“I haven’t seen the smog stay so long like this for years,” a 40-year-old woman who only gave her last name, Zhou, said after buying two air purifiers for more than 13,000 yuan($2,000) each in downtown Beijing. “This seems to be the only solution for us. You used to just open the windows to get fresh air at home, but now you can’t do that since it’s even dirtier outside.”

[...] Official measurements of PM2.5 rose to 993 in Beijing on Jan. 12. The city has proposed rules to scrap old vehicles, ban new cement and steel factories, and impose fines for roadside vendors barbecuing food on smoggy days.

Further measures to clean up the capital may be difficult because much of Beijing’s smog comes from surrounding regions, Ma Jun, a Beijing-based environmentalist and founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said in a phone interview.

“China is the world’s biggest steel producer, and half of China’s steel is produced in areas around Beijing such as Hebei and Tianjin, mostly by burning coal,” Ma said. “How can the region stand this?”

People with an entrepreneurial spirit have started to make money by selling fresh air in cans. From John Garnaut at The Sydney Morning Herald:

Chen Guangbiao, whose wealth is valued at $740 million according to the Hurun Report, sells his cans of air for five yuan each.

It comes with atmospheric flavours including pristine Tibet, post-industrial Taiwan and revolutionary Yan’an, the Communist Party’s early base area.

Mr Chen told Fairfax Media he wanted to make a point that China’s air was turning so bad that the idea of bottled fresh air is no longer fanciful.

“If we don’t start caring for the environment then after 20 or 30 years our children and grandchildren might be wearing gas masks and carry oxygen tanks,” said Mr Chen.

James Fallows at The Atlantic notices a less humorous related phenomena: birth defects and cognitive disorders related to the heavy pollution:

Some related notes that have come in, about a problem increasingly recognized inside China as a national emergency. From a reader in the United States:

“[...A]long with the disappearance of children with no identified medical needs, we have seen a huge increase in the number of children with identified medical needs.  Every month, I place children (from 9 months to 14 years) who have cleft lip and/or cleft palate; missing fingers, hands, toes, parts of arms or legs; malformed internal organs; genetic disorders; etc. ”

[...] From another reader, this link to an article on the possible relationship between certain forms of pollution and autism. And from a technically trained reader who has been living and working in China:

“It is not hard to believe, if the vegetables they ate spent the entire season grown in soil and air laden with heavy metals, the water they drank is contaminated with metals and VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds], and the air the breath is full of PM2.5 dust which can pass through the alveoli sacs into the blood stream, and through the blood/brain barrier, directly into their growing brains.  Certainly, we are aware of how heavy metals retard brain development…”

See more on air pollution via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, Beijing environment, Chen Guangbiao, coal power, environmental activism, greenhouse gas emissions, PM2.5, sustainable development
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The capital will take 180,000 old vehicles off the road and promote clean energy autos among government departments, the public and the urban cleaning sector, which includes street cleaners and trash collectors, Wang Anshun said at the opening of a session of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, the municipal legislature.

The heating systems of 44,000 old, single-story homes and coal-burning boilers downtown are to be replaced with clean energy, Wang said as he delivered a government work report.

The city will also speed up the promotion of clean energy in rural areas and strictly control dust in construction projects, said Wang.

He vowed to strengthen air quality monitoring and analysis, as well as the release of such information.

The promise of increased transparency, itself coming on the heels of a wave of unusually frank coverage in state media, was accompanied by a call for public comment on the new regulations. From Dexter Roberts at Bloomberg Businessweek:

In another sign that Beijing officials are, for now, leaning toward openness, officials will allow the city’s 20 million residents to weigh in on draft regulations aimed at curbing the Chinese capital’s horrendous air pollution, according to a notice posted Jan. 20 on the Beijing municipal government website. The public can comment on the proposed new measures until Feb. 8, the day before China shuts down for the annual Chinese New Year festival, said the statement issued by the city’s legal affairs office.

“This is important. Now public scrutiny should play a key role in promoting pollution control and enforcement of this rule,” says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Ma’s environmental advocacy group plans to comment through the online platform that the municipal government has created for this purpose.

Edward Wong argued at The New York Times on Sunday that Beijing’s “extraordinary surge” in air pollution was one of several drivers of growing demands for political input. But Reuters reported a generally unfavorable response to the plans on Sina Weibo:

“These plans are just dreams,” wrote one user.

Others said the phasing out of old cars would make little difference in a city where about 250,000 new cars hit the road every year, albeit with supposedly higher emissions standards.

“These ‘old cars’ are what the ordinary people drive. You people can only dare talk about this subject when you start phasing out all the cars officials drive,” wrote another user.

Other doubts remain about the likely effectiveness of public consultation, enforcement, and of rules targeted only at the city itself. From Yin Yeping at Global Times:

Zhang Yuanxun, a professor of resources and environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that a lack of law enforcement will be a problem.

“The punishments enshrined in the regulations are too strict and broad. It will require many more law enforcement officers to ensure its effective implementation,” he said.

“The old laws were not enforced, not to mention this new one,” he said.

[…] “Also, just restricting the local atmospheric pollution would have little contribution to its improvement if there are no changes in the pollution conditions in the surrounding areas [of Beijing],” [Zhou Rong, climate and energy director of Greenpeace] said.

Wang Yan, a resident working in international trade, said she thinks the new laws should have been launched already.

“I don’t think I’ll offer comments on the new regulation since I doubt if my voice will be heard,” she said, adding targeting street barbecues is ridiculous.

At chinadialogue, Gavin Lohry suggested an additional measure that might help address a range of environmental concerns, from air quality and energy consumption to drainage:

Green roofs – roofs covered with plant vegetation – first gained popularity in Germany and have since been spreading around the world. They help cities reduce storm water runoff, cool the urban environment, absorb air pollution, insulate buildings and increase biodiversity. With enough green roof adoption, Beijing could realise positive impacts on the environment and improved quality of life.

My research on the topic found that in Beijing there is around 93 million square metres of roof space suitable for cost effective green roof adoption. If the cheapest and most basic forms of green roofs covered the suitable roof space, the urban environment would be substantially improved.

