summarized the general characteristics of China’s marine legislation. As to the reason why this paper reviews the specific provisions is that the daily penalty system and the revision of MEPL are the hot points in the current China. Meanwhile, the daily penalty is also stipulated in the Article 73 of MEPL. Therefore, the authors came up with the idea of discussing how to improve the daily penalty of MEPL. Then, this paper carries out to focus on the Article 73 of MEPL.

4. L101-107 and Table 1: More than mentioning that the Act succeeds in doing so, important to specify how it does that, through which provisions, and what these provisions do etc.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to explain every revised situation, and increased the content on number of revised items every modification and their proportion in the total from the Table 2 (original Table 1). Notable, the authors don’t unfold the revised provisions because the Table 2 have fully expressed the changed content and characteristics of every revision. If we do that, the expansion on these provisions won’t be beneficial to the expression of the discussed content.

“The MEPL of 1982 was completely a law on marine pollution prevention and control, and established the keynote of China’s MEPL with the mainly pollution prevention and control. The MEPL of 1999 added two new chapters, and modified almost all provisions of the whole law, which began to consider marine ecological protection. The 2013 MEPL only revised the Article 43, 54 and 80. The 2016 MEPL amended 19 articles, in which Article 73 is the daily penalty clause. The 2017 MEPL just modified two articles of 30 and 77. (see Table 2)”

5. L112-113: Statement unclear. To which revision do you refer? Consider rephrasing

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have cleared the time of the MEPL revision, as follows:

“In 2022, the MEPL will start a new revision.”

6. L116; L117: What is the role of the council, or the State Oceanic Administration in the framework of the Act? These things need to be explained more critically and in more detail.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to further explain the role of the State Council (SC) and the State Oceanic Administration in the para. 1 of revised section 2.2:

    “The SC as the Central People’s Government, is the highest organ of state administration in China. On 13th March 2018, the fourth plenary session of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) resolved that, according to, the SC's Proposal for Reviewing the Reform Scheme of the SC's Institutions, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) was no longer retained. [23] The SOA was originally the state oceanic administrative department responsible for the supervision and control over the marine environment, organize survey, surveillance, supervision, assessment and scientific research of the marine environment.”

7. L121-123: How did this change, into what way and how did it result in a need for the amendment of the Act?

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to further explain how and in what way this reform changed the China’s marine environmental protection and management mechanism and result in a need for the amendment of the Act in the para. 1 of revised section 2.2:

    “That has changed China’s marine environment protection and management mechanism from “integrated management” to “decentralized management” [24]. The central government centralizes the functional departments of marine affairs, and the marine management and law enforcement forces are scattered to multiple departments. This institutional reform has changed the division of responsibilities of marine administrative departments and should be translated into legal safeguards in a timely manner. So the amendment of MEPL is necessary. [25]”

8. L123-124: Superficial. It is clear that there is central political will, but how this is to be implemented is not discussed.

Response: Many thanks for comments. This inspection was the special supervision on the implementation of MEPL by the national legislature “Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC)”. Although it was the practice of the central political will of building a maritime power, it was also a legal practice survey before the legislature revising the law, which is the direct reason of starting a new revision of MEPL. Therefore, it was not only a political act. After the sentence of original L123-124, this paper has begun to state how to implement the revision of MEPL. Notable, the latest progress of the MEPL revision is that the MEPL has been listed in the legislative work plan of 2022. The authors have created the following table to make the implementation of MEPL revision more clear.

Proposing to be included in the annual legislative work plan of NPC

 

Proposing to initiate the revision procedure

Listed in he legislative work plan of 2022

    

Proposing a bill

Start the revision work

 

 

 

9. L125: More than stating that the report said that the marine environment should be protected, critically assess how it aimed to do that, and in this context, what was the “strictest legal system”.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The reason why the authors state that the marine environment should be protected by using the “strictest legal system” is to reflect the basic attitude of the inspection group to the MEPL revision. The daily penalty discussed in this paper is exactly a system design of legal liability of the MEPL, which is strongly consistent with the attitude of the law enforcement inspection group. This part just provided a basic background why the current MEPL needs to be revised, especially the daily penalty clause. The emphasis on the “strictest legal system” here is to explain that the laws and regulations on marine ecological environment protection are not perfect and urgently need to be improved, it may contain many aspects such as revising the MEPL, introducing supporting laws and regulations, improving the standards of marine environmental quality and the discharge of pollutants into the sea, etc. That is not the main point to be debated in this paper, and may need another article to analyse in detail. If do that in the future, we hope to have the opportunity to submit it to you for review. So we do hope the reviewer can understand. 

10. L131-133: what were such suggestions? How was this stakeholder engagement performed? Who are the relevant departments?

Response: Many thanks for comments. This information came from the official notification on the official website of the National People’s Congress (NPC). Unfortunately, the official notification had not provided the specific suggestions, the relevant departments and the way how the stakeholder engagement performed. We do hope the reviewer can understand. Meanwhile, the authors hold this issue doesn’t affect the article, because this part is to illustrate the progress of revising the MEPL, and the provided information has achieved this aim. 

 

Daily penalty provisions

This section starts making some more sense, but again key notions and concepts need to be better described and contextualised.

Response: Many thanks for comments.

1. Who are such violators? Individual vessels?

Response: Many thanks for comments. The Article 73 of Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL) has not regulate the violators, which is not beneficial to the marine law enforcement, and may cause confusion in law enforcement. The authors persist that the indeterminacy of violators is a serious problem and states it by different judicial decisions in practice in revised section 5.2.3. Further, the authors have given the answer in revised section 6.1.3. It can be reasonably inferred that the punishment object of the daily penalty should be “any subject” such as unit, individual, and vessels. Meanwhile, the Article 38 of the Marine and Maritime Administrative Penalty Regulations (MMAPR) of 2021 further defines the punishment objects of daily penalties as a vessel’s owner, operator, or manager.

2. L141-143: Who are the department empowered by the Law? Such things need to be clearly described throughout the manuscript.

Response: Many thanks for comments. As suggested by the reviewer, the authors have explained that the authority departments are those which conducting marine environment supervision and control in the revised Table 3. In addition, the departments empowered by the MEPL have been changed because of the 2018 institutional reforms of the State Council, which has been explained in the added content in the revised section 4.2:

“Furthermore, before the 2018 institutional reforms of the SC, the authorities of marine environment supervision are the SOA and the departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision and control under the coastal local people's governments at or above the county level. The work of enforcing law is a specifically undertaken by the Chinese maritime supervision section affiliated thereto. After the reforms, the marine environment supervision is in charge of the Ecology and Environment Ministry at the central level, and the local ecological administrative organs (Ecological Environment Bureau). In 2021, Coast Guard Law was formulated by the NPCSC, and the coast guard agencies, uniformly perform the duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement.”

3. L141-144: More precision and elaboration required as to what each of these entails (what sort of corrective action? What time limit?

Response: Many thanks for comments. Before imposed a daily penalty, the violators can obtain one time of correction opportunity. If the violators have corrected the illegal act following the environment protection organs order, they shall not be punished continuously on a daily basis. This is the characteristic of China’s daily penalty. That has been added in the revised section 3. In China, the order correction is an administrative order, not an administrative penalty. The forms of correction stipulated in the MEPL include the measures of stopping the illegal act, taking corrective action within a prescribed time limit, ordering the violator to take such measures as restricting production, or suspending production for rectification etc. Stopping the illegal act is that the polluters no continuing of polluting marine violations. The sort of corrective action and time limit is indefinite, which is decided by different environment protection organs. Another two measures are specially regulated by the Measures for the Implementation by Competent Environmental Protection Departments of Limiting and Halting Production for Remediation. Article 73 of MEPL has been the whole content expression of the daily penalty provisions, and the order correction is just one implement condition of starting a daily penalty. So the authors have not more precision and elaboration on each measure.

4. Information is required on: who is the authority responsible for controlling pollution incidents? Is it national and or regional? Is there a fragmentation between different authorities? i.e. is the authority responsible for policy development the same as policy implementation? Are they different that the control and enforcement authorities?

Response: Many thanks for comments. In China, the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee are the national legislatures, owning the national legislative power; the Local People’s Congress and its Standing Committee are the local legislatures, owning the local legislative power. The Marine Environment Protection Law belongs to a law, its revision is determined by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The enforcement departments empowered by the MEPL have been changed because of the 2018 institutional reforms of the State Council. The authors have addressed the reviewer’s comment in the revised section 4.2:

“Notable, MEPL as the top-level marine law, was issued by the national legislature NPCSC, in which the daily penalty provisions apply to any polluting marine violations appearing one of the four situations in the nationwide. Furthermore, before the 2018 institutional reforms of the SC, the authorities of marine environment supervision are the SOA and the departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision and control under the coastal local people's governments at or above the county level. The work of enforcing law is a specifically undertaken by the Chinese maritime supervision section affiliated thereto. After the reforms, the marine environment supervision is in charge of the Ecology and Environment Ministry at the central level, and the local ecological administrative organs (Ecological Environment Bureau). In 2021, Coast Guard Law was formulated by the NPCSC, and the coast guard agencies, uniformly perform the duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement.”

5. L163: be specific about “early … century”

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to make the the text smooth, the authors have deleted this sentence, and added the specific time of China’s first introducing daily penalty in para. 2 of revised section 3:

    “The daily penalty in China first appeared in the local legislation. Chongqing Municipal Environmental Protection Ordinance (2007 Revision) was the first to put daily penalties into effect.”

6. L164-165: “from local legislation to national law”. This is a very interesting point and requires extra elaboration and foregrounding earlier in the article. What was the situation before the introduction of the law? Did every region/prefecture have its own law, and were there issues with dealing effectively with pollution incidents because of this fragmentation? Did the introduction of the law aim to fix these problems? Elaborate.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added a new section to illustrate the origin of the daily penalty. Especially add the legislation history of daily penalty in China, stating the daily penalty how to become the national law from the local legislation. The added content is in revised section 3, as follows:

“The daily penalty in China first appeared in the local legislation. Chongqing Municipal Environmental Protection Ordinance (2007 Revision) was the first to put daily penalties into effect. Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Environmental Protection Regulation (2009 Revision) was the second to adopt the daily penalties. One year following the implementation of the daily penalty system in Shenzhen city, the rectification rate of enterprises facing environmental violations had increased by 30%. In Chongqing city, enterprises’ voluntary rectification rate raised from 4.8% in 2007 to 95.5% in 2014 following seven years of implementation [29]. Further, environmental regulations in Hebei, Ningxia, and other regions successively proposed the daily penalty. However, lack of the superior law’s authorization, the daily penalty provisions differed in different regions and became “zombie regulations” [30].”

Fortunately, encouraged by the successful experiences of local legislation, the central authorities began to concern and discuss the introduction of daily penalty. Going through several processes of initial proposal, intermediate deletion, multiple deliberations, and final into the law, the daily penalty was clearly defined in the Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (EPL) in 2014 and become a national legal responsibility. Article 59 stipulates the daily penalty clause as: where any enterprise, public institution, or other business is fined and ordered to make correction for illegally discharging pollutants but refuses to make correction, the administrative agency legally making the punishment decision may impose continuous fines on it in the amount of the original fine for each day from the next day after it is ordered to make correction. [31] Obviously, China specifically establishes a preventive correction mechanism before starting a daily penalty. If the lawbreakers correct the violations, they won’t be imposed daily penalty. In the same year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (dissolved) deliberated and adopted the Measures for the Implementation by Competent Environmental Protection Departments of Consecutive Daily Penalties (hereinafter referred to as Daily Penalties Implementation Measures), standardizing the scope of application, implementation procedures, methods of calculating penalties, and other specific contents. The application of daily penalty is limited to five types of illegally polluting discharge violations as discharging pollutants beyond the standards or the total volume, illegally discharging pollutants by means to avoid supervision, discharging pollutants as prohibited discharging by laws and regulations, illegally dumping hazardous wastes and other acts as illegally discharging pollutants. [32] The 2014 EPL and the Daily Penalties Implementation Measures provides the legal basis and specific guideline for other environmental laws and local regulations, and empowers the local regulations to increase the types of illegal acts subject to continuous daily fines based on the actual needs for environmental protection. For example, the daily penalty was respectively introduced in the 2016 MEPL, 2015 Atmospheric Pollution Prevention and Control Law (APPCL) and the 2017 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law (WPPCL).”

