Beijing’s smog: When a scale of zero to 500 isn’t high enough
BEIJING--In the space of an afternoon, Beijing vanished.
For days, the city was crisp and clear. Wind whipped down its ancient alleys and sprawling, 12-lane thoroughfares; an electric blue sky reflected in the glass walls of its postmodern office buildings. But by evening, all was gone, engulfed in a gauzy-white miasma. Buildings rose into hazy oblivion, and the sun became a dull yellow orb, like a flashlight shining from under a blanket.
That was Friday, when levels of PM2.5—particularly noxious particulate matter, small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs—reached 429 micrograms per cubic meter, 17 times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit. By Monday, schools were closed; drivers were using their headlights at noon.
As China’s political and cultural capital, Beijing’s heady dynamism attracts a diverse population of ambitious, passionate people. There are quiet streets lined with persimmon trees, and leafy parks where the elderly practice tai chi. Travel opportunities are abundant; the art scene is terrific; residents are, on the whole, remarkably good-humored, hospitable and astute.
There are, of course, downsides. The Internet is censored, the food unsafe, and the political system a wellspring of injustice, from petty corruption to sweeping crackdowns on dissent.
On Sunday, President Xi Jinping traveled to the international climate change conference in Paris. In advance of his arrival, China’s environment minister, Chen Jining, announced that the country “has achieved the pollution-reduction targets for major pollutants outlined in its 12th Five-Year Plan, six months ahead of schedule,” according to the state-run China Daily.
Meanwhile, Beijing got worse. By Monday, the Air Quality Index, a widely recognized measure of air pollution, hit 587 on the usual scale of zero to 500, registering as “beyond index” on monitors throughout the city. (The United Nations’ recommended maximum level is 25.) The government issued an “orange weather alert,” temporarily suspending some factories and ordering schools to keep children indoors.
The problem’s scope is difficult to fathom. This week’s smog spread across a land mass of 204,634 square miles, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection—about 25 percent larger than the state of California.
For years, the government blocked reporting on the smog, until a similar stretch of record-breaking pollution in 2013—dubbed the Airpocalypse by Internet users—resulted in a surge of public complaints (and a run on air purifiers). In 2014, premier Li Keqiang said in a speech that the government would “declare war’’ on smog. Authorities began releasing air pollution data with unprecedented transparency.
They shut down coal-fired plants in central Beijing. This April, Greenpeace released a detailed report noting that air pollution in Beijing and 359 other Chinese cities had “modestly improved in the last 12 months.”