China tightens smog data controls amid public anger

BEIJING: China has established a single network to monitor air pollution levels across the country, as the government attempts to control the spread of information about the country’s toxic smog in response to rising public anger.

The announcement follows instructions from the national Meteorological Administration last month ordering local meteorological bureaus to stop issuing haze alerts, raising suspicions the government was attempting to suppress information about the chronic problem.

Until now data has in large part been manually compiled from local stations, but the national network will now track pollutants using a combination of manual sampling stations, satellite sensing and airborne platforms, the People’s Daily state newspaper reported on Tuesday.

“Though data collected by ground base stations can be manually forged, real- time satellite data cannot be changed,” He Kebin, a Tsinghua University professor, told the paper.

The initiative aims to accelerate pollution reduction and eliminate falsified data, the People’s Daily said.

In October, environmental protection officials in Xi’an, Shaanxi province were caught tampering with air quality monitoring equipment to produce fraudulent numbers.

The network’s creation coincides with government efforts to suppress reports about the country’s choking pollution, which afflicts most major cities.

According to the China Digital Times, this week authorities directed all Chinese websites to ‘ find and delete’ a two-year- old story from The Paper, a Shanghaibased digital news site, about pollution’s health risks. — AFP