China released measures on hazardous chemical enterprises’ responsibility system for safety of major hazard sources (Trial) 
On October 13, 2020, Ministry of Emergency Management of the Peoples’ Republic of China published “Measures on Hazardous Chemical Enterprises’ Responsibility System for the Safety of Major Hazard Sources (Trial)” on its website. The comment period will last to November 12, 2020. According to the Measures and the “Explanatory Note” published at the same time, the main contents of the Measures are as follows.
Under the Measures, in order to ensure safe and smooth operation of major hazard sources, the key requirements for the safety management of major hazard sources in the enterprises, which are specified in the existing Law of the People’s Republic of China on Work Safety, Regulation on the Safety Management of Hazardous Chemicals, Interim Provisions on the Supervision and Management of Major Hazards of Dangerous Chemicals and other laws and regulations, have been assigned to three responsible parties. In other words, for each major hazard source which should be connected to the national hazardous chemical production safety risk monitoring and early warning system, the related enterprise shall clearly identify the three responsible persons, namely, the main responsible person, the responsible person for technique and the responsible person for operation, and shall provide safety coverage for the major hazard source at the overall, technical and operational levels. In addition, the three responsible persons shall be designated by the enterprise specifically for the purpose of risk management of major hazard sources in accordance with the requirements of the Measures and in the light of actual practice.
The Measures are divided into 5 chapters and 15 articles.
Chapter 1 is a general guideline, which specifies the scope of application and general requirements.
Chapter 2 is about the responsibility, stating that each of the safety responsible person has five safety production responsibilities for major hazard sources.
Chapter 3 is about management measures, requiring those safety responsible persons for the major hazard sources to publicize related information in the plant and in the monitoring and early warning system, as the first targets for risk warning information. And they also need to establish a record of performance and commit to make daily announcements of risk management to the community.
Chapter 4 is about monitoring and inspection, requiring emergency management departments to use monitoring and early-warning systems to strengthen online inspections and spot check on the safe operation of major hazard sources.
Chapter 5 is Annex that specifies the schedule for implement.
In September 2020, the Measures began to collect comments from emergency management departments and central enterprises (writer’s note: major state-owned enterprises under the jurisdiction of the State Council) at the local level. In addition, it began to collect comments from the emergency departments of major cities at the beginning of October 2020.
The original text of the Measures can be found from the following link (in simplified Chinese)
