One Fire, Three Decades: Why Did China's Straw Burning Ban Move from Targeted Control to Comprehensive Prohibition? (Part 2)

In 1999, China established a straw burning ban management system centered on priority zones: areas around airports, near major transportation arteries, and densely populated regions became the priority targets. By the 2010s, however, some provinces had begun to enforce strict burning bans across their entire administrative regions.

Why did a policy that originally focused on priority-zone management gradually move toward comprehensive burning bans in some localities?

The answer is not simply “smog has gotten worse.” A review of policy documents from 2008 to 2015 shows that the expansion of the ban’s scope, the strengthening of local accountability, the spread of satellite remote sensing, and the combination of fiscal subsidies and administrative assessment together reshaped how straw burning was governed.

One thing especially deserves attention: Jiangsu already proposed in 2009 the goal of achieving a province-wide ban on open-field straw burning by the end of 2012. Therefore, treating the comprehensive ban as a policy that only emerged after the 2013 smog-control push does not fit the historical record. 1 2

This article focuses on the institutional evolution during 2008 — 2015, and distinguishes between the original policy text, local practice, and the resulting governance incentives.

I. 2008 — 2015: How did the burning ban policy cascade into place layer by layer?

Modern straw burning prohibition was not carried out by a single department on its own; it unfolded through a cascading governance structure:

Relevant national departments set policy goals for environmental governance, comprehensive utilization, and responsibility implementation.
Provincial governments and local legislatures defined ban zones, local institutions, fiscal support, and assessment methods.
City and county governments divided responsibility areas, arranged subsidy funds, organized patrols, and verified burning fire points.
Townships, village groups, and agricultural operators directly faced the practical tasks of clearing fields, mechanized return to fields, straw collection and storage, and on-site management.

This structure is not fundamentally different from other public policy implementation models, but straw burning has several particular features: it occurs in highly dispersed locations, is concentrated mainly during the farming season, and yet a portion of its fire points can be detected by satellite.

This gradually turned it from a dispersed agricultural production activity into an administrative object that could be counted, notified, and ranked.

II. 2008: The Olympics Assurance Pushed Large-Scale Strict Bans

On 21 April 2008, the former Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the Notice on Further Strengthening Straw Burning Prohibition (Huan Fa [2008] No. 22). 1

The document not only required that the jurisdictions of municipalities directly under the central government, provincial capitals, and sub-provincial cities be fully included in the burning ban scope, but also specifically stated that, to ensure air quality during the Olympics, from early May to the end of September 2008, nine provinces and municipalities — Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Liaoning — were designated priority burning ban zones and implemented comprehensive burning bans.

The document also required satellite remote-sensing monitoring of straw burning, and the organization of dedicated supervision and notifications of the situation.

What did this change mean?

The 1999 Administrative Measures for the Prohibition of Straw Burning and Comprehensive Utilization emphasized key areas such as airports and roads, with a strong public-safety and local pollution-control character. The 2008 Olympics assurance, by contrast, placed more stress on regional air quality: pollution emissions from different provinces can affect urban air quality through atmospheric transport.

As a result, larger-scale, longer-duration unified bans gained a practical precedent.

But it must be made clear that the temporary comprehensive burning ban required for the 2008 Olympics did not mean that the entire country permanently moved to a province-wide ban from that year on. Whether long-term comprehensive burning bans were later established depends on local legislation and specific policies.

III. Jiangsu: A Province-Wide Ban Goal Was Already Set in 2009

Jiangsu is an important case for studying the institutional expansion of the straw burning ban.

On 20 May 2009, the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress passed the Decision on Promoting the Comprehensive Utilization of Crop Straw. The decision initially defined the following priority burning ban zones: 2 3

Zone type	Burning ban scope defined at the time
Nanjing	The entire administrative region
Other cities with districts	30 km around the built-up urban area
County seats and similar areas	5 km around the built-up area
Airports	20 km around the airport
Expressways, national/provincial highways, and railways	5 km on each side
Other zones	Designated by district/city or county (city) governments based on actual conditions

More importantly, this decision required localities to gradually expand the burning ban zones, achieving a province-wide ban on open-field straw burning by the end of 2012. The Jiangsu Province Comprehensive Utilization of Crop Straw Plan (2010 — 2015), released the same year, reiterated this timeline. 2 3

This shows that, at least in Jiangsu, the province-wide ban was not merely a grassroots slogan but had a clear provincial institutional and planning basis.