7. Conoco Oil spill: Here it becomes evident that the Law deals with vessels. This should have been clearly stated early in the article and not inferred by the reader.

Response: Many thanks for comments. Exactly due to the ConocoPhillips oil spill accident, the Chinese people clearly realize that, the legal cost of polluting marine violations is rather low in China, and the relevant marine law needs to be revised. The ConocoPhillips oil spill accident is the direct factor to result in the new revision of MEPL. The revised section 4.1 is a special part of analyzing the legal factors of the daily penalty. It is proper to place this accident in revised section 4.1. The concern here is not the vessels. Further, the objects of the daily penalty of MEPL is rather an important issue, so the authors have analyzed the objects of the daily penalty in other sections such as the Table 3 of section 4.2, section 5.2.3 and section 6.1.3.

8. L170-172: Interesting comparison and good to mention that it was this incident that led to the change in the legal framework. Provide the Yuan to Dollar equivalents for both figures for the reader to have a frame of reference and make the comparison.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors have provided the the Yuan to Dollar equivalents for both figures for the reader to have a frame of reference, and further revised the content of the two accidents and marine laws in China and U.S. for the better comparison, as suggested by the reviewer:

    “ConocoPhillips finally paid more than RMB 2 billion, integrating a total amount of administrative fines, administrative coordination compensation and civil coordination. A similar oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 had resulted in a fine of $ 20.8 billion (RMB 140 billion, according to the exchange rate of RMB to USD in 2010, USD 1 was about RMB 6.7704) [35]. The disparity in fines is mainly due to the different legal remedies for oil pollution accidents between China and U.S.. According to the MEPL at that time, the maximum fine for such a serious marine pollution accident was only RMB 300,000. The 1990 Oil Pollution Act in the U.S. had long stipulated a civil penalty of no more than $ 25000 (RMB 160,000 in 2010) per day. If the responsible enterprise was found to have gross negligence, intent or fraud, the civil compensation limit of $ 75 million (RMB 500 million in 2010) stipulated by the act would be abolished.”

9. So first major amendment was the change in the ceiling of the penalty system. To whom is the penalty imposed? Is there a polluter pay principle in Chinese law? i.e how is the polluter to do corrective actions in case of the oil spill?

Response: Many thanks for comments.

(1) Before the 2016 amendment of Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL), the ceiling of the penalty system in MEPL was RMB 300,000 stipulated as follows: Any unit that violates the provisions of this Law, causing thus pollution accident to the marine environment, shall be fined by the interested department empowered by the provisions of this Law to conduct marine environment supervision and control according to the degree of the damage and losses incurred; The amount of fine mentioned in the preceding paragraph shall be so calculated that it amounts to 30 per cent of the direct losses, but shall not exceed RMB 300,000. From the above provisions, the ceiling of RMB 300,000 is applicable to any unit. The MEPL (2016 revision) had canceled the ceiling of RMB 300,000 and added the daily penalty provisions, so the daily penalty can be used with no limiting in frequencies. We can say that, the amount of daily penalty has no the limit of maximum, which largely raising the illegal costs of polluting marine violations, and this is the significant meaning of introducing the daily penalty in MEPL.

(2) Although the previous provision of the ceiling of the penalty system in MEPL applied to any unit, this provision was aimed at the violations of causing pollution accident to the marine environment. The daily penalty clause also regulates other three situations, besides the violations of causing pollution accident to the marine environment. The daily penalty clause in MEPL has no definite penalty objects. The violators of other situations may include either unit, personal, or vessel. So we can infer that the daily penalty can be imposed on any subject such as unit, personal, and vessel. The authors have analyzed the objects of the daily penalty in other sections such as the Table 3 of section 4.2, section 5.2.3 and section 6.1.3.

(3) There is a polluter pay principle in Chinese law. The formulated Environment Protection Law (For Trial Implementation) in 1979 had established the pollutant discharge fees system, and the State Council issued the Regulation on the Administration of Collection and Use of Pollutant Discharge Fees in 2003. The Regulation on the Implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law was issued by the State Council in 2018, which repealing the Regulation on the Administration of Collection and Use of Pollutant Discharge Fees. From then on, the pollutant discharge fees levied by the environment departments have been changed to the environmental protection tax levied by tax departments. The pollutant discharge fees and environmental protection tax, both are the embodiment of the polluter pay principle. In China, the pollutant discharge fees and environmental protection tax are administrative expropriations, the daily penalty is an administrative penalty. The two belong to different administrative behaviors, limited by the length of the text, so the authors have not conduct a comparison between the two. If do that in the future, we hope to have the opportunity to submit it to you for review. So we do hope the reviewer can understand.

(4) Pityingly, the MEPL have not regulated the concrete corrective action to show the polluter to do in case of the oil spill, which only stipulating that in the course of offshore petroleum exploration and exploitation as well as oil transportation, effective measures must be taken to avoid occurrence of oil spill. The Regulations of Concerning Environmental Protection in Offshore Oil Exploration and Exploitation has ruled how to prevent the oil spill, which no including the daily penalty provisions. So the authors have not stated this aspect.

10. L179-187: Here it becomes evident that the two are different laws. However, it is not clear how the MEPL came to amend the EPL and specifically the maritime sector and the penalty system thereon in particular.

Response: Many thanks for comments. (1) In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the relationship between the EPL and MEPL in the para. 4 of revised section 4.1:

“The EPL is a basic and comprehensive law in the environment field, and the MEPL is a comprehensive law in marine environmental protection. Both of them are reviewed and adopted by the NPCSC, equally effective from the legal level. However, the two actually have an inclusive relationship from three aspects: (1) the applicable scope. The EPL shall apply to the territory of the People's Republic of China, and other sea areas under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China, which naturally includes the applicable scope of the MEPL; (2) the protected objects. The protected objects of the EPL is “environment”, which means the entirety of all natural elements and artificially transformed natural elements that affect the survival and development of human beings, including seas, water, air, land and so on; (3) the required content. In terms of marine environmental protection, the EPL has made principled and general provisions, while the MEPL has made specific provisions [41]. Hence, the EPL is the general law, and the MEPL is the special law. Under the principle that special law is superior to general law, if there is any discrepancy between the MEPL and the EPL, the MEPL shall prevail.”

 

• In addition, the daily penalties in the MEPL did not replicate the EPL but made extension to the basic provisions of the EPL. The authors have detailed this view from three aspects in revised section 4.3: first, new application situations were established. Second, classification sets the penalty base of daily penalty. Finally, a fine as the penalty base cannot be used singularly. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the daily penalty provisions of the EPL and the Daily Continuous Penalties Measures in para. 3 of revised section 3:

“Article 59 stipulates the daily penalty clause as: where any enterprise, public institution, or other business is fined and ordered to make correction for illegally discharging pollutants but refuses to make correction, the administrative agency legally making the punishment decision may impose continuous fines on it in the amount of the original fine for each day from the next day after it is ordered to make correction [31].”

“The application of daily penalty is limited to five types of illegally polluting discharge violations as discharging pollutants beyond the standards or the total volume, illegally discharging pollutants by means to avoid supervision, discharging pollutants as prohibited discharging by laws and regulations, illegally dumping hazardous wastes and other acts as illegally discharging pollutants [32].”

11. “Marine ecological civilisation” unclear what is meant.

Response: Many thanks for comments. Political policies in China have an important bearing on its legislation, and in return powerful legal rules are indispensable to the effective implementation of political policies. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have modified the content of “political factor” part and explained the meaning of marine ecological civilization as follows:

“the political factor is positively responding to the legislative requirements of marine ecological civilization and protect the marine ecological environment through the strictest legal system [36,37]. The marine ecological civilization is an essential part of China’s ecological civilization construction, which was first proposed by the General Secretary Xi Jinping of Chinese Communist Party, and belonged to the socialism with Chinese characteristics. Marine ecological civilization is a complete system containing strategic position of marine ecology, marine ecosystem governance, green development of marine ecology, legal construction of marine ecology and global cooperation in marine ecology [38]. Daily penalty system further clarifies the legal liability of marine environmental protection. The consecutive fines with no capping, have drawn a red line of strict accountability for the restoration of the damaged marine ecological environment.”

12. I do not follow the reason in the number sequence first, second, third.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors have added a scientific factor, and readjusted the number sequence of the reason in revised section 4.1 as follows: (1) direct factor; (2) political factor; (3) scientific factor; (4) main factor.

“Third, the scientific factor is to improve the enterprises’ compliance rate and total factor productivity, which promoting marine sustainable development. The daily penalty ties the fine amount to the duration of violation, and increases the costs of illegal pollution discharge by accumulating the daily illegal cost to guide enterprises’ pollution behavior toward legal conformity and improve the compliance rate. Furthermore, a study suggests that, daily penalty system stimulates the innovation compensation effect of enterprises through the high dynamic penalty mode, and eliminates high polluting and inefficient enterprises in the industry to improve the enterprises’ productivity [39]. In the long run, daily penalty is a tool for environmental regulation that advances sustainable development, turning anti-pollution treatment from an “external compulsion” of environmental regulation into enterprises’ “internal demand” for continued survival and development [40]. Therefore, the introduction of daily penalty is conducive to achieving a win-win situation of marine economic growth and green development.”

 

New Regulations and Reasons for Daily Penalties

 

1. L198: what do you mean by“new applications”

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors intend to express the innovative regulations of MEPL, different from the current law and regulation. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the relevant content of daily penalty provisions of EPL and Daily Penalties Implementation Measures for better comparison in para. 3 of revised section 3:

“Article 59 stipulates the daily penalty clause as: where any enterprise, public institution, or other business is fined and ordered to make correction for illegally discharging pollutants but refuses to make correction, the administrative agency legally making the punishment decision may impose continuous fines on it in the amount of the original fine for each day from the next day after it is ordered to make correction [31]. Obviously, China specifically establishes a preventive correction mechanism before starting a daily penalty. If the lawbreakers correct the violations, they won’t be imposed daily penalty. In the same year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (dissolved) deliberated and adopted the Measures for the Implementation by Competent Environmental Protection Departments of Consecutive Daily Penalties (hereinafter referred to as Daily Penalties Implementation Measures), standardizing the scope of application, implementation procedures, methods of calculating penalties, and other specific contents. The application of daily penalty is limited to five types of illegally polluting discharge violations as discharging pollutants beyond the standards or the total volume, illegally discharging pollutants by means to avoid supervision, discharging pollutants as prohibited discharging by laws and regulations, illegally dumping hazardous wastes and other acts as illegally discharging pollutants [32]. The 2014 EPL and the Daily Penalties Implementation Measures provides the legal basis and specific guideline for other environmental laws and local regulations, and empowers the local regulations to increase the types of illegal acts subject to continuous daily fines based on the actual needs for environmental protection.” 

2. -L201-203: what are some examples of these cases (applying for a permit, and not being granted one) to demonstrate limitations in policy implementation and/or needs for additional enforcement and control?

