Abstract:
Since the launch of the ‘10th Five-Year Plan’, China has spent nearly 20 years developing a comprehensive system for managing and cleaning up contaminated industrial sites. As the country enters a phase of high-quality development, with a focus on green and low-carbon initiatives, the prevention and control of soil contamination at these sites faces both challenges and new opportunities. This paper reviews progress in technologies for the prevention and remediation of contaminated industrial sites in China, evaluates current needs, and identifies ten major scientific and technical challenges across five key areas: soil environmental standards, pollution mechanisms, monitoring and regulatory technologies, remediation techniques, and decision-support systems. It highlights specific gaps, including limited scientific support for soil standards, unclear pollution mechanisms for certain contaminants, incomplete sampling and monitoring systems, insufficient green remediation technologies, and a lack of comprehensive decision-making tools. Based on China′s national conditions and global trends, the paper proposes several strategies: strengthening research on soil standards, deepening the study of pollution mechanisms, improving monitoring systems, advancing green remediation technologies, and building an information and intelligence-based decision-support system. These efforts aim to drive scientific and technological innovation, promoting coordinated development across disciplines, technologies as well as the soil remediation industry.