Under this scenario air particle pollution could be reduced by as much as 880,000 kilograms every year, equivalent to taking 730,000 cars off the road. The roofs could reduce storm water by 3.5 million cubic metres during large rain events, equivalent to filling the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square with two metres of water or 1,400 Olympic swimming pools.

Any boost to Beijing’s drainage infrastructure would be valuable in the event of more storms like last summer’s, which killed 77 people. But there are no easy solutions: the problems are tangled, often beyond the scope of local government policies, or out of human control entirely. From Jonathan Kaiman at The Guardian:

Deborah Seligsohn, an expert on China’s environment at the University of California, San Diego, said that there is no silver bullet for the country’s air pollution. The underlying causes are dynamic and diverse: power plants, small factories, automobile emissions, rampant construction, farmers burning coal for heat. “One of the things about the air quality in Beijing is that it varies a lot more than it used to,” she said.

Beijing’s air quality fluctuates with the weather – a strong wind from the north can blow the smog to sea, she said, while south-eastern winds trap the air against a nearby mountain range, drowning the city in a pea-soup haze.

[…] Beijing has taken significant steps to combat pollution – it invested an estimated $10bn before the 2008 Olympics to raise emissions standards, replace residents’ coal stoves with natural gas heaters, and relocate a ring of steel plants on the city’s outskirts. Yet Beijing still shares its airspace with six surrounding provinces which may not adhere to comparable environmental standards.

“One of the fundamental problems is that the environmental regulators don’t have sufficient authority and resources to overcome the forces that are creating the pollution,” said Alex Wang, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on China’s environmental law.

The problem is indeed hardly limited to Beijing, as Peking University professor Pan Xiaochuan angrily pointed out while blasting the term “Beijing Cough” as an “extreme insult” to the city. Other cities have been even more severely affected, and Shanghai has not escaped. From Reuters:

Shanghai, too, is improving public communication of air pollution data, as Angel Hsu describes on her blog:

[… B]y far my favorite innovation Shanghai’s EPB has made so far is in the use of this little air quality mascot to communicate what the various levels of pollution on the normalized AQI index mean. For the most part, things take a sour turn for AQI girl (let’s just call her that, I’m not sure if she has an official name) after the Good (51-100) part of the range. I like how they coordinated her hair color with the official color codes of different pollutant thresholds – it’s a great way for people to automatically remember and understand what the different colors mean. AQI girl also provides a much more people and user-friendly means to calculate air quality, as opposed to other cartoon characters or anime figures that they could gone with.

[…] I can only imagine next will come a video game for AQI girl, that will feature her navigating Shanghai’s polluted streets, having to dodge roadside exhaust coming from tailpipes, all the while remembering to wear her face mask when she sees AQI readings above 150.

The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Spegele and Wayne Ma described the obstacles to implementing deeper and broader solutions. Proposed changes inevitably raise questions of who will pay for them.

Over the long term, drawing down emissions will require costly upgrades to industrial facilities and oil refineries, measures resisted by state-owned companies unable to pass costs on to consumers and local governments that depend on industrial output for revenue.

[…] Though attention over the years has focused on power plants and passenger-car emissions, China’s pollution problems are complex and spread broadly across the economy. Mr. Zhao, of Nanjing University, and a research team studied the effectiveness of Chinese government policies in curbing emissions between 2005 and 2010 and estimated PM2.5 from coal-fired power generation fell roughly 21% as cleaner technologies took hold. Meanwhile, PM2.5 emissions from iron and steel production rose roughly 39% to 2.2 million metric tons, according to the estimates, as output increased.

China is particularly struggling to curb what are known as secondary pollutants, formed when primary pollutants—such as emitted sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, from coal burning and other sources—undergo reactions in the atmosphere. The government has had some success targeting primary pollutants, but analysts say it is just beginning to target secondary pollutant problems, including particulate matter that is harmful to human health.

Spegele also discussed a range of air pollution issues with the Journal’s Deborah Kan:

Officials have been careful to manage expectations, stressing that real change will take years, just as the current situation was years in the making. South China Morning Post’s Li Jing spoke to Qu Geping, whose career in shaping China’s environmental policy included a stint as the country’s first environmental protection administrator from 1987 to 1993. Qu lamented that the present of emergency was foreseen thirty years ago, when China nearly chose a different development path to avoid it. He blames the lost opportunity on government according to “the rule of men”, rather than rule of law.

“I would not call the past 40 years’ efforts of environmental protection a total failure,” he said. “But I have to admit that governments have done far from enough to rein in the wild pursuit of economic growth … and failed to avoid some of the worst pollution scenarios we, as policymakers, had predicted.”

[…] But, Qu said, if the central government had respected a policy that it released in 1983, China could be in a much better place now.

“The State Council published a document that year, stipulating that economic and urban construction should synchronise with environmental protection, so that the three legs of social development could reach a co-ordinated benefit,” he said. “It was a pragmatic and feasible strategy, even more approachable than the notion of ‘sustainable development’ enshrined by the United Nations years later.”

[…] “Why was the strategy never properly implemented?” he said. “I think it is because there was no supervision of governments. It is because the power is still above the law.”

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Post tags: 2008 Olympics, air pollution, air quality, Beijing, Beijing environment, beijing flood 2012, Chinese Academy of Science, clean air, clean energy, factories, forbidden city, greenpeace, industrial pollution, law enforcement, Ma Jun, PM2.5, power plants, rule of law, Shanghai, state-owned enterprises, steel, Tiananmen Square, Wang Anshun
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[...T]he Chinese state media said on Sunday that 496 monitoring stations would release data in real time on six types of pollutants, including sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and on PM2.5, particles that are so small they can only be detected by an electron microscope, but which can cause respiratory and heart disease.

[...] The pollution data will be available on the internet and through smartphone apps, said the Ministry of Environmental Pollution. There will also be daily readings on television and radio bulletins.

[...] The release of the official data will leave local governments less room to manipulate their statistics and hide the country’s worsening pollution problem.

It will also hamper other local governments from exaggerating how bad their air is in order to win pollution treatment funding from Beijing.

