Scholars consider deficient local accountability mechanisms a key shortcoming of China's response to environmental issues. Through empirical analysis of the new procurator-led public interest litigation (PIL) system, this study examines whether – and to what extent – this shortcoming can be remedied by empowering the juridical institutions. It concludes that thanks to the procuratorates’ political insider status, relative autonomy from local politics and extensive resources, procurators have generally found ways to maintain a delicate balance between holding executive agencies environmentally accountable and managing local governments’ resistance to the PIL system. However, reliance on top-down political support may ultimately hinder the expansion and stability of the procuratorial PIL system.

This study examines legal opportunity in China after the recent “law-based governance” reforms, including those that have professionalized the judiciary, established NGOs’ public interest standing, and expanded legal aid coverage. Based on in-depth interviews, it finds that despite the generally tightening political control over the social sector, the reforms have helped some law-related NGOs expand their litigation practice, social and legislative influence, and domestic funding sources. At the same time, these changes have had considerable cooptation effects by aligning these NGOs’ interests with the state’s and channeling their activities into state-sanctioned institutional processes. The findings suggest that states can effectively utilize a dualist strategy that combines restrictive and supportive approaches to public participation in the legal process. It thus sheds light on the progression of legality within various political and institutional contexts.

Although judicial empowerment has become increasingly common worldwide, the expansion of judicial powers in authoritarian countries faces persistent obstacles, such as institutional dependence, lack of political clout, and the repression of civil society. Through empirically examining three cases of environmental legal entrepreneurship under China's new public interest litigation (PIL) system, this study aims to reevaluate the patterns and limits of judicial expansion under authoritarianism. It finds that Chinese judges, prosecutors, and NGOs have been able to leverage the PIL system and their respective institutional advantages to substantially expand judicial oversight on eco‐environmental protection. However, the state has established boundaries for such legal entrepreneurship in terms of subject matter, institutional autonomy, and geographic reach, effectively confining them within political spheres considered unthreatening to the regime. Such quarantined judicial expansion shields relevant actors from authoritarian governments' tendency to suppress legal mobilization and thus may be a more viable form of judicial expansion in nondemocratic settings.

Increasing research has been devoted to examining collaborations between public and private actors in environmental regulation under neoliberal democracies. However, this public-private interaction in authoritarian regimes remains understudied. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature through an empirical examination of the interaction between environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and procuratorates in China's environmental public interest litigation. We find emerging complementarity: NGOs focus on new issues and target high-profile defendants to increase the socio-legal impact of their civil litigation, whereas procuratorates increasingly engage in administrative litigation against government agencies. This complementarity is shaped by the different legal opportunities for Chinese NGOs and procuratorates, as well as their respective institutional objectives and capacities. Their divergent regulatory preferences have also fostered synergy between these two actors, allowing them to collaborate on legal experimentation and innovation.