The three years between 2018 and 2020 marked a milestone in China’s environmental governance. Driven by the establishment of Xi Jinping’s Ecological Civilization as China’s fundamental guiding political and development principle，this period witnessed a set of major breakthroughs in China’s environmental legislation，governing infrastructure，and institutional capacity building. More importantly，the top-down ideological and institutional changes had led to a set of stringent environmental law enforcement and anti-pollution campaigns unprecedented in scale and extensiveness in the history of the People’s Republic. The three years campaigns，targeting some of most high-profile and challenging issues such as air pollution，water pollution，and soil contamination，had led to visible improvement in environmental quality，but it still takes time to see whether such highly politicalised environmental law enforcement actions could transform into long-term environmental progress and more effective and institutionalised environmental governance.

It is worth mentioning that 2020 is a very special year because it not only marks. the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan and the three-years anti-pollution campaigns，but also witnessed the outbreak of an unprecedented public health crisis，namely the COVID-19. This chapter also examines some of the emerging，both negative and surprisingly positive，impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on China’s pollution control and environmental governance.