To better regulate the use of the waters off of Shanghai, the Shanghai Oceanic Administration Bureau on January 1 will become the only government agency to issue work permits and impose a sliding scale of user fees.
By centralizing administrative over-sight, the city's estimated annual loss of 300 million yuan (US$36.1 million) caused by "illegal operations" should come to a halt, officials said.
The general law means that a jumble of city agencies, such as the Shanghai Port Authority and the Water Resources and Environmental Protection bureaus, will no longer be issuing permits and charging fees.
The hodgepodge of agencies has allowed unscrupulous businesses and individuals to claim, when asked by one agency, that they are registered with another and had paid that agency's fee when, in fact, they haven't, officials said.
"This year, not a single fee has been collected from any business operation on the area of the ocean that comes under Shanghai's jurisdiction," said Yan Yingdong, an official with the State Oceanic Administration's East China Sea Branch.
The branch director, Zhang Youfen, added: "Those illegal operations - ocean mining, fishing, cable-laying, dredging and waste-disposal, for example - have been threatening a huge expanse of coastline and coastal waters in the vicinity of Shanghai.
"The new law is expected to efficiently wipe out such behavior and put everything in order."
The problems have mainly cropped up along the city's 500-kilometer coastline and in the waters off of Pudong, Jinshan, Baoshan, Fengxian and Nanhui districts and Chongming County.
Shanghai claims jurisdiction over more than 7,220 square kilometers of the ocean off its coast.
Under the law that will go into effect, the use of the East China Sea for public service, administration and military is exempt from operational charges.
(eastday.com December 24, 2001)