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added two examples. Notable, the revised section 4.3 emphasizes the analysis on the innovative regulations, especially compared to the EPL. Meanwhile, the added two examples are the concrete manifestation of Article 73. Therefore, the authors have taken two examples to demonstrate the deterrent effect of daily penalty in revised section 4.2. The “Beihai City” case proved the deterrence of heave punishment on the violator. The “Zhongshan City” case checked the deterrence of prevention on the violator. The two cases fully verified that the daily penalty were better for enforcement and control on the marine polluting violations. Examples are as the following in the last paragraph of revised section 4.2:

“Taking an administrative penalty in Beihai City as an example, a firm discharged water pollutants in excess of standards, which violated the item (2) of paragraph 1, Article 73 of MEPL. The ecological environmental bureau imposed a fine of RMB 60,000, ordering to halt discharging water pollutants out of standards. The firm refused to correct and continued the violation, leading the administrative organs to initiate a daily penalty. The final fines were equal to RMB 60,000 multiplied by 13 days, a total of RMB 780,000. The measure directly increased the illegal cost by 12 times, severely penalizing the firm’s malicious pollution behavior [44]. In addition, a firm in Zhongshan City carried out marine dumping operations without obtaining a permit for dumping wastes into the sea. The law enforcers imposed a fine of RMB 80,000 in according with the item (3) of paragraph 1, Article 73 of MEPL. The firm stopped work immediately for rectification, then the law enforcers didn’t start a daily penalty on it. That, mainly owed to the preventive deterrence of daily penalty [45].”

3. L203-204: what are “units” or “individuals”? what are cases of emergencies and pollution incidents?

Response: Many thanks for comments. (1) What the authors intending to express is that any violators who failing to take immediate measures to handle any marine environmental pollution accident resulting from any accident or any other emergency may be imposed on a daily penalty. But Article 73 has not regulated the punished objects of the daily penalty. The authors should not infer the objects are possibly any “units” or “individuals”, and the authors have corrected in the revised paper, and changed the “units and individuals” to “violators”.

(2) Pityingly, the MEPL have not regulated the defining standards of emergencies and pollution accidents. However, China has the relevant law and regulations of emergencies and pollution accidents for references such as Emergency Response Law, Provisions on the Investigation and Settlement of Vessel-source Marine Pollution Accidents, Regulations on Investigation and Handling Procedures for Pollution Accidents in Fishery Waters. How the marine relevant competent departments define the emergencies and pollution accidents is a new project involving many aspects, and limited by the article length, the authors have not detailed the cases of emergencies and pollution accidents.

4. L205: what are such cases of immediate measures? How is immediate defined in the context of the law?

Response: Many thanks for comments. Article 17 of the MEPL has regulated the context of immediate measure. The authors have added the following content in para. 1 of revised section 4.3:

    “Item (4) in paragraph 1 of Article 73 refers to obligatory provisions made for violators who failing to take immediate measures to handle any marine environmental pollution accident resulting from any accident or any other emergency. In case of accident or emergency, the violators must take immediate measures to promptly inform all parties that are potentially endangered, report to the department empowered by this Law to conduct marine environment supervision and control and accept investigation and treatment;”

5. How are such pollution incidents established in the law? Who inspects and monitors?

Response: Many thanks for comments. Departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision are responsible to inspect and monitor such pollution incidents. What the departments are, also has been explained in former response as:

“Furthermore, before the 2018 institutional reforms of the SC, the authorities of marine environment supervision are the SOA and the departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision and control under the coastal local people's governments at or above the county level. The work of enforcing law is a specifically undertaken by the Chinese maritime supervision section affiliated thereto. After the reforms, the marine environment supervision is in charge of the Ecology and Environment Ministry at the central level, and the local ecological administrative organs (Ecological Environment Bureau). In 2021, Coast Guard Law was formulated by the NPCSC, and the coast guard agencies, uniformly perform the duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement.”

6. L215: what is the “daily penalty”?

Response: Many thanks for comments. China’s daily penalty is referring to uncapped penalties that seek to adjust the low, static traditional fine approach to a higher dynamic “daily fine” mode. The amount of the daily penalty is accumulated based on the number of days that an enterprise fails to correct illegal pollutant discharge, and punishment intensity increases the cost of continued illegal polluting activity. Exactly in according with the Article 59 of EPL, the MEPL introduces the daily penalty. The “daily penalty” here says the Article 59 of EPL. For better comparison, the authors have added the content of Article 59 of EPL in the para. 3 of revised section 3:

    “Article 59 stipulates the daily penalty clause as: where any enterprise, public institution, or other business is fined and ordered to make correction for illegally discharging pollutants but refuses to make correction, the administrative agency legally making the punishment decision may impose continuous fines on it in the amount of the original fine for each day from the next day after it is ordered to make correction [31].”

7. L226: illegally discharging pollution? Unlcear. When is there a difference between legally and illegally discharging pollution? Consider wording”

Response: Many thanks for comments. “Illegally discharging pollution” referrers to the violations which failing to discharge pollution in accordance with the law and regulations, such as discharging pollutants beyond the pollutant discharge standards. “Legally discharging pollution” is completely following the law and regulations to discharge pollution, such as complying with the pollutant discharge standards. Considering the flow of the article context, the authors have deleted the content of original “L226”.

8. -L226-229: unclear what you established and propose here.

Response: Many thanks for comments. Considering the flow of the article context, the authors have deleted the content of original “L226-238”.

9. -L252-253: administrative punishment. How and by whom is this applied? How did you perform your query in the database? This is important for the analysis, as well as including information on the type of data assessed, type of violations etc., level of aggregation, reporting framework, i.e. some information on data used to develop Table 1.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have rearranged the data information as follows in the para.1 of revised 5.1:

“This research chooses Peking University law database, an authoritative and comprehensive database in China, to investigate the invoking of MEPL by searching the marine administrative penalties cases. Taking the “Marine Environment Protection Law” as the key-term, the database shows the relevant cases from 2008 to 2021 involving the administrative organs at all levels (national, provincial, municipal, county, district). The types of penalty organs include ministry/department/bureau of environment protection, ministry/department/bureau of ecology and environment, ocean bureau, maritime bureau and so on [47].”

10. -L256-257: Which authorities? How does this relate with better monitoring of violations rather than a stringer application of the law?

Response: Many thanks for comments. It is improper use of words here. The authors have modified the “administrative authorities” to “administrative organs”, and explained the specific organs in the added content in the response to comment of “-L252-253”. In addition, the administrative organs have maintained a high application rate of the MEPL (2016 Amendment). That, exactly demonstrates a stringer application of the law, and better cracks down the violations through a widely application of the law.

11. -L275-285: do I understand correct that the MEPL is then implemented at a province level? This should be briefly mentioned. What are some differences in cases of violations between provinces?

Response: Many thanks for comments. (1) The MEPL is a law formulated by the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress, which is implemented at the nationwide.This point has been illustrated in revised section 4.2:

“Notable, MEPL as the top-level marine law, was issued by the national legislature NPCSC, in which the daily penalty provisions apply to any polluting marine violations appearing one of the four situations in the nationwide.”

(2) The authors have added the following content to state the local implementation in the para. 2 of revised section 5.1:

“Significantly, despite the daily penalty of MEPL is a national system, not all coastal provinces and cities have explicitly incorporated the daily penalty provisions.”

• As to some differences in cases of violations between provinces, the authors have detailed in other sections, as follows:

In para. 2 of revised section 6.1.1, “The Dalian Marine Environmental Protection Regulations have extended the applicable scope of the daily penalty to violations of “vessels pollution”: for the vessel garbage, sewage, oily waste water, waste water containing toxic and hazardous substances, waste gas and other pollutants and ballast water discharged by vessels to the ocean within the sea areas of the City, does not conform to the laws, regulations and other relevant provisions, the requirement of discharge standard, giving continuous penalty by the day [62].”

In revised section 6.2, “the 2017 Marine Environmental Protection Regulations of Hainan (Amendment (II)) has detailed the liability content of daily penalties and clearly listed three applicable situations as: (1) discharging mariculture waste-water beyond the standard; (2) discharging solid wastes and waste water into the sea area by units or individuals that lawfully use the sea area or the coast for production and business activities; and (3) entities and vessels engaged in marine catering services and other production, transportation and business activities in the coastal sea area failing to transport the solid wastes and wastewater generated to the land for centralized treatment and discharge into the sea [72].”

 

3.2. Obstacles in implementation

 

1. -L289-291: what do you mean by limited application scope?

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors have readjusted the structure of this article, and redivided the original obstacles into two major aspects. To make the context smooth, the authors have deleted the sentence of “limited application scope”, and changed the original content of L289-291 to the following content:

“Despite substantial progress in the maritime field, daily penalty provisions in MEPL still exist shortcomings, hindering the deterrence in solving China’s maritime problems.”

2. L300-302: This is very interesting, this is why it is important to specify early in the Manuscript, that mostly pollution is dealt with in the current law, not other major issues.

Response: Many thanks for comments. Actually the early section 2 has introduced the legislative process of MEPL, illustrating that the law primarily focus on the prevention and control on pollution. What the daily penalty dealing with is also the violations of polluting marine, not other issues. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content in revised Introduction:

“For example, the daily penalty of MEPL only applies to the four situations of polluting marine violations, with no covering all violations of polluting marine, and no extending to other marine ecological protection such as IUU fishing, overfishing, over-exploitation of marine resources and marine conservation. Therefore, the key issue is how to take the opportunity of the coming MEPL revision, to formulate a reasonable structure of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system.”

3. -L305-306: Only here is it first mentioned who is the inspection authority. What do you mean be grassroots government?

Response: Many thanks for comments. (1) The comment has been responded in former response. The authors have added the inspection authority in revised section 4.2:

“Furthermore, before the 2018 institutional reforms of the SC, the authorities of marine environment supervision are the SOA and the departments empowered to conduct marine environment supervision and control under the coastal local people's governments at or above the county level. The work of enforcing law is a specifically undertaken by the Chinese maritime supervision section affiliated thereto. After the reforms, the marine environment supervision is in charge of the Ecology and Environment Ministry at the central level, and the local ecological administrative organs (Ecological Environment Bureau). In 2021, Coast Guard Law was formulated by the NPCSC, and the coast guard agencies, uniformly perform the duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement.”

• Grassroots government refers to that the government is at the grass-roots level in the structure of state power in China, such as county government, village and township government. In China, one level government consists of many functional departments. In fact, “grassroots government” here in this paper is a catch-all to describe the marine environment protection departments at the grassroots level. To avoid the understanding confusion, the authors have revised the “grassroots government” to “local law enforcers”, as follows:

“the local law enforcers generally reflect that the punishment should be increased.”

4. -L374: “not uniform” Where?

Response: Many thanks for comments. In fact, the statements after the sentence “not uniform” are the concrete manifestation of “not uniform”, and the authors have listed two different judicial decisions because of undefined objects of Article 73. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the summarized sentence after the sentence of “not uniform” as “either the unit, individual or vessel.”

5. Please see comments above and also address in following sections especially “suggestions for future and revision” and “conclusions”.

Response: Many thanks for comments. The authors have made major changes, including to readjust the structures of the article and the content of some sections. We do hope that the revised manuscript has the flow between sections. The answer can be seen from the early response to the comment “(Revise and resubmit)”.

In section “suggestions for future and revision”, the authors have redivided the original suggestions into two major suggestions. Suggestion one is revising the daily penalty provisions of MEPL by such measures as expanding the applicable scope, increasing the daily fine quota and formulating the specific application standards. Suggestion two is improving the daily penalty system in the maritime-specific legislation.

In section “conclusions”, the authors have deleted some contents and rewritten in the para.1 and para. 2:

“The ongoing revision of the MEPL is representative of China’s efforts to promote marine ecological civilization and build its maritime power. One of the crucial points of the revision is about improving the punishment methods and intensity of marine administrative punishment. To achieve a major breakthrough in this regard, revising the daily penalty clause of the MEPL is an inevitable course of action. However, China has not paid enough attention to the construction of daily penalty system in the marine field, and has not conducted comprehensive and systematic research on daily penalties based on the particularity of marine law enforcement. Some scholars have already proposed the establishment of the principle of a daily penalty in the revision of MEPL as the highest conduct code in marine environmental law enforcement and management to better protect China’s marine environmental rights and interests [73]. Therefore, the improvement of daily penalties is a very important new subject in the revision of MEPL.”

