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Numerous studies have examined China's authoritarian environmentalism, with a focus on policy-making and implementation. We argue that law enforcement should also be investigated as a crucial stage. Specifically, we examine environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) and analyse a novel dataset of 7010 EPIL court judgements from 2015 to 2020. We find that state prosecutors dominate EPIL activities, while the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is strictly limited. We also show great variations in EPIL lawsuits filed by state prosecutors across provinces, indicating high local discretion over environmental law enforcement. Lastly, we doubt whether the great number of EPIL outputs from state prosecutors will produce significant environmental outcomes, because they tend to target low-hanging fruit, in contrast to the more challenging and environmentally profound EPIL cases initiated by NGOs. We highlight the value of using the authoritarian environmentalism framework to contextualise debates surrounding the development of EPIL in China.

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Unsafe use of pesticides and fertilizers is a concern in rural areas of China, resulting in serious threats to environment and the quality of agricultural products. Many works have studied the factors influencing the adoption of green agricultural technology by farmers. However, few studies have explored the factors that lead to a farmer’s sustainable use of green agricultural technology. Based on a survey of 1,138 kiwi growers in Shaanxi province of China, this paper builds a theoretical model to look at this issue and conducts a series of empirical exercises to gain insight into the effects of perceived value, government support and their interaction on kiwi growers' sustainable application of green agricultural technology. We find that (1) Perceived monetary and non-monetary benefits positively affect the sustainable application of green agricultural technology by farmers while perceived monetary and non-monetary risks affect it negatively. In addition, such influence would be enhanced with an increase in the intensity of perceived value and vary with the type of green agricultural technology. (2) Both agricultural extension service and ecological subsidy, as two main forms of government support, have a positive and significant effect on the sustainable application of green agricultural technology. (3) There is also a role for the interaction effects between the influence of perceived value and government support on the sustainable application of green agricultural technology. Therefore, it has been proposed in this paper that the government should expand relevant publicity, education, training, and guidance, offer compensatory incentives for producers, and adopt guiding methods corresponding to different green agricultural technology, so as to promote the sustainable application of green production modes by farmers.

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