Why did Jiangsu expand the scope of control relatively early?

This is closely related to Jiangsu’s economic geography and agricultural production characteristics.

On one hand, cities, populated areas, transportation arteries, and airports are densely distributed. When burning ban protection zones were set around these areas, the actual farmland covered could already be quite extensive.

On the other hand, rice–wheat rotation is widespread in Jiangsu, and there is time pressure between harvest and the next sowing; farmers need to deal quickly with large amounts of straw left in the field.

Jiangsu therefore did not just prohibit burning on its own; it tried to combine burning bans, mechanized return to fields, fiscal subsidies, and straw collection and storage.

A 2014 notice from the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed that Jiangsu had earmarked a special subsidy fund of 520 million yuan for mechanized straw return-to-field operations, with local matching funds of 170 million yuan, and the per-mu subsidy standard had been raised from 10 yuan to 20 yuan. At the same time, Jiangsu used satellite remote sensing, ground patrols, and PM2.5 automated monitoring, and explored the use of drones and helicopters for inspection. 4

This model embodies two policy directions: using management measures to suppress burning, and using fiscal funds to lower the cost to farmers of adopting alternative disposal methods.

The truly difficult problem is that the cost of straw disposal varies across regions and households, and a uniform subsidy standard may not cover all actual expenditures.

IV. Anhui: In 2014, Satellite Fire Points Were Tied to Fiscal Subsidies

If Jiangsu represents the institutional expansion of the spatial scope of the burning ban, Anhui’s 2014 practice clearly demonstrates an even more important change: burning fire points began to directly affect the fiscal subsidy funds a local government could receive.

The summer straw burning ban work report issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in September 2014 records: 4

Anhui’s provincial finance newly arranged 1.145 billion yuan in subsidy funds to support mechanized straw return-to-field and other comprehensive utilization projects in the main producing areas.
On a county basis, 5% of the provincial subsidy funds would be deducted for each burning fire point found in a priority zone.
2% would be deducted for each fire point in non-priority zones.
Fire points by city and province-administered county were published daily, and rankings were broadcast on weekly television news.
After that year’s summer harvest, the principal leaders of the three lowest-ranked cities — Bengbu, Huaibei, and Chuzhou — explained the situation on television news.

Note: the 5% and 2% were Anhui’s deduction rules for relevant local subsidy funds at the time, not fines on individual farmers, nor nationwide rules.

Why is this a key turning point?

Originally, when a fire burned on a particular field, it mainly involved the actor on site, nearby residents, and the relevant regulatory authorities.

But once fire points became linked to fiscal subsidies, public rankings, and administrative accountability, a single fire point could affect the policy assessment and funding arrangements of an entire county.

This created stronger administrative incentives:

The fewer fire points, the smaller the risk a locality faced in terms of fiscal subsidies and administrative assessment; conversely, a fire point being detected could trigger additional inspections and accountability.

This helps explain why some localities tended to expand patrols and raise prevention intensity.

But this system also carries potential risks: if assessment relies excessively on the number of fire points, administrators may pay more attention to whether there are “any fire points at all” than to whether straw is being dealt with in an economic, environmentally sound, and sustainable way.

This is an analysis of the incentive mechanism; these rules alone do not justify a sweeping claim that there was widespread unlawful enforcement or improper punishment at the time.

V. 2013 — 2015: The Burning Ban Became Further Tied to Government Performance Assessment

On 14 May 2013, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly issued the Notice on Strengthening the Comprehensive Utilization and Burning Prohibition of Crop Straw (Fa Gai Huan Zi [2013] No. 930). 5

The document set out three requirements that deserve attention.