“Further, besides revising the daily penalty provisions of MEPL, the improvement and perfection of daily penalty in the marine supporting regulations and local legislation shall be carefully taken into consideration. Especially the daily penalty shall be introduced in the important areas such as fishery, vessels operation, offshore oil exploration and exploitation. Expectantly, the daily penalty will become a wide, regular and effective marine punishment system in China.”

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper analyses the Chinese marine protection legislation system and discusses the flaws observed in this system. It concludes by suggesting improvements in the analysed legal system. The paper presents relevant information that contributes to the improvement of Chinese legislation but lacks in providing overall contributions to the scientific community. The paper needs a more coherent structure and major revisions are needed in order to be published. 

 

The introductory section should present the main theoretical approach, reveal the problem, and then state a clear objective. However, a lack of theoretical background for analysis was noticed: the text is focused on the explanation of Chinese legislation but lacks scientific discussions. The manuscript should demonstrate that the debate presented is also important for the progress of science on marine protection and conservation, in addition to specific local recommendations. 

 

The lack of a clear methodological approach was also observed: A coherent methodological approach should be based on theoretical background and clearly identify the elements that will be analysed and discussed. 

 
English proofreading is required: The text needs thorough proofreading, including punctuation, wording, and phrasing. Some terms and/or concepts (compound terms) appear to have been translated directly from Chinese, as it is difficult to understand their meaning. An explanation of the terminology adopted should be provided, if specific to the Chinese marine governance context.  

 

In addition, a brief explanation of the Chinese maritime governance system (and its history) is recommended in order to clarify for readers the complexity of the analysed governance system. 

 

Legal comparisons are made to the US environmental legislation system; however, it was observed a lack of discussions based on other studies that adopted the same approach. 

 

References numbers are loose in the middle of the text. A revision is necessary (in terms of organisation). 

 

Please provide a reference for converting RMB to US Dollars for comparison purposes. 

 

In conclusion, the analysis presented is relevant to be published, especially as it provides significant insights to improve Chinese legislation and thus contribute to the maintenance of healthy and sustainable marine ecosystems, but major revisions are needed to also meet the scientific purposes required for publications in "Sustainability".

Author Response

Reviewer #2: The paper analyses the Chinese marine protection legislation system and discusses the flaws observed in this system. It concludes by suggesting improvements in the analyzed legal system.

1. The paper presents relevant information that contributes to the improvement of Chinese legislation but lacks in providing overall contributions to the scientific community. The paper needs a more coherent structure and major revisions are needed in order to be published.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the contributions to the scientific community and readjusted the paper’s structure, as follows:

• In para. 2 and para. 3 of revised section 4.1, the authors have re-explained the political factor and added the scientific factor of introducing the daily penalty.

“Second, the political factor is to positively respond to the legislative requirements of marine ecological civilization and protect the marine ecological environment through the strictest legal system [36,37]. The marine ecological civilization is an essential part of China’s ecological civilization construction, which was first proposed by the General Secretary Xi Jinping of Chinese Communist Party and belonged to the socialism with Chinese characteristics. Marine ecological civilization is a complete system containing strategic position of marine ecology, marine ecosystem governance, green development of marine ecology, legal construction of marine ecology and global cooperation in marine ecology. Daily penalty system further clarifies the legal liability of marine environmental protection. The consecutive fines with no capping, have drawn a red line of strict accountability for the restoration of the damaged marine ecological environment.”

“Third, the scientific factor is to improve the enterprises’ compliance rate and total factor productivity, which promoting marine sustainable development. The daily penalty ties the fine amount to the duration of violation, and increases the costs of illegal pollution discharge by accumulating the daily illegal cost to guide enterprises’ pollution behavior toward legal conformity and improve the compliance rate. Furthermore, a study suggests that, daily penalty system stimulates the innovation compensation effect of enterprises through the high dynamic penalty mode, and eliminates high polluting and inefficient enterprises in the industry to improve the enterprises’ productivity [39]. In the long run, daily penalty is a tool for environmental regulation that advances sustainable development, turning anti-pollution treatment from an “external compulsion” of environmental regulation into enterprises’ “internal demand” for continued survival and development [40]. Therefore, the introduction of daily penalty is conducive to achieving a win-win situation of marine economic growth and green development.”

• In the last paragraph of revised section 5.1, the authors have added a good effect of daily penalty system, as follows:

“Finally, daily penalty system raises the costs of marine environment violation, and achieves positive results in protecting the marine ecological environment. Before adding the daily penalty clause, the maximum cost of dumping waste into the sea without obtaining a permit is RMB 200,000. After the daily penalty was incorporated, the cost of the illegal behavior will rise with an unlimited daily fine. Huge fines can not only deter the violators to curb marine pollution, but also be used as a fund for the restoration and conservation of the marine ecological environment to achieve sustainable development of the marine ecological environment. For example, since 2022, the Guangxi Coast Guard has investigated and dealt with 16 cases of illegally dumping wastes into the sea, involving 24 ships and 7 marine projects, with a total fine of RMB 1.28 million, and effectively protecting the marine ecological environment of the North Gulf [51].”

• The authors have made major changes, including to readjust the structures of the article and the content of some sections. We do hope that the revised manuscript has the flow between sections. The revised paper has been reorganized into seven sections as follows:

Section 1 is the introduction, in which deleting the described policy content of original L55-69, increasing the evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy with a concise explanation of key points/changes, adding the problem, aim and approach of this research, and the comparison of 2022 Environmental Performance Index between China and Untied States, finally to form a complete theoretical background of this paper. In order to avoid the abrupt structure, the authors have abandoned the writing method of directly introducing the daily penalty provisions of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL) at the the beginning of the article, and added two new sections to introduce the revision background of MEPL and origin of the daily penalty system.

Section 2 introduces the revision background of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL), which takes the first part of original section 2 as a separate section. This revised section 2 includes the legislation history of MEPL, reasons and progresses of starting a new revision of MEPL. Section 3 as a new section, examines the origin of daily penalty, stating some legislation experiences referring to the daily penalty of foreign countries and describing how the daily penalty of China becomes a national law from the local legislation. Section 4 analyzes the daily penalty provisions of MEPL focusing on the Article 73, mainly including the legal factors, specific applications and innovative regulations. The authors have added many contents such as the scientific factor of daily penalty provisions, the relationship between EPL and MEPL, legal case and further explained the Article 73. Section 5 details the achievements and obstacles in the implementation of daily penalties in maritime law enforcement. The authors have rearranged the structure to divide into three parts as achievements, first obstacle and second obstacle. The first obstacle is the defects of daily penalty in MEPL such as narrow scope of application, low daily fine quota and vague provisions. The second obstacle is imperfect daily penalty in the marine special legislation. On the basis of the two obstacles, Section 6 proposes the corresponding suggestions of the daily penalty system for the future revision. Suggestion one is revising the daily penalty provisions of MEPL by such measures as expanding the applicable scope, increasing the daily fine quota and formulating the specific application standards. Suggestion two is improving the daily penalty system in the maritime-specific legislation. Section 7 presents the conclusion.

 

2. The introductory section should present the main theoretical approach, reveal the problem, and then state a clear objective. However, a lack of theoretical background for analysis was noticed: the text is focused on the explanation of Chinese legislation but lacks scientific discussions. The manuscript should demonstrate that the debate presented is also important for the progress of science on marine protection and conservation, in addition to specific local recommendations.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have modified the content of Introduction as follows:

• In order to make a coherent introduction, presenting the theoretical approach, the problem and a clear objective, the authors have deleted the para. 3, the first sentence and the last sentence of para. 4 in original Introduction.
• In the para. 3 of revised Introduction, the authors have added a sentence as “In other words, the costs of marine environmental violations are rather low, which can’t effectively crack down on marine violations.”
• In the para. 4 of revised Introduction, the authors have added the following content:

“The problem is that, although the daily penalty has made progress since introduced to the marine law, it still contradicts with the fact of severe marine ecological environment situation. It is far from enough for a thorough response to protect marine environment by the original intention as the “strict enforcement”, and reflects the system design of daily penalty needing to be improved. For example, the daily penalty of MEPL only applies to the four situations of polluting marine violations, with no covering all violations of polluting marine, and no extending to other marine ecological protection such as IUU fishing, overfishing, over-exploitation of marine resources and marine conservation. Therefore, the key issue is how to take the opportunity of the coming MEPL revision, to formulate a reasonable structure of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system. After all, “a sound legal system of marine environmental protection is an important prerequisite for orderly promotion of marine comprehensive utilization and sustainable development” [17].”

• In the para. 5 of revised Introduction, the authors have added the following content:

   “This article mainly applies normative and comparative analysis. Under the normative analysis approach, this research centers on article 73 of MEPL, which is the top-level marine legislation of China, macroscopically reviewing the daily penalty provisions. Then, it microscopically carries out in-depth analysis of specific norms of daily penalty in local marine protection legislation. Furthermore, this paper also uses a comparative analysis. Besides a comparison with the foreign legislative experiences, it focuses on the China’s internal comparative analysis, which exploring the daily penalty compared with other environmental legislation at the same level and between local marine legislation. These discussions will have great reference values for the improvement of daily penalty system in the future.”

• In the last para of revised Introduction, the authors have added the following content:

“First, it summarizes the legislative process of China’s MEPL, analyzes the reasons for the revisions and investigates the origin of daily penalty. Second, focusing on the Article 73 of MEPL, it analyzes the legal factors, applications and innovations of daily penalty. Third, it further discusses the progress and obstacles of the implementation of daily penalties in maritime law enforcement.”

 

In addition, the debate of Introduction actually expresses the manuscript’s importance for the progress of science on marine protection and conservation, such as “The effectiveness of marine environmental protection depends largely on the perfection of laws [7]”, “a sound legal system of marine environmental protection is an important prerequisite for orderly promotion of marine comprehensive utilization and sustainable development [17].”. The reason why this article wants to discuss the daily penalty system is that its original intention is to combat marine pollution and protect the marine environment through high continuous fines. In other words, a perfect daily continuous punishment design is an important prerequisite for the marine protection and conservation. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the new content of scientific community, the answer has appeared in the first response to the reviewer’s first comment.

 

3. The lack of a clear methodological approach was also observed: A coherent methodological approach should be based on theoretical background and clearly identify the elements that will be analyzed and discussed.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added a clear approach in revised Introduction, as follows:

“This article mainly applies normative and comparative analysis. With the normative analysis approach, this research centers on article 73 of MEPL, which is the top-level legislation of China’s marine field, macroscopically reviewing the daily penalty provisions. Then, it microscopically carries out in-depth analysis of specific norms of daily penalty in local marine protection legislation. Furthermore, this paper also applies the comparative analysis from home and abroad. Besides a comparison with the foreign legislative experiences, it focuses on the China’s internal comparative analysis, which exploring the daily penalty compared with other environmental legislation at the same level and local marine legislation. These discussions will have great reference values for the improvement of the daily penalty system in the future.”

 

4. English proofreading is required: The text needs thorough proofreading, including punctuation, wording, and phrasing. Some terms and/or concepts (compound terms) appear to have been translated directly from Chinese, as it is difficult to understand their meaning. An explanation of the terminology adopted should be provided, if specific to the Chinese marine governance context.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The manuscript has been proof read by Elsevier language editing service. We do hope that the quality of written English is now at the publishable level.

