Comparative legal framework for marine plastic pollution control in China and Pakistan

Marine plastic pollution is a transboundary environmental crisis that requires strong regulatory frameworks and international cooperation. This study compares marine plastic pollution laws in China and Pakistan and asks how the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) can support bilateral collaboration while reconciling Pakistan’s constitutionally decentralised environmental governance with China’s more centralised and integrated marine environmental system. The article applies a clarified Comprehensive Review of International Law and Relevant Literature (CRILL) method. Legal materials were selected from binding statutes, implementing regulations, official policy documents and peer-reviewed literature, and were compared against six criteria: legal scope, institutional allocation, enforcement powers, plastic life-cycle coverage, implementation evidence and bilateral feasibility. The comparison shows that China’s revised Marine Environmental Protection Law (2023), effective from 1 January 2024, strengthens land-sea coordination, full-chain pollution control, institutional responsibility and public-interest litigation. Pakistan’s framework, centred on PEPA 1997 and provincial environmental legislation, provides a foundational legal basis but remains limited by fragmented competence, uneven enforcement capacity and incomplete plastic-specific regulation. Rather than treating Pakistan’s 2023 single-use plastics rules as a complete failure, the article evaluates them as a legally significant but geographically limited and unevenly enforced measure. The conclusion proposes a legally feasible CPEC Marine Plastic Pollution Cooperation Mechanism based on a bilateral memorandum/protocol, joint monitoring, regulatory coordination, capacity-building and stakeholder participation.