Millions of pollution records, searchable by company name — compiled from what the government already disclosed.
China’s environmental enforcement generates an enormous paper trail: supervision records, automated monitoring data, inspection reports, suspension notices, impact assessments. Most of it was publicly available in principle and inaccessible in practice — scattered across thousands of government websites. The Blue Map Database (蔚蓝地图), built and maintained by the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE, founded May 2006), collects that trail into a single user-searchable database — a key public source of firm-level environmental violation and disclosure records in China.
How it was assembled
IPE aggregates publicly available environmental information through official government channels — ecology and environment departments, water, maritime, and emergency-management authorities — tracking more than 8,000 official data sources, plus enterprise self-disclosure submitted through IPE’s Blue EcoChain platform, plus “publicly confirmed” complaints and reports. The database runs continuously (dynamically updated since IPE’s founding; the Blue Map app launched in 2014) and spans the period 2006–present, covering 31 provinces and 337 cities. IPE’s English materials also describe data from China and overseas. The unit of observation is the enterprise, public institution, pollution source, or monitoring facility — not a representative sample, but a disclosure-coverage aggregation: what the data reflects is what governments and enterprises have disclosed.
What it holds
Environmental quality data (air, water, soil, ocean); real-time emissions data for key pollution sources; environmental supervision records, automated monitoring data, inspection reports, production suspension or restriction notices, environmental impact assessments, and officially confirmed petitions and complaints; plus corporate environmental-information disclosure. IPE’s self-reported scale, from its 2024 official materials: more than 20 million enterprises covered across 100+ categories of environmental and enterprise data by end of 2024; 3.05 million+ environmental noncompliance records for 1.64 million+ factories; hourly or bihourly monitoring data from 72,000+ key monitoring facilities. These are IPE’s own figures — no independent audit was located — and they should be cited as attributed, not independently verified.
What the database powers
Blue Map is the operational backbone of China’s green supply-chain accountability ecosystem. Brands screen suppliers through Blue Map’s single and batch searches. IPE’s own evaluation programs — the Corporate Information Transparency Index (CITI) and the climate-action CATI evaluations — are built on Blue Map data. The Blue Map app itself functions as a live public dashboard.
Reading it without being misled
The central interpretive rule: Blue Map reflects state disclosure coverage, not ground truth. It does not measure actual pollution levels independent of what governments and enterprises disclose; it does not measure undisclosed or unmonitored sources; it does not verify the accuracy of enterprise self-disclosed data. Because the database aggregates disclosed government data, its completeness tracks the strength of local disclosure enforcement — which varies widely across provinces and cities, the same variation IPE’s own PITI index measures. Enterprise self-disclosure through Blue EcoChain is voluntary and unverified. Complaint and report records are included when “publicly confirmed,” which selects toward visible disputes. And the absence of a violation record for a firm says something about disclosure coverage — not about compliance.
Practical details
- Producer: Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE); founder and director Ma Jun, the environmentalist (马军) — not the economist Ma Jun (马骏)
- Currency: continuously updated; scale figures from IPE’s 2024 official materials, checked September 2026
- Coverage: China, 31 provinces / 337 cities, 2006–present; enterprise, supervision-record, monitoring-facility, and city-level reading as units of observation
- Access: open — public search interface via the IPE English portal (Data Introduction page) and Chinese portal; Blue Map app (2014); data services offered to NGOs, research organizations, and businesses
- Citation form: Blue Map Database, Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), accessed September 2026. No DOI.