 

5. In addition, a brief explanation of the Chinese maritime governance system (and its history) is recommended in order to clarify for readers the complexity of the analyzed governance system.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added a brief explanation of the Chinese marine governance system in the para. 2 of Introduction, and created a Table 1 to clarify the evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy, as follows:

“After years of layout and construction, China’s marine governance system has experienced a development process from weak to strong. Since the promulgation of the MEPL of the People’s Republic of China in 1982, China has issued a series of marine governance policies. The policies take the five-year plan for marine economic development as the node, issued by the State Council (SC), which is the Central People's Government of China, and can be roughly divided into six stages: the germination, the establishment stage, the steady advancement stage, the deepening adjustment stage, the strategic development stage and the strategic updating stage (see Table 1). Obviously China’s marine governance system is a huge and complex project with some progress such as diversity of participants and policy tools, from ex-post control to ex-ante control, especially the principle of green priority.”  

 

Table 1. Evolution history of China’s marine environmental governance policy.

Stage	Progress	Characteristics
1982-2000 Scattered Policies	Germination	Ex-post control (pollution control); Single policy tool (administrative means)
2001-2005 (The 10th Five-Year Plan)	Establishment	Shifted to ex-ante control (dynamic monitoring); Increased policy tools (economy means)
2006-2010 (The 11th Five-Year Plan)	Steady Advancement	Expanded governance scope; Increased policy tools (legal means)
2011-2015 (The 12th Five-Year Plan)	Deepening Adjustment	Ex-ante control (risk prevention and control); Diversity of policy tools
2016-2020 (The 13th Five-Year Plan)	Strategic Development	Coordinated land and marine; Diversity of participants
2021-2025 (The 14th Five-Year Plan)	Strategic Upgrading	Regional coordinated development; Green low carbon development

 

6. Legal comparisons are made to the US environmental legislation system; however, it was observed a lack of discussions based on other studies that adopted the same approach.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The reason why legal comparison is made to the environmental legislation is that the daily penalty is a legal liability system in both China and US. The daily penalty first appeared in the Clean Air Act of 1970 in US, and had become a mature legal system in US. Although China has introduced the daily penalty into the law, it is immature and needs to be improved. Therefore, we do hope the daily penalty of China may obtain some legislative experiences from the US. In addition, in order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the comparison of current ecological environment between China and US in the para. 1 of Introduction:

“The 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) provides a data-driven summary of the state of sustainability around the world. Among the 180 countries and regions participating in the evaluation, the United States ranks 43th with 51.10 points and its marine protected areas ranks 1th with 100points. China ranks 160th with 28.4 points, its marine protected areas ranks 89th, with 1.60 points [8]. The scores and ranking of the United States are better than that of China, especially in the marine governance aspect, which may owe to its mature marine legal system.”

7. References numbers are loose in the middle of the text. A revision is necessary (in terms of organisation).

Response: Many thanks for the comment. It may be an operational error when converting to PDF version. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have rearranged the references of the revised article under the formatting guidelines of Sustainability. Notable, if the same number appears in the middle of the text, it represents that the same reference is cited, which is allowed in the Sustainability.

8. Please provide a reference for converting RMB to US Dollars for comparison purposes. 

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have provided a reference for converting USD to RMB for comparison. The reason why no providing a reference for converting RMB to USD is that this paper mainly introduces and analyses the daily penal system of China’s Marine Environmental Protection Law, and there are a few places in the text, compared to US. Therefore, the authors have converted USD to RMB for comparison according to the exchange rate of the Chinese and American currencies at that time. The authors have modified three places as the following:

(1) In the para. 1 of the revised section 4.1, “ConocoPhillips finally paid more than RMB 2 billion, integrating a total amount of administrative fines, administrative coordination compensation and civil coordination. A similar oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 had resulted in a fine of $ 20.8 billion (RMB 140 billion, according to the exchange rate of RMB to USD in 2010, USD 1 was about RMB 6.7704) [35]. The disparity in fines is mainly due to the different legal remedies for oil pollution accidents between China and U.S.. According to the MEPL at that time, the maximum fine for such a serious marine pollution accident was only RMB 300,000. The 1990 Oil Pollution Act in the U.S. had long stipulated a civil penalty of no more than $ 25000 (RMB 160,000 in 2010) per day. If the responsible enterprise was found to have gross negligence, intent or fraud, the civil compensation limit of $ 75 million (RMB 500 million in 2010) stipulated by the act would be abolished.”

(2) In the para. 2 of the revised section 5.3, “(RMB 93,000, according to the exchange rate of RMB to USD in 1987, USD 1 was about RMB 3.7221.) [57]”

(3) In the para. 2 of the revised section 6.1.2, “According to the exchange rate of RMB to USD on January 2020, USD 1 was about RMB 6.9172. Thus, the maximum daily fines under the two laws in the U.S. were about RMB 520,000 and RMB 8881 respectively.”

9. In conclusion, the analysis presented is relevant to be published, especially as it provides significant insights to improve Chinese legislation and thus contribute to the maintenance of healthy and sustainable marine ecosystems, but major revisions are needed to also meet the scientific purposes required for publications in "Sustainability".

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have made major revisions on this paper, as instructed by the reviewers. First, the manuscript has been proof read by Elsevier language editing service. We do hope that the quality of written English is now at the publishable level. Second, the authors have readjusted the structure into seven sections, and modified the content of some sections. Third, some scientific contents of the daily penalty have been added in some sections as far as possible. Fourth, the Introduction has been revised to present the main theoretical approach, reveal the problem, and then state a clear objective. Last, the authors have also responded to the rest comments of the reviewer.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript is providing a valuable and comprehensive insight on China’s Daily Penalty System to facilitate marine environmental protection. Several points need to be further clarified. I hope the authors found my comment helpful.

 

Language-wise: 

1. Some sentences are a bit lengthy and can be condensed a bit. 

2. Some expressions need to be polished. For instance, ① “The above results indicate that......in the peak period of pollution emissions and environmental risks and in the superposition period of ecosystem degradation and frequent disasters” (Page 2, Line 48-51). Such sentence can be understood, yet with some effort. Try to use more verbalized expressions to shorten it. ② “The main reason is that the administrative-penalty method of marine environmental protection is too simple, and the penalty quota is too low”(Page 2, Line 54-55). Try to avoid using vague and seemingly absolute expressions in legal language, like “too” (Compared to which counterpart? According to which standard?). It’s better to replace it with adj. like “rather” or employ other expressions, and try to justify it with 1-2 sentences. ③ Table 1. In the first vertical column, verbs like “formulate”, “revise” and “amend” are better replaced by nouns “Formulation”, “Revision”, and “Amendment”. Check through the whole paper.

 

Content-wise: 

1. As the manuscript is a review article and proposes suggestions for future development, can the title be changed into: “Daily Penalty System Under Revision of Marine Environment Protection Law in China: Review and Prospect”? Just for your reference.

2. The manuscript reviews the revision of the Daily Penalty Provisions in Section 2, then how about its origin? Why was it proposed in the first place? Was it a foreign legacy or China’s invention? 

3. Are there any typical legal cases in China to be listed, in order to show the applicability of Daily Penalty System in China?

 

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer #3: This manuscript is providing a valuable and comprehensive insight on China’s Daily Penalty System to facilitate marine environmental protection. Several points need to be further clarified. I hope the authors found my comment helpful.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have carefully re-visited the reviewer’s comments, and re-addressed the issues as the following:

Language-wise:

1. Some sentences are a bit lengthy and can be condensed a bit.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The manuscript has been proof read by Elsevier language editing service. We do hope that the quality of written English is now at the publishable level.

2. Some expressions need to be polished.

①“The above results indicate that......in the peak period of pollution emissions and environmental risks and in the superposition period of ecosystem degradation and frequent disasters” (Page 2, Line 48-51). Such sentence can be understood, yet with some effort. Try to use more verbalized expressions to shorten it.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have shortened this sentence in the para. 3 of revised Introduction:

   “The above indicates that China’s marine ecological environment still faces the challenges of pollution emissions, environmental risks, ecosystem degradation and frequent disasters [12].”

②“The main reason is that the administrative-penalty method of marine environmental protection is too simple, and the penalty quota is too low”(Page 2, Line 54-55). Try to avoid using vague and seemingly absolute expressions in legal language, like “too” (Compared to which counterpart? According to which standard?). It’s better to replace it with adj. like “rather” or employ other expressions, and try to justify it with 1-2 sentences.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have replaced “too” with “rather”, and re-written the sentence to justify it in the para. 3 of Introduction:

“Mainly in two aspects: (1) rather simple administrative-penalty method. Law enforcers mostly impose fines on the illegality despite of eight punishments among marine legislation; (2) rather low penalty quota. The amount of fines should not exceed RMB (abbreviation of Chinese currency name) 300,000 for violations causing marine environmental pollution accidents [15].”

③ Table 1. In the first vertical column, verbs like “formulate”,“revise” and “amend”are better replaced by nouns “Formulation”,“Revision”, and “Amendment”. Check through the whole paper.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have used nouns “Formulation”, “Revision” and “Amendment” instead of verbs “formulate”, “revise” and “amend” in the first vertical column of revised Table 2 (original Table 1), and modified the similar expressions in whole paper, as follows:

• In the para. 1 of section 2.2: “In 2022, the MEPL will start a new revision.”
• In the para. 1 of section 4.2: “A notable innovation of MEPL (2016 Amendment)”, “The MEPL (2017 Amendment) still retained the daily-penalty clause without any changes, as follows”
• In the para. 1 of section 5.1: “With the MEPL (2016 Amendment) as the turning point”, “The data shows that the administrative authorities have maintained a high application rate of the MEPL (2016 Amendment).”
• In the para. 1 of section 6: “Under the revision background of MEPL”
• In the para. 1 of section 6.1.2: “suggested increasing appropriately when the MEPL revision again”
• In the para. 2 of section 6.2: “the 2017 Marine Environmental Protection Regulations of Hainan (Amendment (II)) detailed the liability content of daily penalties and clearly listed three applicable situations as”
• In the para. 1 of section 6.1.3: “the study suggests the formulation of specific application standards of the daily penalty system.”

 

Content-wise:

1. As the manuscript is a review article and proposes suggestions for future development, can the title be changed into: “Daily Penalty System Under Revision of Marine Environment Protection Law in China: Review and Prospect”? Just for your reference.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors are glad to accept the suggestion by the reviewer, because the proposed title can express the core content of this article more specifically and accurately. Thus, the authors have changed the title into “Daily Penalty System Under Revision of Marine Environment Protection Law in China: Review and Prospect”.

2. The manuscript reviews the revision of the Daily Penalty Provisions in Section 2, then how about its origin? Why was it proposed in the first place? Was it a foreign legacy or China’s invention?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The daily penalty system is not China’s invention, which is a foreign legacy. China’s daily penalty system comes from foreign legal transplants. It is really improper to propose the revision of the Daily Penalty Provisions in the first place. In order to make the paper more coherent, the authors have readjusted the article structure into seven sections. Especially before the section “daily penalty provisions of MEPL”, the the authors have added two new sections. The revised section 2 introduces the revision background of China’s Marine Environment Protection Law (MEPL), which takes the first part of original section 2 as a separate section. This revised section 2 includes the legislation history of MEPL, reasons and progresses of starting a new revision of MEPL. The revised section 3 as a new section, examines the origin of the daily penalty, stating some legislation experiences referring to the daily penalty of foreign countries and describing how the daily penalty of China becomes a national law from the local legislation.

3. Are there any typical legal cases in China to be listed, in order to show the applicability of Daily Penalty System in China?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added two legal cases to show the application of Daily Penalty System in China in revised section 4.2, as follows:

“Taking an administrative penalty in Beihai City as an example, a firm discharged water pollutants in excess of standards, which violated the item (2) of paragraph 1, Article 73 of MEPL. The ecological environmental bureau imposed a fine of RMB 60,000, ordering to halt discharging water pollutants out of standards. The firm refused to correct and continued the violation, leading the administrative organs to initiate a daily penalty. The final fines were equal to RMB 60,000 multiplied by 13 days, a total of RMB 780,000. The measure directly increased the illegal cost by 12 times, severely penalizing the firm’s malicious pollution behavior [44]. In addition, a firm in Zhongshan City carried out marine dumping operations without obtaining a permit for dumping wastes into the sea. The law enforcers imposed a fine of RMB 80,000 in according with the item (3) of paragraph 1, Article 73 of MEPL. The firm stopped work immediately for rectification, then the law enforcers didn’t start a daily penalty on it. That, mainly owed to the preventive deterrence of daily penalty. [45]”

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Content wise the manuscript has improved from the previous version, but issues remain, as summarised below:

1. The Manuscript must be proof-read for English by an English native speaker as several passages are lacking structure and are hard to understand (e.g. title, abstract; “imperfect in marine supporting”; use of tenses inconsistent in certain passages, etc.