The New York Times, on the other hand, compares pollution in Beijing with London’s in the past. From Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore:

For London, the disaster was the Great Smog of 1952, which hit the city just this month 60 years ago. Near-freezing temperatures led to excessive coal burning in homes, which, combined with low winds, produced a thick yellow fog. Visibility was reduced to just a few feet. Public transport, cinemas, theaters and sporting venues closed down. An estimated 4,000 people died, mostly among the young, the elderly and sufferers of respiratory illnesses.

[...] China, as Peter Thorsheim, author of “Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800,” points out, would do well to learn from Britain’s mistakes for both its sake and its neighbors’. The Great Smog was a catastrophe, but it was also a “moment of opportunity amid the tragedy,” Thorsheim told me this week. The British government turned criticism from the opposition and the public into concrete improvements, including the 1956 Clean Air Act.

Has China reached its Great Smog moment? By the 1950s, although war-torn, Britain was already one of the world’s most technologically advanced and wealthiest nations; that surely helped its decision. China, despite its overall economic might, has not yet reached that stage in per capita terms, and development remains the Chinese Communist Party’s primary concern.

See more on air pollution via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, environmental data, environmental regulation, PM2.5, transparency
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You also include several U.S. cities — what was the reason for that?

The reason I included U.S. cities is because people who have not gone overseas can’t really see what a blue sky is. And when they can click through all the days in New York and Chicago, they can see that skies can be really blue and for a long time. That’s an interesting comparison.

[…] What’s there to be hopeful about?

I want to mention that my boss grew up in New York in the ’40s and ’50s and what he has been telling me is that when he was a kid, the air was very bad in New York City. There were all these smoggy days and when he woke up he could see a layer of soot and dust on the windowsill because New York was burning coal to heat up homes […]

I look at some of the photos from archives, I don’t feel that New York then was as bad as Beijing now. But the point I’m trying to get at is that it’s a very interesting project to be able to capture at this point in time in China with a few sample cities just to show day-by-day what air quality looks like. And I’m pretty sure that government and people and NGOs are trying to work together to get better. So maybe in 10, 20 years we’ll look back at these photos and people will start to appreciate that. Kind of a “you know what, I think we’ve done a good job. We’ve cleaned up, and look at those days.” So that is […] wishful thinking but I think it will be really interesting to see that happen.

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Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing, blue sky, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, New York, Shanghai, United States
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Now, amid the ongoing dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Chen has tried to encourage “rational patriotism” by offering to replace his microblog followers’ cars destroyed in recent anti-Japan protests. On the arguably less rational side, he has been selling cans of ‘Chen Guangbiao: Nice Guy’-branded fresh air to raise money for the Chinese military. From Tea Leaf Nation’s Liz Carter at The Atlantic, with pictures:

Recent tensions between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands have brought out the best and worst in Chinese society. They’ve also led to some unusual displays of patriotism. Recycling tycoon and eccentric philanthropist Chen Guangbiao, known as “Brother Biao” (标哥) by his fans, announced on September 18 that he would personally replace any car damaged in acts of “irrational patriotism.”

[…] This offer encouraging “rational patriotism,” as promoted by Chinese authorities in the wake of violent protests against Japan, comes on the heels of Chen’s announcement that he followed through on his plan to sell canned air (see pictures — lots of them — below). Chen claims the air is not only more pure than that in cities, but reportedly also comes from “revolutionary” regions. Proceeds, Chen says, will go to Chinese military efforts to defend the Diaoyu Islands. The canned air sold out in just a few days, and Chen told his social media followers to hold on to the cans, promising to buy them back for 40 or 50 RMB (about US$7) in ten years.

Global Times gives more details on the air cans and their reception by the public:

The air is collected from revolutionary regions, including Jinggang Mountain in Jiangxi Province, some ethnic minority areas and Taiwan, and sells for four to five yuan each, he said.

“One only has to open the can, directly ‘drink’ it or put the nose close to the can to breath deeply,” said Chen.

[…] Residents were cautious over Chen’s claims.

“Who can ensure the air was collected in Shangri-La?” said resident Shi Tingting, 27, from Chaoyang district.

“Is the fresh air really better than what we breathe every day?” said Wang Fu, a Beijing resident.

(Possibly, yes.)

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Post tags: air quality, anti-Japan protests, Chen Guangbiao, diaoyu islands, ethnic minority, Japan earthquake 2011, Jiangxi, nationalism, patriotism, Shangri-la, Taiwan
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Urban air quality is a serious issue that affects rapidly industrializing cities globally, and within Beijing as the capital of China, it is an issue kept quiet by the government under fear of criticism and protest from the public. At the same time, there is ample opportunity to use cheap, easily accessible microcontroller technology for grassroots air quality mapping. We see the traditional art of kite flying as an immense opportunity to pair it with microcontroller technology in order to give agency to local residents in understanding urban air quality.

[…] A series of 3 workshops + group kite flights will be held in Beijing, with outreach to Beijing neighborhood groups and organizations. Together, the community will be able to design and make kites in which the sensing modules are attached, learn more about air quality monitoring, and the technology behind it. After the workshops, a group night time kite flight will take place. Due to light and air pollution, it is extremely difficult to see stars in the Beijing night sky. These kites will appear not only as indicators of urban air pollution, but also a strong visual and sensory experience. As our project is public art, it also brings together people from all walks of life — from old kite masters in Beijing, to young environmentalists, to participate and make the final public art piece together.

Guler further explained the project’s aims to Julie Ma at GOOD Environment:

“It’s citizen-science—that’s the main goal,” Guler says. “We’re trying to interact with people on the street and see what they’re trying to do with the information they see. I don’t plan to argue that this is the most accurate data because there are many potential reasons for differences in air quality reports. We want to just keep it up, upload the data, and focus on that more after we come back.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Beijing
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After the U.S. consulate in Shanghai started its own feed this month, China claimed that air quality monitors at any foreign mission are illegal. The U.S. insists its monitors are intended solely for the consular community, but that has not quelled Chinese government spokespeople. Nor do the authorities think America is solely to blame. Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin excerpted his paper’s June 7 editorial, “Confronting an Increasingly Active U.S. Embassy,” in a Weibo post:

HuXijin: One of the reasons for the U.S. embassy’s growing activity is its group of followers within China. Through the Internet, they enter into a tacit agreement with the embassy, while also helping the embassy disseminate information through traditional media. This is a normal manifestation of the diversity of Chinese society. We cannot think of the whole thing as a “U.S. embassy conspiracy.” This is often China’s own problem.

