Since 2009, the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have jointly measured the level of information disclosure on pollution sources and levels from 113 Chinese cities. IPE and NRDC have developed and implemented an evaluation system called the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI). The fourth annual report, which analyzed data from the assessment year of 2012, found that the average PITI score for these 113 cities has continued to rise for the third year in a row, reaching 42.73 out of 100 points total.

In the years since the report was first published, environmental information disclosure has continued to grow, but there has been a simultaneous downward trend in the annual rate of progress. The 2012 annual assessment saw the largest number of cities with decreasing PITI scores out of the past three years. Eastern China has led previous PITI scores; however, the performance of Eastern China in 2012 was not worth highlighting. Overall, most cities made no substantive progress in the disclosure of key information such as routine supervision records, enterprise emission data and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) documentation.