In China, lawyers filing suits over smog threats

BEIJING — Lawyer Cheng Hai has an itemized list of compensation demands from Beijing authorities over the city’s smog: 65 yuan ($9) for having to buy face masks, 100 yuan ($15) for seeing a doctor for a sore throat and 9,999 yuan ($1,500) for emotional distress.

Fed up with what they consider halfhearted efforts to fight air pollution, Cheng and like-minded lawyers are putting China’s legal system to the test by suing the governments of the capital and its surrounding regions.

“Some people might think that air pollution is inevitable with economic development, but they are wrong,” said Cheng, 64. “We have laws to protect air quality, and major pollution can be avoided if they are fully enforced.”

The lawsuits demonstrate the mounting frustration of China’s middle class at the country’s notoriously bad air, a topic that is expected to be discussed at the upcoming annual meeting of the country’s parliament three years after Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution” at the same event.

The dissatisfaction comes even as authorities in the capital are closing factories, getting rid of coal-fired boilers and taking older, heavier-polluting vehicles off the road.

Official data show those measures are having some effect, with Beijing reporting year-on-year improvements since 2013.

Yet the city’s average reading of the tiny particulate matter PM2.5 is still seven times what the World Health Organization considers safe.

The lawyers say their cases are more about drawing attention to government inaction than winning a settlement.

China is grappling with serious pollution resulting from three decades of breakneck growth that vastly improved living standards for many, but took a disastrous toll on the environment.

As people became more aware of the health issues associated with smog, the declaration of a “war on pollution” at the National People’s Congress in 2014 resulted in measures to reduce pollutants in the air, including capping coal consumption. However, a particularly heavy bout of smog at the beginning of this year still triggered pollution “red alerts” in more than 20 cities.

Beijing plans to spend $2.7 billion on fighting air pollution this year, some of which would be used to close or upgrade more than 3,000 polluting factories, replace the use of coal with clean energy on the outskirts of the city and phase out 300,000 high-polluting older vehicles, according to the city’s acting mayor, Cai Qi.

A Beijing court has already twice rejected attempts by the lawyers to file cases, while a court in Hebei province’s capital, Shijiazhuang, has yet to respond to a case filed more than two months ago. Similar attempts to file suits in previous years have also been derailed.

ANDY WONG/AP Commuters, some wearing masks, walk to a subway station during the evening rush hour in Beijing. Lawyers have filed suit against the capital and surrounding regions over smog.