1. Clarifying local responsibility

Local governments bear overall responsibility for the comprehensive utilization of straw in their administrative regions; the principal government leader is the first responsible person; and a target responsibility system needs to be established to assign responsibility to the relevant departments.

2. Creating a “reverse-pressure mechanism”

The document required linking the burning ban to project approval, total air-pollutant emission reduction assessment, and rural environmental protection target responsibility assessment.

3. Strengthening satellite monitoring and grassroots supervision

The document proposed building a burning ban supervision information system based on a satellite application platform, while promoting the construction of straw crushing, benching, return-to-field, and collection-and-storage-and-transport systems.

In 2014, the implementation assessment of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan further incorporated straw burning prohibition work. The Ministry of Environmental Protection confirmed this change both in its official 2014 report and in its 2016 reply to a suggestion from a National People’s Congress deputy. 4 6

At this point, the straw burning ban was no longer merely an issue of agricultural production and environmental protection; it more directly entered the performance assessment system of local governments.

Why did stricter management approaches become easier to appear?

From the standpoint of enforcement cost, precisely distinguishing between burning ban zones and non-ban zones, individual plots, special time periods, and management conditions requires more detailed investigation and management capabilities.

By contrast, using a simple, unified comprehensive burning ban rule is often easier to publicize, inspect, and hold people accountable for.

Comparison item	Precise zoned management	Simple comprehensive burning ban
Rule complexity	Higher	Lower
Plot and time-period determination	Requires specific judgment	Relatively simple to judge
Agricultural production flexibility	Relatively higher	Relatively lower
Grassroots communication cost	May be higher	Initially may be lower
Environmental risk management	More dependent on technical and execution capacity	More emphasis on comprehensive pre-emptive prevention

This administrative incentive helps explain the drivers behind the expansion of management scope in some localities, but administrative convenience itself cannot replace the legal basis for defining burning ban zones and imposing penalties in accordance with the law.

More importantly, simply tightening regulation cannot resolve the final destination of straw.

In June 2015, in its reply to a National People’s Congress deputy’s suggestion, the Ministry of Environmental Protection explicitly pointed out that the straw burning ban faced problems such as the difficulty of evidence collection, the difficulty of imposing penalties, and insufficient grassroots enforcement capacity. In some localities, grassroots personnel carried out 24-hour rotating inspections during the busy farming season, and still could not detect and stop all illegal burning in time. The reply attributed an important cause to: the outlets for large amounts of surplus straw had not yet been effectively resolved in a timely manner. 7

This is a very important official judgment: the responsible authorities at the time already recognized that inspection and penalties alone cannot fundamentally solve the problem.

VI. Hubei: A Province-Wide Burning Ban Formally Implemented in 2015

On 1 February 2015, the Third Session of the 12th Hubei Provincial People’s Congress passed the Decision on the Open-Field Burning Prohibition and Comprehensive Utilization of Crop Straw. The document stipulated: from 1 May 2015, open-field straw burning is prohibited throughout the administrative region of Hubei Province. 8

The decision also required localities to improve prevention-and-control mechanisms, advance comprehensive utilization, and implement the burning ban through publicity, village rules and covenants, and responsibility allocation.

Interestingly, the draft amendment explanation published by the Hubei Provincial People’s Congress also recorded differing views from the legislative discussion. 9

At the time, most representatives agreed with the timeline for the comprehensive ban and the goal of striving for a comprehensive utilization rate of straw of 95% or above by 2020, but some representatives raised the question of whether the implementation timeline and goals could be further considered.

In the end, the legislature still chose to implement a province-wide ban starting from 1 May 2015.

This shows that the formation of local comprehensive bans was not entirely without discussion. Policymakers also had to choose between air quality, agricultural production cycles, comprehensive utilization capacity, and timing of implementation.

VII. 2014 — 2015: Did the Number of Fire Points Actually Decrease?

According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s summer notices in two consecutive years, during the monitoring window from 20 May to 31 July: 4 10

Year	Nationwide satellite-monitored straw burning fire points
2014	2,119
2015	1,158

In 2015, the number decreased by 961 year-on-year, a decline of 45.35%.