胡锡进： 美使馆之所以越来越活跃，原因之一是中国国内有了一批它的追随者，他们通过互联网与美使馆默契互动，也通过一些传统媒体帮助美使馆做传播。这是中国社会多元化的正常表现，我们不能认为这全是“美国使馆的阴谋”，它在很多时候就是中国自己的问题。

Hu further commented on the article in a reply to his original post:

HuXijin: China must assiduously guid mainstream public views in [the effective production and convergence of voices] in the public opinion space, clamping down on and balancing pro-U.S. and pro-Western voices. In nearly every country, including countries heavily influenced by the U.S., it is difficult for the pro-U.S. view to gain support. In China, however, at least on Weibo, has become an exception. This is a bit abnormal, and its causes are worthy of deep consideration.

胡锡进： 中国一定要认真引导主流公共意见在舆论场的有效发声和汇合，使这些意见对亲美和亲西方的声音形成强有力钳制和平衡。几乎在所有国家，包括美国影响巨大的国家，亲美的声音都很难在舆论场获得强势，而在中国至少微博现在成了例外。这有些反常，也值得深思它的成因。

As usual, netizens had a field day with Hu. Below is a sampling of over 1000 comments. Read more on CDT Chinese.

Translated by Deng Bolun.

ArabianYouth: The reason is that you can speak relatively freely on Weibo, so the people’s vehement dissatisfaction comes spewing out. All other websites have been harmonized. If you can’t see dissatisfaction, does this prove a happy society? @HuXijin

阿拉博童童：成因就是，微博相对可以言论自由，人民对国家强烈的不满可发泄出来。别的网站全被和谐了，你看不到不满就表示社会多美好？@胡锡进

KiMzzzzzZ: The Chinese people aren’t pro-U.S., they’re pro-conscience, pro-truth.

KiMzzzzzZ：中國人民不是親美，是親良知，親真話

NiuniuLovesKaka: The mainstream you’re talking about would be People’s Daily, right? You should know, only on Weibo can you really sense the people’s will. The People’s Daily is just selling dog meat and calling it lamb.

牛牛爱卡卡：你所说的主流，是指人民日报吧？要知道，微博才真正体会民意，人民日报之流，无非是挂羊头卖狗肉

HappyIsEnough: Other than stirring up nationalist fervor among some people, what else can you do? Pursuing freedom and democracy is wrong. Pursuing better air quality is wrong. I know your children must have gone abroad. Are you f*cking evil? Turning a few normal young people into Maoists.

若是安好便足矣：你除了煽动部分人的民族气节，煽动人你还会搞什么，追求自由和民主有错，追求质量好点的空气有错，我知道你的孩子肯定是出国了，你他妈能不能这样邪恶啊，把一些正常的年轻人搞成一个个毛派

ChineseCitizen8: If I’m pro-U.S. or pro-West, that’s my right. Do you want me be an [ass-licker] like you? @HuXijin

中国公民8：老子亲美亲西方是老子的自由，难道要老子和你一样舔菊花啊@胡锡进

KubiTranslatorLiu: We are far from being pro-U.S. We are looking forward to a better life. As for your comment “In nearly every country, including countries heavily influenced by the United States, it has been difficult for the pro-U.S. voice to attain a strong position,” please have a look at the immigration policy on U.S. passport holders in the democratically elected governments of those countries heavily influenced by America.

苦逼的翻译刘：我们并不是亲美，我们是向往更好的生活，至于您说的“几乎在所有国家，包括美国影响巨大的国家，亲美的声音都很难在舆论场获得强势” ，请您看看那些美国影响巨大的国家的民选政府对持有美国护照的人的入境政策。

Zi-Fei-Yu: @HuXijin You use “clampdown” very well, very appropriately, just like someone who has practiced various [throat-clenching or wrestling moves]. Very good, and if you can’t clamp down then couldn’t you still remove our vocal chords for free? Perhaps it wouldn’t be free. You still want fifty cents per bullet [for executions], isn’t that right, Editor Hu? @SimaNan @KongQingdong @SongYangbiao @WuFatian

子-非-余： @胡锡进 钳制这个词用的非常好，恰如其分的好，如同练过锁喉功或者鹰爪功。很好，即使钳不住还可以给我们免费做个声带小手术吗？也有可能不是免费的，子弹还要五毛一颗呢，对吧，胡编？@司马南 @孔庆东 @宋阳标 @吴法天

GuyCalledBubbleBobble: Teacher Hu, if you tell us not to be pro-U.S., ask So-and-So’s and So-and-So’s  “only children” to come back from the United States and then we’ll see. You do the utmost to send your family to America and then ask the common people to not to be pro-U.S. Who are you fooling?

用泡泡龙名字的人：胡老师，如果说不要亲美，请某某的独生女儿，独生儿子等人从美国回来再说。拼命把自己家属送往美国，然后让百姓不亲美，你忽悠谁呢。

Laomu 1840: Your own [government] credibility is lacking, what use is it to blame others? What you should think about is why people don’t trust you! Traditional media are all organized, it’s only Weibo that can sound the voice of the people! Everyday it’s guide this, guide that, and your way of thinking is always right. Now you’re looking for volunteer Fifty Centers. In the end it’s ordinary people who pick up the tab. Senior Fifty Center Sima Nan even secretly took his family and money to the United States. What else can you say???

老木1840：你自己的公信力差，怪别人有用吗？你应该反思的是老百姓为什么不信任你！传统媒体都是组织的，只有微薄才能发出人民自己的声音！天天引导这个引导那个，还是那种自己一贯正确的思维啊，雇佣五毛不要花钱啊，最后还是老百姓买单。资深五毛司马南都偷偷把家人和资产转移到了美国了，你还说什么呢？？？

Bickermate: #HuXijin, if the public opinion space needs your guidance, can you still call it mainstream opinion? Do you represent the mainstream? What’s the point of equating truth and progress with the U.S. and the West? This kind of logic wouldn’t come out of a dog’s ass. The people will support whatever best promotes social benefit. If you don’t want to see pro-U.S. and pro-Western, then build a democratic government. What’s the use of playing dumb all the time?

