How China is exploring PFAS regulation and remediation

From looming disaster to proactive strategy

In 2015, the Chinese government issued its Water Ten Plan (Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Water Pollution) in response to the poor state of its surface water and groundwater systems.

China grades its water quality with Grade I-III considered safe for direct use, and anything Grade V and above is viewed as unfit for any use. At one time, 70 per cent of the water in the country’s major river systems was too polluted for human use.

Pollution was a direct consequence of a booming economy and industrial growth, leading to widespread contamination from factories, energy production, agriculture and from ageing and unsuitable sanitation and water treatment facilities.

The Water Ten Plan was a direct reaction to the significant pollution of water sources, exacerbated by the fact that the country’s freshwater supplies are dwarfed by the size and needs of the growing population.

Contained within the plan were 10 broad measures and 238 specific actions, each with concrete deadlines. One of the key targets was to ‘flip’ the 70 per cent river water statistic, so that the same percentage of water within the seven major river basins achieved Grade III or better quality by 2020. This marked a shift from water purely as a resource to a more resilient ‘quality and quantity’ strategy.

Progress made under the Water Ten Plan

To mark the 10-year anniversary of the Water Ten Plan, a joint report was published by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) – a non-profit environmental research organisation registered and based in Beijing – and Green Jiangnan – an environmental protection centre for the Taihu Lake Basin. The Path to Lucid Waters: A Decade of Clean Water Actions in China outlined the successes achieved under the plan, while also setting out recommendations for further improvements.

It would be impossible to discuss PFAS remediation in China without acknowledging the successes and importance of the Water Ten Plan, which, it can be argued, set the foundations for all future water improvement work.

Among the achievements, the research teams behind the report state:

• China has successfully advanced initiatives, such as the protection of drinking water sources
• Remediation of urban black and odorous water bodies
• Protection of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River
• Comprehensive treatment of key sea areas and control of rural pollution.

Spending on water pollution control increased significantly under the plan, as did monitoring efforts and disclosure of pollution events, as well as infrastructure quality improvements and spending on wastewater treatment.

Interestingly, one of the key recommendations from the report was for the Chinese government to ‘strengthen source control measures for emerging pollutants’ and advance wastewater treatment that ‘simultaneously reduce pollution and carbon emissions’.

From a 10-year plan to a Beautiful China

China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment is currently leading an initiative called Beautiful China, which runs through to 2035. This is an action plan designed to protect and create beautiful rivers and lakes, and to improve the quality of aquatic ecosystems across the country.

Liu Jing, deputy director of the Department of Water Ecology and Environment at the ministry, told Chinese media at the project’s launch that: “Pollutant discharge within the basin should be effectively controlled…” and that it marked a ‘new phase’ in China's water governance, moving beyond pollution control toward a more integrated approach, following the end of the Water Ten Plan.

Beautiful China is significant because:

• It sets numerical targets for quantifying environmental objectives with a clear timeline
• It applies a whole-of-government and whole-of-the-economy approach to addressing environmental and social objectives
• It is backed by the country’s top leadership, which shows that the environmental objectives of Beautiful China are a core requirement of all social and economic development.

This effectively frames any subsequent policy to limit the production, use and clean-up of PFAS chemicals.

The PFAS problem in China

A study published this year in the journal Research of Environmental Sciences (Vol 39, Issue 3) provides an insight into the PFAS challenge for wastewater treatment plants in China.

Researchers from the Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Eco-Environmental Protection sampled wastewater (influent, effluent, and individual treatment units, along with sludge samples from anaerobic, anoxic, aerobic, secondary sedimentation tanks, and transport sludge) from a plant in North China serving the electronics manufacturing industry.

