A Comparative Study On Chinese And American Legal System Of Environmental Impact Assessment

In1979, the environmental protection law of China was enacted, which means EIA was firstly legalized. In2003, through acting the law of EIA, Chinese EIA became more thorough. Chinese EIA after three decades of development, helped government to coordinate the relationship between environmental protection and economic development. Meanwhile, using legal procedure was able to prevent environmental risk. Due to at the beginning of the establishment, the Environmental Impact Assessment System in China absorbed a lot of valuable experience for reference from the United States, so that the two EIA systems have lots in common. At the same time, because of the different social forms, legal system and other basic national conditions, the two countries have different characteristics. However, look around the whole practice of environmental impact assessment system in China, there are still lots of shortcomings, like unspecific rule and poor operability. Comparing with the United States, there is a big gap between Chinese and American EIA.This paper based on basic theory of EIA. Moreover, political system, jurisprudence, different economic development and respective EIA were as the point of penetration for the study. Obviously, there were many differences and similarities with comparing the relationship between the both countries about EIA. There were many imperfections in implementation process of American EIA. Based on those imperfections and Chinese national conditions, it is necessary to provide some institutional and measures in order to consummate EIA.