只配抬杠：#胡锡进#，舆论场里需要你引导的那还能叫主流意见？你代表主流了？你把真实和进步等同于美国和西方干嘛？狗屁不通的逻辑。哪个更能促进社会利益，人们就亲哪个，不想看到亲美亲西方，就建设民主政府。整天装憨有什么用？

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Hu xijin, transparency
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Beijing is over 16,000 square kilometers big. Relying on just one or two points to monitor air quality won’t work. Relying on amateur institutions such as foreign embassies is also unacceptable, and moreover exceeds their function. Ultimately, we must depend on the Chinese people’s own efforts.

北京面积大到1万6000多平方公里，要做好空气监测仅靠一两个点不行，依靠外国驻华使馆这样一些非专业机构也是不行的，并且这已经完全超出了驻华使馆的职能。归根结底还是要靠我们中国人自己的努力。

Read netizen reactions to the dispute.
Via SneezeBloid. Translated by Josh Rudolph.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, Cui Tiankai, environmental data, environmental regulation
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Two theories on the deadly smog soon emerged. The most popular, and the least serious, was that Wuhan’s high school students were burning their books in the wake of graduation and the much-hated college entrance examination. The more serious was that a large-scale industrial accident had taken place. Boiled Universe, the handle of a Wuhan-based Sina Weibo user of no great importance, was one of hundreds of microbloggers who offered a variation: “It’s said that a boiler explosion at Wuhan Iron & Steel caused large volumes of toxic dust and smoke to spread, enveloping the whole of Wuhan, and the death of two people.” Others not only promoted the rumor, they did so by re-tweeting what they claimed was a photo of a chlorine gas leak at Wuhan Iron & Steel. (Another microblogger later offered definitive proof that the photo was six months old).

Someone from Wuhan Iron & Steel Co. Ltd, clearly incensed by the rumor-mongering, logged into the company’s Sina Weibo account (the company has 900 followers, billions in revenue) to deny responsibility for the haze . But that was destined to go nowhere: Few in China are going to take the word of a giant state-owned steel company, especially when it comes to rumors about large industrial accidents. By mid-afternoon, fears of a chlorine gas leak had become so prevalent (online, at least), that the Wuhan Fire Department felt compelled to tweet on Sina Weibo to inform its 95,000 followers that over the course of Monday, it had removed two hornet’s nests, caught a snake and put out five small fires, but it had not, under any circumstance, responded to a major alarm, much less a “so-called chemical leak and explosion.”

Local authorities then went further. From Bloomberg, the following day:

Police in the Chinese city of Wuhan detained two people for spreading rumors that heavy pollution in the capital of Hubei province was caused by an industrial accident, a newspaper controlled by the local Communist Party reported.

The Changjiang Daily, supervised by Wuhan’s party committee, said government departments denied rumors the smog that covered the city June 11 was related to an industrial accident or the leaking of toxic gases. The newspaper didn’t give more information about the people detained or the rumors.

After some investigation, Wuhan’s Environmental Protection Bureau blamed burning of straw by farmers for the pollution, in a statement translated and circulated by the US embassy in Beijing:

An analysis of the air indicates the pollution is caused from burning of plant material northeast of Wuhan.

[…] According to our investigation, the abnormal air quality in our city is mainly caused by the burning of the crops northeast of Wuhan towards Hubei province. Similar air quality is occurring in Jiangsu, Henan and Anhui provinces, as well as in Xiaogan, Jingzhou, Jingmen and Xiantao, cities nearby Wuhan.

The straw burning explanation was, as Minter described, greeted with some incredulity. Farmers had long burned straw as fuel, but Monday’s pollution was exceptional, and its intensity seemed to point to an industrial source. But according to Cornell University air quality expert Dane Westerdahl, America’s only source of “beyond index” pollution scores is not industrial activity, but forest fire. Using straw as fuel spread the burning out over many months. With coal and natural gas replacing it in this role, and other traditional uses also disappearing, straw is now incinerated in vast quantities simply for disposal, producing greater, more concentrated amounts of smoke than in the past. Jiang Gaoming described this shift in a 2007 article at chinadialogue, pointing out that with some organisation and investment, the straw could instead be used to produce beef, fertilising manure or carbon-neutral energy.

In northern China it is now the middle of the autumn planting season, and once again the farmers are burning off the crop stubble left after the harvest. The highways that run through the fields are covered in smoke, which seeps in through closed windows and can reduce visibility to half a kilometre. It gets worse at night; crop fires are illegal, so the farmers wait till it gets dark to avoid getting caught. However, you were unlikely to see this a decade ago ….

So why are the farmers so determined to burn off their leftover straw? Because there is nothing else to do with it. In the past the straw was used as fuel, but now farmers are more affluent and burn coal or natural gas. At one time it could also have been used to feed draught animals, but now they have been replaced with tractors. The government has promoted the use of straw in methane production, but to date only 0.5% of China’s total 600 to 700 [million?] tonnes of straw produced annually is used to make the gas. Ideally it could feed livestock, but the cost of storing straw and the livestock itself makes this unfeasible. Even if you fed the entire nation’s herds with straw, there would still be a lot left over. One could increase the number of ruminants, but China’s straw is scattered around the country and the cost of collecting and transporting it is high. If farmers cannot make a decent profit from it (and they no longer care about earning a few yuan here and there) it will be burnt off to prevent it getting in the way of other work.

The immediate grab for explanations involving hushed-up accidents, and the widespread rejection of the one offered by the local government, show the depths to which trust on public safety issues has sunk. New rules requiring publication of PM2.5 data for cities around China, overdue or not, were a sign of progress on this front. More recent developments such as the arrests of the alleged rumour-mongers in Wuhan and demands for the US embassy to stop tweeting its own air quality measurements seem to indicate a backward step. At chinadialogue, Greenpeace’s Zhou Rong argued that, while the American @BeijingAir monitor does indeed accentuate negative readings, silencing it is not a solution. Instead, the government’s best means of overcoming public scepticism is greater transparency.

