I think you might be overemphasizing that relationship (or underestimating its consequence).

As a counter example, we can say China can't possibly enforce things like seat belt or drunk driving without political reform but those are largely non-problems now because they were easy politically costless solutions.

The problem is here is prioritization/will rather than mechanism/implementation since China likely believes the environment is a problem with a known solution and wants to milk dirty production for a new more years.

Gorbachev wanted to follow the simultaneous political and economic reform route and that definitely didn't turn out well for anyone.