I stopped providing line specific comments after Section 1, and only focus on major issues.

2. As a result of the previous, the manuscript is lacking flow, and certain aspects important for understanding are only made clear late in the manuscript (e.g. section 2 that 2022 is the year of the review of the MEPL; what the focus is, i.e. on pollution incidents etc.).

3. Clarify aims and objectives of the manuscript and link with the later sections.  

4. Several passages and statements require substantial contextualisation, (e.g. Introduction monitoring data that show environment stable overall, with respect to what? What type of data? What type of stability?)

Section specific comments

Introduction

-        Not clear again to which level the fine corresponds “the amount of fines should not cross …”

Points below need to be cross-checked and relevant issues need to be fixed throughout manuscript because they are now out of context.

- part on EPI, requires more context. Ranking with respect to what? Good or bad?

- Layout and construction – consider: planning

- Table 1 and corresponding passage – what does this mean? That each individual new policy goes though these stages? Or these are the stages of the implementation of the MEPL? Clarify.

- Monitoring data and stable on the whole? With respect to what?

- Water quality worse than grade IV - what does this mean? Put it in context

- Year-on-year - I do not understand to what years you refer and to which year range, period, or individual year the percentage corresponds to

- National marine dumping – of what?

-Legal liability now fully implemented – of what? Of whom?

- eight punishments – what do you mean, what are these punishments?

- coming MEPL revision  when is this planned?

- How is intro to section 2, different that Table 1? Intro to Section 2 better written, streamline.

 Section 2.2.

-        How do the two ministries differ with respect to marine protection? Clarify.

- Section 3. 

- You mention day fines in Europe but it is not clear if you refer to the marine environment or generally. Issues like that should be resolved throughout the manuscript.  

- Page 7, Para 2. Does this mean that prior to 2007 there was no daily penalty system in China? what does voluntary mean in this context? 

- Para 3. How can a lawbreaker correct a violation? Interesting to know. Further down in later sections you provide nice examples. 

- 5 illegally polluting discharge types. in an earlier section you mention another number. streamline 

Section 4

- If there was a 300,000 ceiling, why did the Conoco oil spill end up paying substantially more? Unclear.

- "ecological civilisation" Unclear what this means in this context.

- The points mentioned here are unclear and how they comprise complex multiple factors. Specify. 

Section 4.2. 

So is there still a ceiling in the fine? Did the 2016 introduce a change in the ceiling? (becomes clearer in section 5.2.2.).

Section 5.1 

- what do you mean by application rate of MEPL? How does the daily penalty improve the application? Unclear. 

Section 5.2. is the gist of the article, where you make a critical evaluation of the gaps in legislation. 

Section 6.

- What do you mean "should be improved gradually"? why is a gradual improvement necessary, instead of an immediate one?

- 6.1. Interesting, make clear in earlier section WHICH pollution sources are covered from the law and which are not.

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript has been significantly improved and merits publication. However, there are some refinements to be made prior to publication. I highlighted these points in the revised manuscript and provided some comments to contribute to the writing (attached document).

Regarding the scientific aspect of the text, the research still needs to present the theoretical background of the analysis, i.e., the international scientific literature that provides information on the assessment of the daily penalty system and on which the analysis will be based. Also, a research question could be raised before indicating the steps you will take to conduct your research (last paragraph of the introduction). Posing a research question will bring clarity to your research objectives.

By solving these minor flaws, the text will be ready to be published.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2’ Comments-Second Round

Reviewer#2 comments:    
The authors would like to take this opportunity to thanks the reviewer’ comments on this manuscript. The authors wish to address these comments as fully as possible and do hope that this paper is now reaching publishable level.

 

 

1. The manuscript has been significantly improved and merits publication. However, there are some refinements to be made prior to publication. I highlighted these points in the revised manuscript and provided some comments to contribute to the writing (attached document).

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have revisited the reviewer’s comments in attached document, as instructed by the reviewer, and re-written relevant contents, as marked in red.

Notably, in order to address the reviewer’s comments, the authors have modified the yellow points in the attached document as far as possible. However, not every change appears in this response. There are two points to illustrate: (1) References numbers are loose in the middle of the text, which may because of an operational error when converting to PDF version. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have checked every number of reference in the text, and rearranged the references of the revised article under the formatting guidelines of Sustainability. (2) Rather simple revisions to the article will not be listed one by one in this response, such as deleting a word, changing the tense use, converting the gerund of some words, and removing the space in the text. the. As instructed by the requirements of reviewers, the authors have made all corresponding revisions in the article and marked them in red.

 

• “The first is defects in the Marine Environment Protection Law. The second is imperfect in the marine supporting and local legislation.” Comment: “Shortcomings” “imperfection”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have replaced the words of “defects” and “imperfect” with “shortcomings” and “imperfection”. And the authors have revised this sentence as “the first is shortcomings in The Marine Environment Protection Law, while the second is the imperfection in the marine supporting laws and regulations, and local legislation.”

• The daily penalty system should be the last resort in an environmental protection system. The environmental licensing system must be responsible for preventing environmental damage before it occurs. Perhaps the authors can provide a brief explanation about this.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, as suggested by the reviewer, the authors have added the following content to make a brief explanation about the difference between the daily penalty system and the environmental licensing system in the para. 4 of revised Introduction:

“Different from the environmental licensing system established to prevent environmental damage before it occurs and belongs to preventive measures, the daily penalty system should be the ex-post resort in an environmental protection system, considered as punitive measures. Hence, the design of a daily penalty system should play an effective deterrence on violators, which will prevent the violators’ preference to be punished for law-breaking because of low illegal costs, and control the frequent occurrence of environmental violations.”

Notably, the environmental licensing system is very valuable in environmental management, and is used widely with the function of preventing environmental risks in practice. However, the main point of this paper is not environmental licensing system, its usage in this paper is to illustrate the role of daily penalty system by comparison. So we don’t talk it in detail and hope the reviewer can understand.

• All this information about the Chinese environmental governance system could be placed in the next section. The introduction should be concise: present the problem, the theoretical framework (international scientific literature providing information on the assessment of the daily penalty system), and the objectives of the paper.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have readjusted the place of all information about the Chinese environmental governance system and the corresponding Table 1, and placed them in the revised section 2.

In addition, in order to make the context more fluent, the authors have revised the content of Introduction, and added international scientific literature and the objectives of the paper as follows:

“Different from China, the international community has early found a solution to the issue of low illegal costs for continuous environmental violations. The famous view is the “rational polluter model” based on the deterrence theory, which allows enterprises to choose their environmental behaviors in accordance with the cost-effect analysis of law-abiding/law-breaking [10]. Long ago, Charles Garlow & Jay Ryan pointed out that the ability to prevent pollution relied on a precondition that “illegal costs should be higher than compliance costs”, that is, it is much more economical to comply with environmental regulations than to illegally pay fines [11]. The logic of daily penalty is to construct a consecutive penalty structure for continuous environmental violations by increasing the illegal costs to achieve effective deterrence and restrain illegal behaviors. Patricia Lindauer predicted that legal provisions like “daily penalty” would be added in future legislation [12].”

“Then, problems arise concerning the reason for and the approach of the MEPL establishing the daily penalty system, innovations of the daily penalty system in the MEPL, etc. The key issue is whether the daily penalty system established by the MEPL works well for the effective remediation of marine environment, and if not, focus will be placed on obstacles in implementation to be found and solved? To this end, this article intends to take the opportunity of the upcoming MEPL revision to address the problems, and formulate a reasonable design of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system.”

• “Coast guard law enforcement agencies at all levels have seized sea-sand cases with a growth of 425% year-on-year, checked and detained the involved vessels and sea sand with a growth of 360% and 337% year-on-year, respectively” Comment: Mining? Hyphen?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. Herein the hyphen is not required, and “sea sand” is the sand and stone in the sea, not “mining”. After consulting relevant literature and asking expert editor whose native language is English, the authors have confirmed it is proper to use the word “sea sand”, and deleted the hyphen.

• “RMB (abbreviation of Chinese currency name)” Comment: footnote.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The format of journal Sustainability requires to attach with references at the end of the article. So the authors have to explain briefly the source of abbreviation in the article.

• “which tying fines” Comment: which ties (or binds) fines

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors are very sorry to appear the wrong usage, as instructed by the reviewer, the authors have replaced “tying” with “ties”.

• “The problem is that, although the daily penalty has made progress since introduced to the marine law, it still contradicts with the fact of severe marine ecological environment” Comment: What "situation" means?? Be more specific.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to make the context fluent, the authors have rewritten the following content of this sentence, and added the specific “progress” and “situation”:

“After introducing the daily penalty system, China performs more effectively in solving marine environmental problems. China Coast Guard, jointly with Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Environment, Transport, carried out the “Blue Sea 2021” special law enforcement action for marine ecological environmental protection in coastal provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, and strictly cracked down on all kinds of violations of marine pollution and ecological destruction. Coast guard law enforcement agencies at all levels seized 438 cases involving sea-sand violations, investigated and punished 57 cases of dumping wastes, dealt with 573 cases of constructing marine engineering without environment impact assessment and illegally excavating sea sand and destroying island, and imposed administrative fines of RMB 23.8 million [13].”

“However, China still faces the challenges of severe marine ecological environment situation, such as marine environmental pollution remaining serious, improvement effectiveness of water quality in unstable offshore areas, some bays and estuaries appearing pollution rebound, marine garbage pollution affecting the happiness of residents dwelling closing to the sea, and frequent occurrence of oil spill accidents at sea [14].”

Notably, in order to keep high timeliness of the article, the authors have deleted the related content of “Blue Sea 2020”, and monitoring data from the Bulletin on Marine Ecological Environment of China in 2020. And we have added new content of “Blue Sea 2021” and content from Fourteenth Five Year Plan for Marine Ecological Environment Protection issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China jointly with other ministries in 2022 to illustrate the progress and severe situation.

• “with no covering all violations of polluting marine, and no extending to other marine ecological protection such as IUU fishing, overfishing, over exploitation of marine resources and marine conservation.”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have rewritten the following content:

    “without covering all violations of polluting marine, or being extended to other marine ecological protection targeting at issues such as IUU fishing, overfishing, over-exploitation of marine resources and marine conservation, etc.”

• “The current researches on marine environmental protection focus on the two aspects. First, the macro-analysis of MEPL, which introduces its historical development, defects, and opinions and suggestions for future revision [18,19]. Second, under the revision background of MEPL, it analyzes some marine pollution prevention problems and suggestions for improvement [20,21]. Few literature mentions the daily penalty system in the study of maritime administrative penalties, and the content is relatively concise and ambiguous [15].” Comment: “The current research focus on...” “shortcomings” “mention”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, and make the article more flow, the authors have rewritten the following content:

“However, current research focus is classified into two categories on marine environmental protection in China: the macro-analysis of MEPL that introduces its historical development, shortcomings, and opinions and suggestions for future revision [15,16], as well as analysis on some marine pollution prevention problems that provides suggestions for the improvement under the revision background of MEPL [17,18]. Few literature has mentioned the daily penalty system in the study of maritime administrative penalties, and the content is relatively concise and ambiguous [19].”