First, the government should face up to the severity of the air-pollution problem. China has long looked to traditional pollutant indicators like PM10 (coarse particulates) to evaluate air quality, but not PM2.5 levels. The result is a picture of air pollution that is, at times, too rosy – and out of step with public perceptions.

[…] Second, although most Chinese cities have now started to publish PM2.5 figures – a major step forward – they remain evasive about the health implications of that data. The public don’t understand what a daily average PM2.5 figure of 35ug/m3 or 75ug/m3 means for their health. They just want to know if their elderly parents can go out for a stroll or their kids can go out to play, but the raw statistics they are given don’t tell them that. In the absence of more “human” data, it is hardly surprising that so many citizens, concerned about their families, turned to the US embassy’s feed and its depressing litany of warnings – exaggerations that have worsened the fear and mistrust of the government.

It isn’t complicated stuff. But escalating it to a political – even a diplomatic – issue may just make it so. To regain public trust, all that the Chinese government needs to do is push its existing systems of data disclosure further, and provide accurate information in a format the public can digest and use. Breathing air under the same piece of sky every day, ordinary Chinese people make their own judgements about the state of their environment. And when it comes to statistics, urban residents will judge their veracity by their own experience.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agriculture, air pollution, air quality, chemical leak, farming, greenpeace, industrial accident, PM2.5, public opinion, public safety, rumors, United States, wuhan
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…To come out swinging against the United States for tweeting (here and here) air pollution readings deviates from this pattern. It’s one thing to posture against what Party officials often call “hostile foreign forces,” when the matter under discussion is remote from the everyday concerns of Chinese citizens. But when the issue is the thick haze that hangs over China’s growing cities, harming the health of their residents, condemning U.S. diplomats for providing air pollution information is only going to further alienate the public.

Another thing that makes the criticism of the U.S. Embassy so odd is that the U.S. Embassy has been reporting such information in Beijing since 2008. It started monitoring and posting air quality to advise its staff and other American expats about when it was unsafe to jog, bike, and engage in other out-door activities. Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks reveal that Chinese officials privately lodged protests with the U.S. Embassy over the practice as early as 2009.

Then in early January 2012, when disparities between the information reported by the U.S. Embassy and by the Beijing municipal government during a number of weeks of particularly bad air quality aroused public outcry, the government responded agilely. After Premier Wen Jiabao said that air quality reporting should reflect public perceptions, authorities adopted more stringent air quality standards and began monitoring harmful particulates like PM 2.5 (particulate matter measuring less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers in diameter).

But realizing concrete improvements in urban air quality will take time. Announcing new standards was only a temporary solution to the leadership’s public opinion problem. At present two-thirds of Chinese cities cannot meet China’s own PM 2.5 standard. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has installed monitoring stations in 113 key cities that send data automatically to the national headquarters in Beijing and plans to install more. Nevertheless, the public still suspects that the air reports in local newspapers and TV broadcasts are manipulated by local authorities. Residents of major cities need only look out the window, take a deep breath, and wonder how these reports can claim that the air is only “lightly polluted.” Poor air quality days similar to those that stirred up the public last January will almost certainly occur again.

Read more about air pollution and PM 2.5 in China via CDT. See all of our coverage of the environment.

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Post tags: air pollution, air quality, PM2.5, transparency
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Scientists found that the annual emissions reported by China’s 30 provinces in 2010 added up to 1.4 billion tonnes a year more than the total reported by its National Bureau of Statistics.

The gap between the provinces’ data and the national figure is equivalent to the entire annual emissions from Japan – the world’s fourth-largest emitter. It is 5 per cent of total global emissions.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found the gap was mainly due to differences in reported levels of coal consumption in coal washing and manufacturing.

According to Washington Post, the difference between the national and provincial statistics is equivalent to the amount of all carbon emissions from Japan last year:

According to national-level statistics, Chinese carbon emissions grew at a 7.5 percent annual pace between 1997 and 2010, largely from coal use. But according to provincial statistics, emissions grew at an 8.5 percent pace. That’s a puzzling discrepancy, and it’s not clear which figure is actually correct.

The researchers, Dabo Guan, Zhu Liu, Yong Geng, Sören Lindner and Klaus Hubacek, come up with two possible explanations for the gap. The first is that the data is simply messy, due to the fact that many smaller Chinese firms are burning coal without the national government knowing about it. That might be due to shoddy record keeping. Or it might be due to black-market activity — small inefficient coal mines and coal-washing mills that were shuttered by the government and then quietly reopened elsewhere.

So it’s a mystery. But it’s a critical mystery. As the researchers note, it’s more difficult for scientists to model future climate change if they can’t be sure of how much carbon the world’s largest emitter is actually belching out. Right now, the International Energy Agency thinks we’re on pace to warm the planet by a staggering 6°C by the end of the century. But that’s based on China’s national-level data. What if the provincial-level data is correct and China’s emissions are actually 20 percent higher? Suddenly the picture looks even hotter.

Due to this discrepancy, climate change could be occurring faster than what was previously thought as well. The Guardian adds:

China has already overtaken the US as the world’s top greenhouse gas polluter, producing about a quarter of mankind’s carbon pollution that scientists say is heating the planet and triggering more extreme weather.

But pinning down an accurate total for China’s carbon emissions has long been a challenge because of doubts about the quality of its official energy use data. It is used to compute how the planet’s climate will change, helping plan for more extremes of drought, flood and the impact on crops.

Scientists say the world is already racing towards a warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more in coming decades because of the rapid growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Adding another billion tonnes into computer models would accelerate the pace of expected warming.

On the other side of this debate, Professor Wang Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing claimed that the figures from the government were actually overstated. Reuters reports:

But Wang said in an interview that research being conducted by his institute pointed to the opposite conclusion.

That is because the methodology used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. panel of climate scientists, does not take sufficient account of the big differences in calorific content of China’s many grades of coal, Wang said.

“We have some preliminary calculations and current emissions may be 10-20 percent less than the result based on IPCC methodology,” he said.

Even if the findings are confirmed, Wang said they would not change the bigger picture: China pumps out more carbon than any other country, about 22 percent of the global total.

In another article from Reuters, Chinese and European airlines are also disputing claims about CO2 and possible impounding of planes:

 China will take swift counter-measures that could include impounding European aircraft if the EU punishes Chinese airlines for not complying with its scheme to curb carbon emissions, the China Air Transport Association said on Tuesday.

Chinese airlines, which have been told by Beijing not to comply with the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, refused to meet a March 31 deadline for submitting carbon emissions data.

A new stand-off looms after EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the carriers would have until the end of this week to submit their data or face enforcement action.

“Chinese airlines are unanimous on this. We won’t provide the data,” Wei Zhenzhong, secretary general of the China Air Transport Association, said on the sidelines of an International Air Transport Association (IATA) meeting in Beijing.

“We would not like to see a situation of ‘you hold up my planes and I hold yours’,” Wei said.

Read more about the environmental crisis, via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, airlines, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution
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Beijing makes no secret of its secrecy. While the government has become much less controlling than it used to be, information that doesn’t suit Beijing’s larger purposes still gets withheld, while information that doesn’t quite suit its purposes is often polished until it does. Only last month, an op-ed in the state-run newspaper Beijing Daily exposed local reporters displaying a shameful inclination towards balanced journalism. “Chinese media interested in negative news have been seduced into wrongdoing by Western concepts,” it fumed.

China’s sensitivity about its control of the bad-news agenda was highlighted once again this week when Beijing publicly chided the U.S. embassy for measuring Beijing’s sometimes “crazy bad” air pollution and publishing the data on Twitter. The damage is limited: although many expats and web savvy Chinese can still access it, Twitter is blocked in China. Nonetheless, the U.S. embassy smog readings are embarrassing for the Chinese government, whose own pollution measures tend to be much more favourable.

But pollution is just one of the items on the propaganda hit list. Anything that might shed some light on policy failures, social ills, or even the personalities of the country’s leaders is liable to be altered or suppressed. Here, then, are six of Beijing’s bad-news taboos.

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Now China says all air quality readings conducted by foreign missions are illegal. Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Wu Xiaoqing said on June 6 that the consulate’s actions constitute a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and interference in China’s internal affairs.

A diplomat in the Shenyang consulate, “Luo Jie” (罗杰), responded to the latter accusation via Weibo:

LuoJie_USConsulateShenyang: It is our job to monitor our work environment; the consulate issues this information because it is responsible for the health of officials and their families. If the health of our diplomats counts as part of China’s “internal affairs,” things get more complicated.

罗杰_沈阳美领事 ：监测我们工作环境是我们任务；使馆负责官员和家人的健康， 所以发布信息。如果我们外交官的健康是算中国“内政”一部分，那就更复杂了。

Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin came to China’s defense on Weibo, following the publication of an editorial in his paper titled “The U.S. Embassy Must Actively Respond to the Environmental Protection Ministry”:

HuXijin: Objectively, the U.S. embassy’s PM2.5 data have pushed China to improve its own air quality monitoring. But it is also objective fact that this data is incomplete. It has recently given vent to the emotions of some Chinese. The embassy must promptly stop [its readings] and not cause any more trouble. It is necessary for diplomatic missions to make these adjustments. The Environmental Protection Ministry’s announcement is objectively seeking realistic results, and its request that the U.S. embassy cease to issue data is reasoned.

胡锡进：美国驻华使馆发布PM2.5数据对中国提高空气质量监测精度、加快大气治理起了客观刺激和推动作用。但该数据的不全面也是客观事实，它成了目前中 国一些人的一个情绪发泄点也是事实。美使馆应及时撤出，不再掺和，这确是外交机构应做的调整。环保部的声明是客观求实的，它要求美使馆停止发布数据有其道 理。

As usual, netizens were ready with witty ripostes for Hu:

LaimangHupan: Why does reading the domestic news feel like reading a bunch of jokes? Before it was ridiculing Gary Locke for being honest and humble, now it’s the differences in PM2.5 readings? It turns out the safest place to be is the enemy camp. Our great nation should go tit-for-tat with and issue PM2.5 readings from our own embassies, make our embassies the safest place for the Occupy Wall Street people, and make our country proud.

莱芒湖畔：为什么现在看国内新闻总有看笑话的感觉？前一阵是讥讽骆家辉清廉低调，现在又是PM2.5数值差异？敌营阵地居然是最安全的地方。我们泱泱大国的 对外使领馆也应该以牙还牙，公布当地的PM2.5数值，让我们的使领馆成为占领华尔街的人们的最安全的地方，方能扬眉吐气。

Silent59412: I never understand the Environmental Protection Ministry, especially this sentence: “They use their own country’s air quality standards to evaluate ours, which is clearly unreasonable.” Does this mean Americans are higher human beings or lower human beings than Chinese?

默59412：我一直没看懂环保部意思，尤其是这一句“他们用本国的空气质量标准来评价我国的空气质量，这是明显不合理的”。是说美国人比中国人高等一些还是低等一些？

Houhuoma: Do you think people are blind? How many days the Beijing skies have been blue? You think ordinary people will only believe your own statements?

猴活妈：老百姓都是瞎子呀，就北京这天有几天是蓝天，你以为只有自己公布就让老百姓信了

SeeStarsHearWaves: The price of oil should respond positively to the requests of the National Development and Reform Commission. Taiwan should take the initiative to return to the motherland.

观星听涛：石油价格应积极回应发改委要求。台湾应主动回归祖国。

LawyerYuanYulai: Is the Global Times fighting with the U.S. to win minds, or to win hearts?

袁裕来律师: 环球时报是在跟美国斗智慧，还是斗胸脯？

keyurain: Can’t we do this the old fashioned way? The U.S. publishes China’s human rights white papers, and we publish theirs. America issues PM2.5 readings in Beijing and Shanghai, we issue readings in Washington and New York.

keyurain：可否依照老模式？美国发表中国人权白皮书，我们发表他们的白皮书。美国在北京上海报PM2.5，我国也在华盛顿和纽约的使馆测量发布。

Vine_Leon: I demand that CCAV stop broadcasting the weather reports from New York and Los Angeles!

