After posting the article "On Detention Penalties for Noise Pollution: Starting with the Translation of the 'Ecological Environment Code'" , the comment section became quite interesting.

Some say that since the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security has been revised, one can just call the public security organs directly for noise disturbances without making things so complicated. Others argue that the root of the problem isn't who regulates it, but that the definition of "what constitutes noise" itself is unclear. Both statements are correct, but both are incomplete.

A few days ago, I had dinner with a classmate who works at the Bureau of Ecology and Environment and specifically chatted about this. He was very blunt: these types of problems are hard to manage not because no one is in charge, but because in reality, they are truly difficult to regulate.

I have summarized a few major "sticking points."

Regulatory Responsibilities Tend to "Hang in the Air"

From a legal perspective, noise issues are not actually unregulated.

Whether it is the current Law on the Prevention and Control of Noise Pollution or the soon-to-be-implemented Ecological Environment Code, the wording is the same: departments such as housing and urban-rural development, public security, and transport are responsible for noise supervision within their respective scopes of duty.

The problem is that this division of labor is based on "type." For example, construction noise is managed by the housing and construction department; noise from freight vehicles is managed by the transport department; modified exhaust pipes on "street-roaring cars" and illegal honking are managed by public security; industrial enterprise noise falls under ecology and environment, and so on.

However, activities like square dancing or singing do not fit into any typical category.

It is not a construction project, nor is it transportation, and certainly not a pollutant-discharging unit. It is simply a group of people generating sound while active in a public space. Therefore, the legal clause can only end with a sentence: Responsible departments shall be designated by the local people's government.

This sentence looks like a safety net, but in fact, this is exactly where the problem lies.

In many places, this "designated department" defaults to the Urban Management (Chengguan), but the legal text does not actually say "Urban Management." Whether and how it is clearly designated varies across different regions. At the grassroots level, interpretation easily becomes distorted; in some places, Urban Management is in charge, in others, Public Security acts as the backup, and in some, it simply becomes "whoever receives the complaint handles it."

Consequently, a very realistic situation arises:

Legally, there appears to be a "division of labor," but in specific cases, it often becomes a situation where "everyone can regulate it, but no one can say for sure if they must regulate it."

This is why many people feel that after calling a whole round of numbers—12345, Urban Management, 110—the problem remains unsolved. The core issue is that the boundaries of enforcement responsibility themselves are not clear enough.

Noise Standards are Hard to Quantify

Many people in the comments mentioned a question: how can enforcement be carried out if there are no decibel standards for social life noise?

This question seems professional, but the reality is even more awkward: social life noise not only lacks standards, but it is also very difficult to establish them.

Many people bring up values like "60 decibels," but a little thought reveals the problem.

After all, a person speaking normally is already at roughly that level. If there are speakers in a square, combined with a mix of people, it is naturally a layering of multiple sounds. If you take a decibel meter and measure at different locations in the square, the results might be completely different.

Even more troublesome is that this noise is "mixed together."

The sound you measure in your home is not just the speakers from the square dance; it might also include road traffic, other people talking, or even sounds from inside your own home. In the end, while you might measure a value exceeding 60dB, it is very difficult to prove exactly who caused that value.

An essential prerequisite for enforcement is the ability to pin the responsibility onto a specific target.

If the sound itself is a "mixed result," then the responsibility is very hard to decouple.

Additionally, there is a very practical problem: once you set up to take measurements, the situation is likely to change.

As soon as enforcement officers arrive at the scene with equipment, the volume is often immediately turned down. This is not an isolated phenomenon but a universal situation. Thus, a typically awkward dilemma arises: it is indeed noisy when not being measured, but as soon as a measurement is taken, it becomes "compliant."

This is why many citizens are dissatisfied in practice. They are "suffering" in noise every day, yet every time the enforcement department goes to test, the results come back as "no problem." The result is that what was originally a conflict between a noise source and a victim turns into a conflict between the victim and the enforcement department.

Enforcement Measures are Difficult to Replicate

If a technical means exists in theory but is difficult to use consistently in actual enforcement, it is truly hard to implement.

Some people might suggest: can we design a stricter method of evidence collection, such as measuring simultaneously in the square and in nearby residents' homes, supplemented by audio and video recordings to make the evidence solid?

This idea has been proposed, but it faces many problems when put into practice.

First is the issue of manpower. Squares often have more than one sound source. If simultaneous evidence collection is required, many people would need to measure at different points at the same time. On the residents' side, to prove the scope of impact, you might need to measure multiple households simultaneously. This scale of evidence collection is basically unrealistic for daily enforcement. By the time that many people are mobilized, the offenders would have fled with their speakers; they won't just stay in place waiting to be penalized.

Second is the issue of legal boundaries. For instance, the decibel level measured in a resident's home might be high. But how much of that is caused by the square speakers, and how much is due to the building's own sound insulation issues? That is also hard to say. If the building itself fails to meet insulation standards, leading to excessive noise in the living environment, that falls under the jurisdiction of the housing and construction department. Furthermore, since many parks and squares are surrounded by old buildings that may not meet the Code for Design of Sound Insulation of Civil Buildings, the responsibility for noise becomes even more difficult to untangle.

Then there is the issue of evidence. Mixed noise is inherently difficult to separate. Even if you complete a full evidence collection process, it is easily challenged later for "the inability to attribute cause accurately." For example, if each sound source is capped at 70 decibels, but ten 70-decibel sources stack up to 80 decibels, on the surface, no individual source exceeded the limit. This is very difficult to handle in practice.

The overlap of these factors leads to a realistic outcome: for these situations, it is difficult to form a set of low-cost, replicable enforcement procedures that can be used repeatedly in daily operations.

And once that cannot be achieved, it is hard to expect the problem to be completely solved by enforcement alone.

Social Noise Governance Must Return to "People"

Precisely because of the issues mentioned above, one can understand why the clause in the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security includes the wording "where persuasion, mediation, and handling by grassroots autonomous organizations... have failed to stop it."

Involving village committees and neighborhood committees in steps like persuasion and mediation is not redundant. Rather, it tells everyone one thing: for these types of social life noise problems, the law is not intended to be the first-tier solution. Instead, priority is given to the self-governance of villagers and residents.

To put it more bluntly, social life noise is essentially a "boundary conflict."

One side feels it is normal entertainment and exercise; the other feels it is a continuous intrusion into their lives.

The law can draw a bottom line, such as defining at what point a penalty can be applied, but it is difficult for it to be precise about what time activities must stop, how loud is reasonable, or how public space should be allocated.

Therefore, in many places where problems don't actually arise, success often relies not on enforcement, but on things "not written in the law."

Such as a default time boundary, choosing activity locations far from residential areas, or the tacit understandings repeatedly formed between neighbors. These things might not sound "tough" enough, but they may actually be more effective. Ultimately, the essence of the noise problem remains a question of how people coexist within the same space.