(10) Methodological approach should be placed in another section.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors respect the observation and suggestion in methodological approach by the reviewer. But we still persist the original structure. The reasons why we place the methodological approach in Introduction are as follows:

First, as in Sustainability we found some recently published articles that bring the methodological approach into the section of Introduction. To exemplify: “The Way toward Sustainability: Policy Attention Evolution of Chinese Local Governments to Promote Entrepreneurship of Returnees Based on Grounded Theory and Social Network Analysis” “Double-Faceted Environmental Civil Liability and the Separate-Regulatory Paradigm: An Inspiration for China”.

Second, the research direction of this paper is not mainly in science and engineering, but in social science. There is no need to separate the methodological approach from the Introduction and place it in another section. In order to make the structure of this article more reasonable, the authors hold that it is proper to place the methodological approach in Introduction.  

(11) This summary (steps) can be maintained in the Intro. However, could you please provide your research question before stating the steps you will undertake to answer your research question?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to provide the research questions of this article in the para. 6 of revised Introduction:

    “Then, problems arise concerning the reason for and the approach of the MEPL establishing the daily penalty system, innovations of the daily penalty system in the MEPL, etc. The key issue is whether the daily penalty system established by the MEPL works well for the effective remediation of marine environment, and if not, focus will be placed on obstacles in implementation to be found and solved? To this end, this article intends to take the opportunity of the upcoming MEPL revision to address the problems, and formulate a reasonable design of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system.”

(12) You can bring the historical information and the table to this section.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have brought the historical information of Chinese environmental governance system and the corresponding Table 1 to revised section 2.

(13) “Foundation stage” Present as numbered bullet points. Remove the period after the dates in parenthesis- substitute by an - or an:

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have showed the four stages as numbered bullet points, and removed the period after the dates in parenthesis- substitute by an:. These change can be seen in the revised manuscript.

(14) “It came into being when the focus shifted from the prevention and control of marine pollution to the protection of marine ecological environment” Comment: “command and control?”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to make the sentence more understanding, the authors have revised it to “the focus shifted from the prevention and control of marine pollution to the protection of marine ecological environment”

Furthermore, the former focus of MEPL is “prevention and control of marine pollution”, not “command and control”. That can be seen from the titles of chapters regarding to marine pollution in MEPL, like “Prevention and Control of Pollution Damage to the Marine Environment Caused by Land-based Pollutants” “Prevention and Control of Pollution Damage to the Marine Environment caused by Dumping of Wastes”. So, it is proper to use “prevention and control”.

(15) “In 2022, the MEPL will start a new revision.” Comment: “has started?”

• Response: Many thanks for the comment. 2022 is the year of starting to prepare relating work of MEPL revision. The authors have rewritten the following content as: “Besides, it is noteworthy that the MEPL has started to prepare the relating work of a new revision in 2022.”, and placed this sentence in revised section of Introduction.

(16) “The SOA was originally the state oceanic administrative department responsible for the supervision and control over the marine environment, organize survey, surveillance, supervision, assessment and scientific research of the marine environment” Comment: “responsible for organizing suvey...or, survey organization, surveillance... Keep the coherence here.”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to keep the coherence herein, as instructed by the reviewer, the authors have revised the sentence to “The SOA was originally the state oceanic administrative department responsible for the supervision and control over the marine environment, survey organization, surveillance, supervision, assessment, and scientific research of the marine environment.”.

• “on December 24, 2018,” Comment: Keep coherence across dates: 24th of December or you will need to change the previous ones, e.g., 13th of March to March 13th.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have revised “on December 24, 2018” to “on December 24th, 2018”, and in order to keep coherence across dates, revised the format of dates across the article to “on Month ‘date’th, Year”, such as “on March 13th, 2018”

• “Half of all Europe countries use the day dines into practice”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. It is very sorry that the authors use the wrong word here. And the authors have revised “dines” to “fines” in the sentence.

• “$8 billion” Comment: use the correct currency.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have used the correct currency, changing “$” to “USD” across the article.

• “The disparity in fines is mainly due to the different legal remedies for oil pollution accidents between China and U.S..” Comment: “??”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors admit that “remedies” herein is incorrect usage. Because a fine is a legal penalty, not a legal remedy. We have modified “remedies” to “punishments”, and hoped it is suitable.

• “marine ecological civilization” Comment: What does it mean? Are you sure that "civilization" is the correct translation to the terminology adopted in Chinese?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have made more specific clarification on marine ecological civilization to make it easier understanding in the para. 1 of revised section 4.1:

“Marine ecological civilization is an essential part of China’s ecological civilization construction and significant content of developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in accordance with the actual situation of China featuring distinctive Chinese characteristics. Its core is to pursue harmony between human beings and the marine space on the premise of respecting the sea, requiring to jointly build a maritime community with a shared future, thereby strengthening the prevention and control of marine environmental pollution, protecting marine biodiversity and realizing orderly development and utilization of marine resources, and leaving a blue sea and sky for future generations. President Xi Jinping of Chinese Communist Party pays close attention to the construction of marine ecological civilization, especially legal construction of marine ecology, and even proposes protecting marine ecological environment through the strictest legal system”

Furthermore, the authors have confirmed that the official appellation is “marine ecological civilization”, which can be seen from official English website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China. We do make sure that “civilization” is the correct translation to the terminology adopted in Chinese.

• “green development of marine economy”, Comment: Internationally it is called "blue economy". Please, check the international literature on this topic.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to make “marine ecological civilization” more understanding, the authors have deleted the original sentence of “Marine ecological civilization is a complete system containing strategic position of marine ecology, marine ecosystem governance, green development of marine ecology, legal construction of marine ecology and global cooperation in marine ecology”, and described the connotation of “marine ecological civilization” in more understandable language. We do hope it is suitable.

In addition, the authors noticed “blue economy” referred by the reviewer and considered it relevant to the scientific factor by checking the international literature. So we have added the following content of “blue economy” into the part of “scientific factor” in the para. 2 of revised section 4.1:

“The international community is making waves for “blue economy” [35], which develops an ocean-based economy for current and future generations, and requires to manage and use the oceans and their resources in a sustainable manner.” “Therefore, the introduction of daily penalty is an effective practice of following international waves for blue economy, and is conducive to achieving a win-win situation of marine economic growth and green development.”

• “(1) The applicable scope. (2) The protected objects. (3) The required content.” Comment: Bullet points?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have rewritten the following content to illustrate the relationship between EPL and MEPL in the para. 3 of revised section 4.1:

“However, these two acts actually have an inclusive relationship in three aspects of the application scope, the protected object, and the stipulated content. First, the EPL is applicable to the territory of China and other sea areas under the jurisdiction of China, which naturally includes the application scope of the MEPL as the internal waters, territorial seas, contiguous zones, exclusive economic zones, and continental shelves of China and all other sea areas under the jurisdiction of China. Second, the protected object of the EPL is “environment”, i.e., the entirety of all natural elements and artificially transformed natural elements that affect the survival and development of human beings, which includes “marine environment”, namely, the protected object of specific environment targeted by MEPL. Third, the EPL has made principled and general provisions regarding to marine environmental protection, and provides the guideline for specific provisions of the MEPL [38].”

• “Only when the polluter illegally discharges pollutants can they be Only when violator is ordered to make corrections will there be situations in which refusing to make corrections” Comment: “they can be”; “there will be”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to make the article more fluent, the authors have revised the sentence to “Only polluters illegally discharging pollutants can be fined. Only when the violator is ordered to make corrections there will be situations related to refusing to make corrections.”

• “only exits a miscellaneous clause”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. It is very sorry that the authors use the wrong word here. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have revised the sentence to “only a miscellaneous clause is stipulated.”.

• “Finally, daily penalty system raises the costs of marine environment violation, and achieves positive results in protecting the marine ecological environment. Before adding the daily penalty clause, the maximum cost of dumping waste into the sea without obtaining a permit is RMB 200,000. After the daily penalty was incorporated, the cost of the illegal behavior will rise with an unlimited daily fine.” Comment: “raised? (past tense)?” “past”; “was”;“rose”

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have revised the sentence to “Finally, the daily penalty system raised the costs of marine environment violation, and achieved positive results in protecting the marine ecological environment. Before adding the daily penalty clause, the maximum cost of dumping waste into the sea without obtaining a permit was RMB 200,000. After the daily penalty was incorporated, the cost of illegal behavior was increased with an unlimited daily fine.”

• “5.2. First Obstacle: Defects of daily penalty provisions in MEPL” Comment: Shortcomings

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have changed the use of “Defects” to “Shortcomings” in the title.

• “The above problems affect the entire undertaking of marine environmental protection” Comment: compliance

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have changed the use of “understanding” to “compliance” in the sentence.

• “the local law enforcers generally reflect that the punishment should be increased.” Comment: enforcement?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have changed the use of “enforcers” to “enforcement” in the sentence. And the authors have revised the sentence as: “local law enforcement generally reflects the necessity of increasing the punishment.”

• “water waste” Comment: wastewater

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have changed the use of “waster waste” and “waster-water” to “wasterwater” across the article.

• “either the unit, individual or vessel” Comment: ???

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors are sorry to make the reviewer have question about “vessel”. Actually, what the authors try to express is that the daily penalty is also applicable for violations on marine environment caused by vessels and their operations. However, we ignored that this is an illegal behavior, not a punished object. Meanwhile, the punished object of vessel’s violation is generally a vessel’s owner, operator or manager in practice, and also belongs to “individual”. Hence, in order to address the reviewer’s comment, and make the expression clearer, the authors have deleted “vessel” in the sentence. We do hope it is suitable.

• “5.3. Second Obstacle: Imperfect Daily Penalties in Marine Other Legislation” Comment: other marine.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have changed “Marine Other” to “Other Marine”, and revised the title of section 6.2 as “6.2. Improving Daily Penalties in Other Marine Legislations”

• “and thereby cannot solve the local marine pollution situation according to local conditions” Comment: problem? conflict?

Response: Many thanks for the comment. Herein, it is more proper to use the word “problem” than “situation”. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have revised the sentence as “thereby failing to solve the local marine pollution problem according to local conditions.”

• “Meanwhile, the Regulation of Yantai Municipality Marine Ecological Environment Protection (Draft) copied the three applicable situations of daily penalty in the MEPL but deleted the behavior of dumping wastes into the ocean without a license” Comment: disregarded

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have unified the tense usage of this sentence, and revised it as “Meanwhile, The Regulation of Yantai Municipality Marine Ecological Environment Protection (Draft) copies three applicable situations of the daily penalty in the MEPL, but disregards the behavior of dumping wastes into the ocean without a license.”

• “supporting legislation should incorporate the daily penalty clause in a timely manner” Comment: should be incorporated

Response: Many thanks for the comment. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have modified the usage of “should incorporate” to “should be incorporated”.

• “the improvement and perfection of daily penalty in the marine supporting regulations and local legislation shall be carefully taken into consideration.” Comment: refinement of the daily penalty system

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors admit that the comment of the reviewer makes the sentence more fluent. So we followed the reviewer’s comment, and changed “perfection of daily penalty” to “refinement of the daily penalty system” in the sentence.

• Revise in all references the correct order: Authors. date. title....

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors respect the suggestion in regard to references by the reviewer. But the authors completely follow the requirement regarding to references of the journal Sustainability, which clearly requests to describe the reference in the following order: Authors. Title. Type of work. Date....  To explain, we have taken the following examples of reference requirements of journal article and book:

“Journal Articles: Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.”

“Books and Book Chapters: Author 1, A.; Author 2, B. Book Title, 3rd ed.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, Year; pp. 154–196.”

In addition, in order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have reedited the format of references following the requirement of the journal Sustainability, and added the hyphen of “-”for those incomplete words, which are not in the same line, as marked in red.

(38) “(accessed on 20 May 2022)” Comment: Revise the format of all dates in this section.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors respect the suggestion in regard to references by the reviewer. But the authors completely follow the requirement regarding to references of the journal Sustainability. The official website of Sustainability has provided the format of all dates, as follows:

“Title of Site. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).”