藤_Leon：强烈要求CCAV停止播发纽约洛杉矶的天气预报！

For more on the air quality debate in China, read CDT’s PM2.5 posts.

“Netizen Voices” is an original CDT series. If you would like to reuse this content, please follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 agreement.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, environmental data, environmental regulation, netizens' voices, PM2.5, pollution, sina weibo, transparency, United States, weibo
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During a June 1 press conference, the Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau announced that installation of the city’s PM2.5 (fine particle) air quality measuring equipment was completed in late May. The equipment will now undergo testing and calibration in June. An exact date for when the machine’s readings will start being made available to the public is yet to be announced.

According to the “Plan for the Testing and Implementation of the First-phase of New Air Quality Standards” published by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, Shanghai is among the first batch of Chinese municipalities granted permission to publish PM2.5 air quality data. Earlier media reports also indicated that Shanghai would officially begin publishing PM2.5 data this June.

Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau director Zhang Quan stated that official publication of PM2.5 readings would signify at least three achievements: that the installation of national air quality control centers has reached completion, that the 10 indexes by which new environmental standards will be calculated will have been made public and that new standardized equipment has passed the testing phase.

After the installation of Shanghai’s national air quality control center, the equipment must still pass temperature and humidity testing before it can meet scientific requirements, Mr. Zhang said. Only then would results be made available to the public.

In May, the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai began issuing its own PM2.5 air quality data on the consulate’s official website. Mr. Zhang stated that the consulate’s publication of PM2.5 data is illegal.

PM2.5 readings recorded by the consulate tend to differ from the readings of the Shanghai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. Regarding this, Mr. Zhang again responded, “The PM2.5 density readings taken by the U.S. Consulate and some other research organizations are actually very similar to the Environmental Protection Bureau’s. The disparity arises from differences in evaluation criteria.”

Mr. Zhang indicated that China employs the World Health Organization’s (WHO) relatively low Level 1 standards for PM2.5 readings. Some developed nations, on the other hand, use the higher Level 2 or Level 3 standards.

PM2.5 refers to particulate matter suspended in air measuring less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter—a size so small that the particles can enter into a person’s lungs. Because these particles are highly toxic and stay suspended in the air for a very long time, potentially traveling vast distances, they are considered to be very damaging to human health and the environment. In February 2012, China’s State Council issued new air quality standards, which, for the first time, included standards regarding PM2.5 density.

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A foreign embassy’s monitoring and issuing of air quality data in China is technically inaccurate and goes against international conventions and Chinese laws, an environment official said Tuesday in Beijing.

Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Wu Xiaoqing said to monitor air quality and release results, which involves the public interest, is the duty of the Chinese government.

“Some foreign embassies and consulates in China are monitoring air quality and publishing the results themselves. It is not in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, as well as environmental protection regulations of China,” Wu told a press conference.

Wu said China’s new standards for air quality, introduced at the beginning of this year, can meet China’s current situation as it took into consideration the current development level of China, and also conforms to international standards.

According to the Voice of America, the US embassy and consulate release on-the-hour reports on air quality through Twitter:

The U.S. embassy posts hourly air-quality data on its popular Twitter feed, which boasts over 19,000 followers. The U.S. consulate in Shanghai has a similar service.

The embassy feed was set up in 2009 following widespread complaints that official government readings were understating pollution levels in the smog-filled capital city.

In January, Beijing authorities promised to start publicizing more precise data on the city’s air quality. But there are often large differences between the official and U.S. readings, which Chinese government officials have criticized as being “unscientific.”

Wu said Tuesday that air quality figures should only be released by “competent” authorities, and that the readings should be based on a large area and not single monitoring stations such as the embassy grounds. The embassy acknowledges on its website that its readings should not be used to provide city-wide pollution readings.

Although Wu did not mention the United States specifically, the US has responded to this announcement. From the BBC:

The US says its own equipment should not be wholly relied on, as its data is compiled from only a single monitor. Its website makes clear that the measurements are for the benefit of embassy personnel and do not give citywide data.

The US monitoring helped spur a public outcry earlier this year that forced China to update its own standards, according to the BBC’s Damian Grammaticas.

China has privately demanded that the US halt its readings in the past, but this is believed to be the first time it has delivered a public warning over the issue, he adds.

US Embassy Spokesman, Richard Buangan, has also released a statement regarding air data quality. Bloomberg adds:

In a statement issued today, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Buangan said the readings are “an unofficial resource for the health of the consulate community.”

Asked about Wu’s remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a briefing in Beijing that embassies can measure air pollution and give the information to their own staff; not broadcast it on the Internet.

China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and second-biggest economy.

Although Beijing has claimed to offer more accurate readings in response to public criticism, residents have dismissed these readings because they are ‘grossly understated,’ from Reuters:

The level of air pollution in China’s heaving capital varies, depending on the wind, but a cocktail of smokestack emissions, vehicle exhaust, dust and aerosols often blankets the city in a pungent, beige shroud for days on end.

“What needs saving is the country’s air quality, not the government’s face,” Zhou Rong, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace, said in emailed comments. “The environmental authorities must stop finger pointing and start taking actions that really address the issue.”

Despite his criticism, Wu acknowledged that China’s air quality and overall environmental situation remained precarious, with more than one tenth of monitored rivers rated severely polluted, for example.

International organizations have also published data on China’s air pollution. According to AFP, China ranks among the worst in the world:

Wu did not name the US, but called on embassies to abide by China’s laws, saying that publishing their own air quality data was “not in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”.

China’s air quality is among the worst in the world, international organisations say, citing massive coal consumption and car-choked city streets in the world’s biggest auto market.

According to the latest Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale University, China ranked 128th out of 132 countries for air quality.

Most Chinese cities base their air-quality information on particles of 10 micrometres or larger, known as PM10, and do not take into account the smaller particulates that experts say are most harmful to human health.

Read more about the environment and transparency, via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, environmental data, environmental regulation, PM2.5, pollution, transparency, United States
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