Volume 2, Number 1: ( 2003 ) : pp. 65-88

Pollution prevention has been adopted by many countries as an efficient and proactive strategy to reduce waste releases. During the past decade, China made great efforts to control industrial pollution by transferring cleaner production (CP) technology at both the regional level and the sector level. In this paper, the Taiyuan City Cleaner Production Programme is used as a case study to examine the content and the effectiveness of such city-level CP programmes. Based on reports generated by eight demonstration factories and data collected through interviews with factory managers and the CP programme managers, the factories" decisions to adopt CP technologies are influenced by several key factors, including the following opportunities for factories to enhance competitiveness, enforcement of environmental regulations, and the Taiyuan CP Programme. The influence of various factors on CP-related decisions made by enterprises is difficult to disentangle.