The change was more pronounced in some provinces:

Province	Summer 2014	Summer 2015	Year-on-year change
Anhui	644	32	-95.0%
Hubei	79	14	-82.3%
Henan	815	512	-37.2%
Hebei	106	196	+84.9%

Anhui and Hubei saw sharp declines, while Hebei clearly increased.

These official data show that, under the corresponding monitoring conditions, the number of detected straw burning fire points nationwide during the summer did decrease significantly, but the regional variation was very large.

Why can’t the number of fire points alone be used to evaluate the full effect?

First, satellite fire points are not a complete record of all burning activity.

Cloud cover may obscure fire points.
Smaller-scale, shorter-duration events may go uncaptured.
Thermal anomalies still require ground verification to rule out misidentification.
One fire point does not equal one household, nor can it be directly converted into burned area or pollution emissions.

Second, changes in fire points are also influenced by weather, planted area, harvest progress, mechanization level, enforcement intensity, and policy incentives.

Finally, even if fire points drop in a given area, that does not directly imply that local PM2.5 concentrations fell by the same percentage year-on-year.

Therefore, to evaluate the effect of the burning ban, it is ideal to also combine air-quality monitoring, agricultural production costs, the actual volume of straw disposed of, and governance expenditure.

VIII. Changes in Jiangsu’s Policy Timeline: Institutional Requirements and Real-World Implementation Are Not the Same

Jiangsu’s 2009 provincial people’s congress decision and the plan released afterwards both set the goal of a province-wide ban on open-field straw burning by the end of 2012. 2 3

But on 20 December 2014, the Jiangsu Provincial Government’s Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Comprehensive Utilization of Crop Straw set new staged goals: 11

By 2015, the comprehensive utilization rate of straw to reach 90%, and open-field burning to be basically eliminated.
By 2017, the comprehensive utilization rate of straw to rise to over 95%, achieving the goal of a comprehensive ban on open-field straw burning.

This shift deserves attention.

It does not directly prove that all previous localities failed to enforce the policy, but it shows that making an institutional arrangement for a province-wide ban does not mean that sufficient alternative disposal capacity has actually been built up in reality.

Straw collection, benching, transport, storage, processing, and sales involve machinery and equipment, rural labor, seasonal logistics, and industrial markets. None of these can be built up immediately simply by issuing an administrative order.

The time lag between policy requirements and technical and industrial capacity is key to understanding why the straw burning ban has been repeatedly controversial.

IX. Is the Burning Ban Actually Solving Pollution or Just Shifting Costs?

These two questions should not be confused.

First, open-field burning does produce air pollution and public safety risks. Strict control in densely populated areas, near airports, and along major transportation arteries has a clear public-interest basis.

Second, the reality that straw needs to be dealt with does not disappear because of a ban. In the absence of market-based collection and storage and economically viable alternatives, farmers must shoulder the costs of mechanized return to fields, benching, transport, or other field-clearance work.

Finally, regulation itself also has costs. Satellite monitoring, grassroots inspection, duty, notification, and on-site verification all require public resources.

The costs borne by different parties can be roughly divided as follows:

Cost	Possible bearers	Main manifestations
Burning pollution and public-safety damage	Residents, transport users, and society	Smoke and dust, health risks, reduced visibility
Straw disposal costs	Farmers, cooperatives, agribusinesses	Crushing, return-to-field, benching, transport, storage
Regulation and enforcement costs	Governments at all levels	Monitoring, inspection, verification, law enforcement
Investment in resource-based utilization	Enterprises, cooperatives, and public finance	Collection-and-storage-and-transport networks, processing facilities, subsidies

A burning ban may reduce the social cost caused by pollution, but it does not automatically remove the cost of straw disposal.

A 2016 paper in Resources Science, Analysis of Farmers’ Straw Disposal Behavior in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui, surveyed 473 farmer households. The study found that burning-ban subsidies, farmer awareness, technical guidance on return-to-field, and the presence of straw purchasing stations nearby were all significantly associated with choices to burn, return straw to fields, or sell straw. 12

This means whether the policy can be effective over the long term depends both on regulatory intensity and on whether alternative disposal methods are actually feasible.

In November 2015, the NDRC and three other departments further issued the Notice on Further Accelerating the Comprehensive Utilization and Burning Prohibition of Crop Straw, emphasizing “combining blocking with channeling, with channeling as the main approach”, and setting the goal of striving for a national comprehensive utilization rate of straw of 85% or more by 2020. 13

This is not a denial of the burning ban; rather, it makes clear that administrative prohibition needs to work alongside agricultural technology, collection-and-storage systems, and market demand.

X. What Does the 2008 — 2015 History Actually Show?

Looking at the key milestones together, the trajectory of policy change is very clear.

Time	Key change	Historical significance
2008	Comprehensive bans in nine provinces and municipalities during the Olympics	An important precedent for large-scale unified strict control
2009	Jiangsu sets a province-wide burning ban target by the end of 2012	Province-wide bans begin to be institutionalized at the local level
2013	National document emphasizes government responsibility and reverse-pressure mechanism	Burning ban further combined with administrative assessment
2014	Anhui ties fire points to deduction of fiscal subsidies	Monitoring indicators directly affect local fiscal incentives
2014	Burning ban incorporated into the assessment of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan	Environmental governance performance further strengthened
2015	Hubei passes a province-wide burning ban decision	Province-wide bans institutionalized in more regions
2015	State further strengthens comprehensive utilization and collection-and-storage policies	More clearly addresses the limits of relying on the ban alone

The most important change in this history is not that people only discovered in 2008 that straw burning pollutes the air, but that what was originally a dispersed agricultural production activity was gradually incorporated into a public governance system that can be monitored, ranked, assessed, and held accountable.

This system can mobilize local resources and reduce detected burning fire points in the short term, but it also raises a new question: when administrative goals do not fully align with farmers’ economic conditions or local agricultural technical levels, who ultimately bears the cost of the burning ban?

The legitimacy of a policy’s governance goal does not mean that all implementation methods are equally reasonable. Judging the effectiveness of the straw burning ban requires looking at both environmental improvement and agricultural production conditions and implementation costs.

From the 2008 Olympics assurance to the parallel pursuit of comprehensive bans and comprehensive utilization by 2015, China’s straw burning ban entered a critical period of transition from regional prevention and control to systematic administrative governance. This also set the stage for the later controversy over province-wide bans, the adjustment of comprehensive utilization policies, and the debate over precise zoned delineation.

References

The following mainly uses original government policy documents, official notices, and academic research. All figures are taken as accurate for the corresponding year and statistical scope in the cited sources.

Note: This article focuses on the policy evolution during 2008 — 2015. The historical content of the cited files does not equal the full current legal provisions as of 2026; for the specific current burning ban scope, time periods, and penalties, refer to current laws and the latest local regulations.

I. 2008 — 2015: How did the burning ban policy cascade into place layer by layer?#

II. 2008: The Olympics Assurance Pushed Large-Scale Strict Bans#

What did this change mean?#

III. Jiangsu: A Province-Wide Ban Goal Was Already Set in 2009#

Why did Jiangsu expand the scope of control relatively early?#

IV. Anhui: In 2014, Satellite Fire Points Were Tied to Fiscal Subsidies#

Why is this a key turning point?#

V. 2013 — 2015: The Burning Ban Became Further Tied to Government Performance Assessment#

1. Clarifying local responsibility#

2. Creating a “reverse-pressure mechanism”#

3. Strengthening satellite monitoring and grassroots supervision#

Why did stricter management approaches become easier to appear?#

VI. Hubei: A Province-Wide Burning Ban Formally Implemented in 2015#

VII. 2014 — 2015: Did the Number of Fire Points Actually Decrease?#

Why can’t the number of fire points alone be used to evaluate the full effect?#

VIII. Changes in Jiangsu’s Policy Timeline: Institutional Requirements and Real-World Implementation Are Not the Same#

IX. Is the Burning Ban Actually Solving Pollution or Just Shifting Costs?#

X. What Does the 2008 — 2015 History Actually Show?#

References#