Results from the sampling revealed that:

• Perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA) was the dominant PFAS in the wastewater, accounting for 44-57 per cent of total PFAS.
• Six PFAS compounds, including PFBA, perfluoropentanoic acid (PFPeA), perfluorobutanesulfonate (PFBS), perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), together accounted for more than 90% of the total PFAS.
• During wastewater treatment, short-chain PFAS predominated in the aqueous phase in the sewage, whereas medium-chain PFAS were dominant in the sludge
• The overall removal efficiency was 35.97 per cent, which the researchers attributed as a success for the anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2O) process used at the plant, which included interception and filtration by grates, adsorption onto activated sludge in tanks, and sedimentation in the clarifier.

They did note that further reductions in PFAS discharge will require the integration of ‘advanced treatment technologies with conventional biological processes’. An interesting point given the EU’s requirement that plants over a certain size will need to introduce quaternary treatment phases.

Another study looked at PFAS levels in China’s wastewater, surface water, and groundwater. It analysed the monitoring of 12 PFAS over two decades and found that treatment plants were ‘critical nodes’ for the so-called forever chemicals entering the environment, and noted that their effluents led to similar PFAS distributions in surface and groundwater.

Among the standout findings, the study revealed:

• PFBA and PFOA had the highest average concentrations, with most PFAS increasing over time.
• The highest levels were found in coastal areas.
• PFAS profiles varied by city, dominated by PFOA and short-chain PFAS, and related to fluorine chemical plant distribution.
• PFOS and PFOA had the lowest predicted no-effect concentrations, indicating “medium” to “high” ecological risks in cities like Fuxin and Zibo.

Recommendations included developing a cross-media, multi-level monitoring and assessment system targeting key PFAS compounds.

These are just two studies published in 2026. They reveal that PFAS contamination poses a serious threat to both human and ecological health in China.

Elsewhere, it is estimated that as many as 14 million people around the world now live within 10 km of a fluoropolymer production plant – more than half of them live in China.

Recent regulations tighten PFAS control

China is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of PFAS, accounting for half the global market, and so any regulation will have a transformative impact on manufacturing and wastewater treatment.

In 2025, Sichuan Province jumped ahead of the field by implementing the country’s first discharge standards for PFOA and PFOS in chemical industrial parks. The controls are designed to prevent environmental release at the source, particularly in high-density industrial zones.

Under the controls, firms operating in China within chemical parks need to:

• Audit current PFAS usage and emissions
• Adapt wastewater treatment processes
• Strengthen PFAS monitoring systems
• And, importantly, plan for long-term PFAS substitution strategies.

While some PFAS have previously been regulated in the country, most notably PFOA and PFOS, President Xi Jinping’s signing of Presidential Decree No 64 marked a notable shift in the country's approach to hazardous chemicals, effectively turning regulations into national law. This elevation places control of these pollutants under significantly greater legal force and regulatory intensity.

The Environmental and Ecological Code consolidates dozens of existing environmental statutes covering air, water, and soil pollution; ecological conservation; development; and climate change.

According to the BMJ, Article 645 of the new code will establish a prevention, monitoring, and control system for emerging pollutants, including PFAS. This law significantly tightens regulations on hazardous chemicals throughout their lifecycle.

Leading the world in making and replacing PFAS

Of course, PFAS substances have been widely used around the world for decades for a reason – they are good at what they do, whether that be waterproofing, fire retardation, heat protection, or similar.

For countries and industries around the world, there are still exemptions in place from most regulations. Stopping PFAS production at source will help wastewater treatment plants in the clean-up process; however, exemptions make this task much harder and will only add both time and costs to the effort.

A major driver for industrial change will come from finding alternatives for PFAS. And while China might be the world’s major producer of the forever chemicals, it also leads the world in researching PFAS substitutes.

In fact, not only does the country own the most patents for PFAS substitutes, but its patent portfolio is expanding faster than most, if not all, major industrial nations, with only Germany coming close in Europe.

Substitutes, along with the control of hazardous chemicals progressing into law, and nationwide projects like Beautiful China, could well see the country become a leader in PFAS remediation.