On August 15, 2025, China's Environmental and Ecological Code takes effect — a landmark legal framework of 1,242 articles that reorients the country's courts away from punitive reflex and toward ecological repair. Issued alongside it, the Supreme People's Court's first judicial guidance for the code establishes that polluters who voluntarily remediate harm may face lighter consequences, embedding restoration as a legal value alongside accountability. This is not leniency for its own sake, but a calculated wager: that the promise of reduced penalties will move companies to clean up what they ha