 

 

2. Regarding the scientific aspect of the text, the research still needs to present the theoretical background of the analysis, i.e., the international scientific literature that provides information on the assessment of the daily penalty system and on which the analysis will be based. Also, a research question could be raised before indicating the steps you will take to conduct your research (last paragraph of the introduction). Posing a research question will bring clarity to your research objectives.

Response: Many thanks for the comment.

• In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to provide the international scientific literature that provides information on the assessment of the daily penalty system in the para. 3 of revised Introduction and para.1 of revised section 3:

“Different from China, the international community has early found a solution to the issue of low illegal costs for continuous environmental violations. The famous view is the “rational polluter model” based on the deterrence theory, which allows enterprises to choose their environmental behaviors in accordance with the cost-effect analysis of law-abiding/law-breaking [10]. Long ago, Charles Garlow & Jay Ryan pointed out that the ability to prevent pollution relied on a precondition that “illegal costs should be higher than compliance costs”, that is, it is much more economical to comply with environmental regulations than to illegally pay fines [11]. The logic of daily penalty is to construct a consecutive penalty structure for continuous environmental violations by increasing the illegal costs to achieve effective deterrence and restrain illegal behaviors. Patricia Lindauer predicted that legal provisions like “daily penalty” would be added in future legislation [12].”

“At present, there have been three types of daily penalty in abroad, i.e., “order penalty”, “enforcement penalty”, and “criminal penalty”, respectively. The first imposes daily cumulative penalties from the occurrence of the violation to the date of correction, represented by the U.S., as early as the 1970s, and the daily penalty is expressly stipulated by several environmental acts such as The Clean Air Act of 1970, The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, etc. The second imposes a penalty and order correction at the beginning, and then initiates a daily continuous penalty if the review finds that the violation is still not corrected, which was regulated by The Air Pollution Prevention and Control Act (1981) in India. The third is “day fines” in the criminal justice system, which adjust the size of the fine to both the severity of offence and the wealth of offender by the court. The concept of day fines was first introduced in Finland in 1921, followed by other countries in Europe. Half of all Europe countries apply day fines into practice [28]. The most successful is Germany, where more than 80% of criminal sanctions are day fines, and besides environmental offence, day fines are widely applicable for theft, fraud, forgery, drug offence.”

 

• In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following research questions to bring clarity to this research objective in the para. 6 of revised Introduction:

“Then, problems arise concerning the reason for and the approach of the MEPL establishing the daily penalty system, innovations of the daily penalty system in the MEPL, etc. The key issue is whether the daily penalty system established by the MEPL works well for the effective remediation of marine environment, and if not, focus will be placed on obstacles in implementation to be found and solved? To this end, this article intends to take the opportunity of the upcoming MEPL revision to address the problems, and formulate a reasonable design of daily penalty suitable for the marine law enforcement system.”

Notably, the authors have still retained the part of methodological approach in revised Introduction, and explained the reasons in the sixth response of the first comment. In order to make the article more flow, the authors don’t directly add the research questions before indicating the steps to conduct our research (last paragraph of the introduction), but raise it before introducing the methodological approach. We do hope it is suitable.

 

3. By solving these minor flaws, the text will be ready to be published.

Response: Many thanks for the comment. The authors have solved the flaws to the best of our ability, as instructed by the reviewer. And the authors have also found an English native speaker named Paula Bensley to re-proofread this manuscript, and has a certificate of E-transtar English Editing. After the proofread, the manuscript has been improved in in grammar, punctuation, spelling, verb usage, sentence structure, conciseness, general readability, writing style, and native English usage. We do hope that the quality of revised paper is now at the publishable level.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I strongly suggest that the authors undergo a thorough English proof reading of their manuscript. Sentences are very long, lacking clarity, while key notions are not properly used through the text. What is "low illegal cost"? do you mean low costs of fines/penalties due to unlawful operations"? Things like that need to be clearly written. Especially for legal terms. 

This is necessary for understanding that right now is difficult.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1’s Comments-Third Round

 

1. I strongly suggest that the authors undergo a thorough English proof reading of their manuscript.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have made the third proof reading of this manuscript, so as to an easier understanding about the paper. We do hope that the quality of revised paper is now at the publishable level.

 

2. Sentences are very long, lacking clarity, while key notions are not properly used through the text.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have undergone a thorough English proof reading of our manuscript, in which, including to modify some long sentence as far as possible to make them clearer, as marked in red.

To illustrate, such the following example of re-modified abstract as “The strictness of legal liability for the marine environment protects the marine space of China. Designed to impose the most severe punishment for polluting marine environmental violations, the use of a daily penalty system in maritime legislation has been developed from scratch and from the national to the local levels. Based on Article 73 of The Marine Environment Protection Law, the introduced factors, application, and innovative regulations of the daily penalty system are also hereby discussed. Although substantial progress has been made, the daily penalty system still faces two major obstacle, i.e., shortcomings in The Marine Environment Protection Law, and the imperfection in the marine supporting laws, regulations, and local legislation. To this end, to provide an effective guarantee for marine administrative law enforcement and fundamentally solve the problem of the low law-breaking cost, the liability design of the daily penalty system should be improved by expanding the application scope, increasing the daily fine quota, and formulating specific applicable standards adaptable to the marine environment. In this case, a reference can also be provided for the revision of The Marine Environment Protection Law in China. Additionally, it is also suggested to enhance the relevant provisions of marine supporting laws, regulations, and local legislation.”

In addition, the authors have made further explanations on key notions. To explain, we have taken the following examples:

• In order to make the article clearer, we have fixed and streamlined the key terminology throughout the article as follows: “daily penalty system” = “DPS”
• In the para. 3 and the para. 4 of Introduction, we have rewritten the following content to further explain the “daily penalty system (DPS)” as “The logic of DPS is to rise the illegal costs for continuous environmental violations by imposing consecutive economic fines to achieve effective deterrence and restrain illegal behaviors.” “DPS takes a “day” as a punishment unit, and continuously accumulates fines according to the number of days of refusing to correct the illegal pollution discharge behavior. In this case, fines are tied to the duration of violation. The longer the illegal time is, the higher the penalty amount will be.” “The design of DPS increases the cost of illegally polluting emissions by consecutive daily fines. Besides, DPS results in an effective psychological deterrence and threat of high cost on noncompliance by imposing strict economic penalties, which encourages enterprises to rectify their violations and avoid “high fines”.”
• In the para. 3 of section 3, we have added the source of application of DPS as “Article 5 of Daily Penalties Implementation Measures regulated five types of illegally polluting discharge violations applicable to the DPS”
• In the para. 1 of section 4.1, we have re-modified the core and specific content of marine ecological civilization as “The core lies in pursuing the harmony between human beings and the marine space on the premise of respecting the sea.” “The specific requirements contain to jointly build a maritime community with a shared future, strengthen the prevention and control of marine environmental pollution, protect marine biodiversity and realize orderly development and utilization of marine resources, and leave a blue sea and sky for future generations.”
• In the para. 2 of section 5.2.2, we have rewritten the following content to explain low daily fine quota in the MEPL as “Paragraph 2 of Article 73 of the MEPL stipulates a daily fine quota of up to RMB 200,000. However, the costs of marine pollution control are often tens of millions, and the fine of RMB 200,000 per day is obviously too low. After all, the final fines for ten consecutive days of illegal pollution discharge are RMB 2 million, failing to effectively punish and curb the marine environmental violations. It is also an important reason explaining the preference of lawbreakers to “leave the land and discharge into the sea” in practice. Additionally, the APPCL and the WPPCL also provide the DPS, applying to the same violations involving unlicensed pollution discharge and beyond-standard pollution discharge. The maximum daily fine quota in the APPCL and the WPPCL is RMB one million, far more than five times or even ten times as stipulated in the MEPL (see Table 4).”
• In the para. 2 of section 6.1.3, we have rewritten the following content to explain three ways of defining “pollutants” as “(1) MEPL may imitate the definition of water pollutants in the WPPCL, defining pollutants as substances directly or indirectly discharged to the sea and might cause pollution to the sea; (2) MEPL may learn the second paragraph of Article 2 of the APPCL, listing out specific substances included in the pollutants; and (3) Article 94 of MEPL stipulates the meaning of “pollution damage to the marine environment”. From that, MEPL may define the pollutants as “substances that are directly or indirectly discharged into marine environment and are harmful to marine living resources, human health, fishing, seawater utilization quality and environmental quality”.”

 

3. What is "low illegal cost"? do you mean low costs of fines/penalties due to unlawful operations"? Things like that need to be clearly written. Especially for legal terms.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to address the reviewer’s comment, the authors have added the following content to clarify the meaning of “low illegal cost” in the para. 2 of Introduction as:

“That meant the costs of fines imposed on accidents causing marine environmental pollution were no more than RMB 300,000.” “Notably, the low illegal costs mentioned in this research referred to the low costs of fines, which indicated the low statutory cost of administrative fines for unlawfully polluting marine environment. Direct costs and opportunity costs were not taken into account here. The former included raw materials and machines purchasing for illegally discharging pollutants, and fees paid for identifying pollution discharge points etc, while the latter was an opportunity actually incurred by businesses for engaging in illegal pollution discharge.”

In addition, the authors have revised other legal terms as follows:

• regarding to “ordered correction” in the para. 3 of section 3 as “Obviously in China, one correction opportunity is allowed before starting the DPS. The forms of ordered correction include ceasing the violations, stopping construction, production or use as ordered, dismantling and undertaking treatment within a prescribed time limit and any other specific form of administrative order as prescribed in any law, regulation or rule. If the lawbreakers do correct, they shall not be imposed consecutive fines per day.”
• In the para. 3 of section 4.1, we have added the source of applicable scope and protected object of EPL and MEPL as “Article 3 of the EPL regulates that this law applies to the territory of China and other sea areas under the jurisdiction of China. It naturally includes the applicable scope provided by Article 2 of the MEPL, i.e., the internal waters, territorial seas, contiguous zones, exclusive economic zones, and continental shelves of China and all other sea areas under the jurisdiction of China.” “Article 2 of the EPL stipulates the protected object is “environment”, i.e., the entirety of all natural elements and artificially transformed natural elements that affect the survival and development of human beings.”
• In the para. 1 of section 4.3, we have further explained the “order to correction” of MEPL as “However Article 73 of the MEPL prescribes “order to correct” as ordering to stop illegal acts and take corrective action within a prescribed time limit, or to take measures such as restricting the production and suspending the production for rectification.”
• In the para. 2 of section 6.1.1, we have further explained the content of DPS in The Dalian Marine Environmental Protection Regulations as “Article 54 of The Dalian Marine Environmental Protection Regulations has regulated that violations of “vessels pollution” are also applicable for the DPS. That means, if the vessel garbage, sewage, oily wastewater, wastewater containing toxic and hazardous substances, waste gas and other pollutants and ballast water discharged by vessels to the ocean within the sea areas of the Dalian City don’t meet the laws, regulations, other relevant provisions and the requirement of discharge standards, which could be imposed continuous penalties per day when refusing correction after being ordered to correct [60].”
• In the para. 2 of section 6.1.2, we have further explained the “penalty factors on counting daily fine quota” as “paragraph 2 of Article 59 in the EPL rules that, the daily fine quota shall be determined on the basis of factors such as the operation costs of pollution prevention and control installations, the direct losses caused by the illegal act and the illegal income as provided for by the relevant laws and regulations.”

  

4. This is necessary for understanding that right now is difficult.

Response: Many thanks for comments. In order to make the article more understanding, the authors have made the third English proof reading of this manuscript, not only revising some long sentences as far as possible to make them clearer, but also further explaining the key notions and legal items. The authors wish to address these comments as fully as possible and do hope that this paper is now reaching publishable level.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx