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Beijing’s Smoggy Challenge

Apr 02-2019   



While Beijing’s air quality alerts are still turned on from time to time, there’s no denying the accomplishment over the last six years: whereas in 2013 heavy pollution happened 130 times, in 2018 it was down to 41, with steady progress throughout, said NSD Prof. Hu Dayuan in a recent seminar dedicated to the analysis of the “Two Sessions”, namely the NPC and the NPPCC which were held in Beijing in the first half of March. The air pollution in Beijing and its neighboring Tianjin City and Hebei Province is due to clusters of heavy industries that can be traced back to the industrial planning in the 1950s-1960s. Since reform and opening up, family businesses and factories have mushroomed in these regions and constituted another source of pollution. It doesn’t help that Beijing has seen the number of cars soar from one million to five million within the first decade of the 21st century. Wind is essentially effective in clearing up smog, and efforts on the human side are important too. In his work report for the “Two Sessions”, Premiere Li Keqiang stressed that relevant rules and mechanisms should be reformed and perfected to drive high-quality development and eco-environment protection in a concerted way. Prof. Hu said that Beijing’s challenge is twofold: A budget squeeze due to reduction in economic size, and decreasing marginal effect in air quality treatment as most of the effective measures have already been implemented. 

Beijing’s Smoggy Challenge

Apr 02-2019   



While Beijing’s air quality alerts are still turned on from time to time, there’s no denying the accomplishment over the last six years: whereas in 2013 heavy pollution happened 130 times, in 2018 it was down to 41, with steady progress throughout, said NSD Prof. Hu Dayuan in a recent seminar dedicated to the analysis of the “Two Sessions”, namely the NPC and the NPPCC which were held in Beijing in the first half of March. The air pollution in Beijing and its neighboring Tianjin City and Hebei Province is due to clusters of heavy industries that can be traced back to the industrial planning in the 1950s-1960s. Since reform and opening up, family businesses and factories have mushroomed in these regions and constituted another source of pollution. It doesn’t help that Beijing has seen the number of cars soar from one million to five million within the first decade of the 21st century. Wind is essentially effective in clearing up smog, and efforts on the human side are important too. In his work report for the “Two Sessions”, Premiere Li Keqiang stressed that relevant rules and mechanisms should be reformed and perfected to drive high-quality development and eco-environment protection in a concerted way. Prof. Hu said that Beijing’s challenge is twofold: A budget squeeze due to reduction in economic size, and decreasing marginal effect in air quality treatment as most of the effective measures have already been implemented.