Since its launch at the end of 2015, the central environmental inspection and supervision campaign has adopted a firm resolve to tackle chronic environmental problems with drastic measures and the courage to make tough choices, adopting an iron-fisted approach of “zero tolerance” toward pollution. Within just two years, the campaign has covered all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across the country, and more than 15,000 individuals have been held accountable. The effectiveness of these efforts in tackling pollution is evident to all and has earned high praise from the general public. At the same time, however, claims that “environmental inspections have triggered a wave of price hikes” have also become increasingly widespread.

Does the situation—“pursuing environmental protection leads to rising raw material prices, thereby impacting the economy”—actually exist? Has the intense pressure for environmental protection reached a level that businesses can no longer afford?

It is undeniable that, as environmental inspections are being carried out vigorously and with great intensity, many commodity prices have indeed risen to some extent. For instance, in certain regions, industries closely related to environmental protection—such as home furnishings and building materials, basic chemicals, and plastics—have been raising the prices of their goods and services, citing reasons like capacity restrictions and shortages of raw materials. According to reports, since the start of the environmental inspections, cement prices in some areas have risen by between 30 and 50 yuan per ton, while sand and gravel prices have exceeded 200 yuan per ton, requiring cash purchases and leaving consumers facing a situation where “prices exist but goods are unavailable.”

However, a deeper analysis of these surface phenomena reveals that, under market economic conditions, changes in product prices are primarily determined by the relationship between supply and demand—and are influenced by numerous factors, far from being solely dependent on environmental inspections. Those who enthusiastically champion the notion that “environmental inspections cause price hikes” are mostly business owners. They use “environmental protection” as a pretext to raise prices, focusing solely on their own personal profit—what they call the “economic calculation”—while neglecting the “ecological account” of sustainable and healthy social development. The claim that “focusing on environmental protection leads to higher raw material costs” is a false proposition.

Environmental pollution has long been a hot-button issue that has drawn widespread public concern. Over the past several years, some enterprises that violate environmental laws and regulations have drastically cut their environmental protection costs—or even completely neglected to invest in environmental protection altogether—resulting in a “bad money drives out good” phenomenon in the market. These enterprises have reaped higher profits than those that strictly comply with environmental policies, seriously disrupting the order of market competition, hindering the optimization and upgrading of industrial structures, and further exacerbating the deterioration of the ecological environment.

Therefore, we must never allow the “protracted pain” of pollution control to give way to the “long-term suffering” caused by inaction. The government must remain firmly committed to tackling pollution with an iron hand, intensify its efforts to drive environmental protection, purify the market environment, promote economic structural adjustment, enhance the quality of economic development, and win both the protracted battle to safeguard our ecological environment and the sustained struggle for transformation and upgrading.