Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

A new study suggests China’s tough new pollution standards might actually be working.

Heavy smog in Beijing in JanuaryKyodo/AP Images


Finally, there might be some good news for people inhaling Beijing’s famously filthy air: It’s getting a bit cleaner, according to a new analysis released by Greenpeace today. Pollution levels in the Chinese capital have shown significant improvements, due in part to strict new pollution controls, says the environmental group, which based its analysis on new government numbers.

Beijing’s concentration of the fine airborne particles known as PM2.5—the toxic brew of industrial exhaust and chemicals that contribute to smog—declined by more than 13 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period last year, according to the study. Cities in the neighboring province of Hebei, home to extensive heavy industries like steel production, saw their PM2.5 concentrations decrease by an average of 31 percent. Xi’an, the capital of a major coal-producing province, slashed its concentrations by 48 percent, according to the figures supplied by Greenpeace.

Why such steep declines in pollution over the past year? It’s important to keep in mind how awful the starting point was. 2014 was an especially terrible period for skies across China’s northeastern provinces, resulting in unfavorable comparisons to a nuclear winter. The air got so bad that in March 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared “war” on smog. A year earlier, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I traveled to China to investigate its push to develop natural gas, and we saw for ourselves the extent of the environmental catastrophe playing out across the country:

While there’s room for some optimism in the new numbers, the picture painted is still pretty grim: 90 percent of the 360 Chinese cities studied by Greenpeace failed to meet the national air quality standard (that number hasn’t shifted since Greenpeace analyzed similar data from 2014). Forty percent of the cities registered air pollution levels that were twice the national standard. And even in Beijing, there’s a long way to go. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum daily concentration of 25 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5. That makes Beijing’s average concentrations of more than 90 micrograms per cubic meter alarmingly high.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction. “I think these trends are very positive,” said Angel Hsu, an assistant professor at Yale University who studies China’s environmental performance. But she warned that any statistics emanating from the Chinese government—the source of the pollution data analyzed by Greenpeace—should be taken with a grain of salt. “When you talk about any Chinese data, you’re always a little bit suspicious,” said Hsu, who was not involved in the Greenpeace study.

Hsu attributes the drop in Beijing’s pollution in part to the new air quality controls—the “most comprehensive to date,” she said—enacted by the city’s government, which placed curbs on vehicle use as part of a $21 billion effort to slash pollution levels 25 percent by 2017. “On the vehicle side, I think that has been potentially driving air improvement in Beijing,” Hsu said.

“The government must now ensure that pollution is not simply relocated to other regions,” warns Greenpeace’s Zhang Kai.

Last month, Beijing shut down the third of four coal-fired power plants inside the city in an effort to clear the air, though Hsu is more doubtful that the drop in pollution levels can be directly tied to reduced coal use: “Perhaps that could also be a source of the drop in PM2.5, but I’m very, very cautious about the coal consumption numbers,” she said, referring to China’s official numbers.

While Hsu said Beijing “can serve as a model for what other cities can do,” she also warned that marginal improvements in one big city could simply be pushing the problem further out into the country, as industry seeks other cities in which to set up shop.

It’s a concern Greenpeace shares. “Armed with this information, the government must now ensure that pollution is not simply relocated to other regions, and that the same strict measures enacted in cities like Beijing are actually enforced across the country,” said Zhang Kai, a Greenpeace climate and energy official, in an emailed statement.

Clean air will continue to be a crucial matter for China’s image on the world stage, as Beijing once again pitches itself as a great place to host an Olympic games—this time, the 2022 winter games. Organizers of the bid recently said $7.6 billion will be spent to fight smog.

Beijing’s reported improvement in air quality comes amid a well-publicized efforts to tackle the problem, directed from the upper echelons of the Communist Party, which sees the pall of smog across the county as a threat to the economy and to social stability for a population increasingly anxious about the environment. Awareness of the problem is on the rise: Under the Dome, a searing documentary about China’s pollution crisis, went viral in March. It attracted hundreds of millions of views before China’s official censors began playing a cat-and-mouse game of trying to ban its various online incarnations.

There’s good news elsewhere, too. Bloomberg reported over the weekend that China has recently scrapped a number of small coal plants, avoiding the release of 11.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That has helped the country cut its emissions for the first time in a decade, according to Bloomberg.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate